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List Price: $11.95 | | Publisher: It Books
Salesrank: 278087
Released: August 3, 1999 |
| Our Price: $1.50 |
| Used Price: $0.01 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
I've learned that not all poetry lends itself to music--some thoughts need to be sung only against the silence. These are softer and less tangible parts of ourselves that are so essential to peace, to open-heartedness, to unfolding the vision and the spiritual realm of our lives, to exposing our souls.
-- Jewel from the Preface
Jewel has been writing poems and keeping journals since childhood. A Night Without Armor, her first collection of poetry, explores the fire of first love, the fading of passion, the giving of trust, the lessons of betrayal, and the healing of intimacy.
She delves into matters of the home, the comfort of family, the beauty of Alaska, and the dislocation of divorce.
And then there are the images of the road, the people, the bars, the planes, places exotic and mundane, loneliness and friendship.
Frank and honest, serious and suddenly playful, A Night Without Armor is a talented artist's intimate portrait of what makes us uniquely human.
Description of A Night Without Armor : Poems:
Jewel Kilcher was the first to admit that this book of 100 or so of her poems would not have been published if her dazzling debut album, Pieces of You, hadn't sold 10 million copies. And granted, Jewel is not going to replace Deborah Garrison's A Working Girl Can't Win on anybody's hit parade of serious poets who write for regular people.
But--shockingly!--Jewel's book of poetry is solid by celeb-poet standards, and a fair bit of it is actually sort of readable in its own right. Maybe it's not a bad idea to raise your kids on an 80-acre Alaskan farm with plenty of chores and no TV, as Mr. Kilcher did. Unlike most young people, let alone overnight stars, Jewel has led a life of some intrinsic interest. While they're often prosaically straightforward, her poems about rescuing a newborn calf in the midnight snow, listening to wolves howl in a canyon storm, and racing naked out of a sauna of a winter evening bring us more useful experience than kid poets usually have to share. Some of Jewel's homesteading verse is no worse than some of Gary Snyder's late nature poems; though she'll never write nature poems remotely as good as his early work Riprap, neither will he, probably. Preachiness is the enemy of both poets' deep religious impulses.
Jewel's poems about dumping a lover or thrilling to parking-lot sex "between the moon and a Chevrolet" are perceptive, at points even evocative. Her ode to her own breasts as a nest for her beloved is no good, but it's an honest failure. Her dress at the Oscars was more embarrassing.
The music critics contend that Jewel's music is influenced by Joni Mitchell, though Jewel claims she didn't listen to her until lately. In comparing Joni Mitchell: The Complete Poems and Lyrics with Jewel's book, we find that both use the image of the cactus for a heart that resists a restricting embrace, but that Mitchell is cleverer with language. When Joni's lover is away, "Me and them lonesome blues collide / The bed's too big, / The frying pan's too wide." Meanwhile, Jewel baldly observes, "I miss you miserably, dear / and I can't quite manage / to face this unbearably / large bed / alone."
On the other hand, Jewel does conclude with a nice image for toughing it out with a sentimental gesture--she shaves her armpits with his razor and cheap hotel soap. Ow! We feel her pain. Also, Jewel's "Underage" holds its own against Mitchell's "Raised on Robbery," while demonstrating the influence that probably outweighed Mitchell in Jewel's artistic development: her dad, with whom she played gigs as a child in Alaska.
I hung out once in the bathroom of Trade Winds Harley bar in Anchorage
With several biker chicks for company until the cops had left.
They had pale skin and thick black eye makeup
And they asked me to sing at their weddings.
I said I'd ask my dad. We all sat on the counter and waited for the pigs to leave.
Some guy OD'd and was outside foaming at the mouth.
I remember looking in the mirror
And seeing this white face,
My shirt all buttoned up.
The women were nice to me
And looked like dark angels
Beside me. I liked them,
And together we waited
Patiently for the cops to leave
So I could go back out
And join my dad up
On stage.
The great peril for Jewel, as for most poets when very young, is artless sincerity. Her poem about her dad's Vietnam War trauma is dead sentiment, but she does far better in "Grimshaw," about a Vietvet who came to watch the Kilchers play, perpetually requesting "Ain't Goin' to Study War No More" and drinking four quarts of beer a night until the day he shot his face off. Which made little Jewel vow to deal with her own emotions sooner rather than too late.
Careless editing permitted Jewel to misspell the names of Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski and the word "peek." Most young fans won't notice, and the very poems about love troubles that older readers will find gratingly obvious will strike them as headline news to be taken to heart. --Tim Appelo
A Night Without Armor : Poems Reviews:
An Autobiography Told in Poetry 
2009-11-22 - I'm not a fan of poetry, but I have recently fallen in love with Jewel as an artist. I came upon this collection of poems and decided to take a chance on them based exclusively on the poet. I found in Jewel's poetry the same elements that I have come to appreciate in her songs. Some of the poems could be excerpts from a memoirs; others are the kinds of thoughtful, outside-looking-in perspective on the human condition that make her as much a sociologist as an entertainer.
Jewel's poems are largely stripped of the kind of pretentious symbolism that I find alienating in other poets' work. Instead, she employs an accessible (if deliberate) language. Some poems are ephemeral; others are pregnant with imagery, practically begging to be developed into a longer story. Feminimity is not a dominant theme, but it is certainly present. Rather than repeat any kind of nearly militant doctrine, Jewel explores the issues specific to women simply through her own experiences, as she struggles to make sense of her own identity as a woman. There is a quiet, thoughtful dignity to not only the poet, but the poems as well.
I've read some of the Amazon reviews, and it appears that poetry fans condemn this collection as pedestrian and uninspired. I suspect they reject the very qualities that attract me to these works. Then, I consider the chief objective of the arts--and language--to be the act of conveying ideas. Perhaps I'm just confused because the pro-poetry crowd typically cries as loudly as possible about how poetry is an art form that can disregard any and all conventions; blasting Jewel for a prose-centric style seems to me somewhere between ironic and hypocritical.
Rather than compare Jewel's poems to those of others, I suggest taking them simply for what they are: brief excerpts from the thoughts of one of our generation's most empathic artists. In the intervening decade since this collection was published, however, we have become accustomed to profile updates and micro-blogging on Twitter. I see A Night Without Armor in that vain; these are not full-length stories, but rather specific (if sporadic) observations from Jewel. Form notwithstanding, it sounds like poetry to me.
The Rekindling of my Faith 
2009-09-26 - I stumbled upon this book in a Good Will when I was trying to find a tie to match my best flannels, I knew it was a sign from the God I had long since written off. It took me until the third read to realize her clever use of "night" instead of "knight" in the title, which is when I knew that I had found a work of true genius.
I went directly home, made some bowls of Kraft Easy Mac and spent hours which seemed like a lifetime pouring over the words of this lost soul. Her constant use of hand imagery made me realize that I too had hands, which maybe, just maybe, were meant for more than just making instant macaroni dishes. When she described the sausages shivering from a gypsy woman's pockets, I was finally able to cry over the loss of my father some three years ago.
I was completely engrossed in this fountain of words and honesty that I canceled all my appointments for the week, figuring that my friends at the shuffleboard hall would understand and that Steve, the seventeen year old lacrosse player I work with at Olive Garden could cover all of my shifts. I read this book every minute of every day for a week, and on the seventh day I rested.
My body was wrought with emotion, my eyes could cry no more. I had a new faith in the world around me, and I was bursting with the need to share it. I was confident enough now to try out for the actual shuffleboard team, and in tryouts, I scored higher than even some of the captains!
One of the recruits offered me a spot on the team saying that I was a real "diamond in the rough."
"No," I replied. "I am a jewel in the rough."
5 stars.
A very personal & sincere poetry collection
2009-02-20 - Jewel is very poetic and her lyrics just roll off the tongue. If you've never heard her sing, she has a certain twang to her song that you'll either adore or not. I personally love her singing and if you do too, you will want to get this sweet, and sometimes bittersweet collection of her simple yet memorable poems. I was inspired to make a few of my own after reading hers, and play around with words the way she does. This book is the cat's meow fans ;) Thanks for reading!
A good effort 
2008-05-25 - There were quite a few poems I did like. But overall, this collection was boring. I think she should stick to singing.
"I am in love with a man who is gone now..."
2007-08-19 - A Night without Armor by Jewel is an excellent and under-rated book of poems. Ok so she's not Shakespeare but most writers aren't. These poems have been highly-criticized in the past, and it's a shame that Jewel was unfairly mocked by critics and so-called fans. I got this collection of poems the first week it was released and I fell in love with the book instantly, the poems are sensual, seductive, sensitive, and incredibly funny as well. Some of my favorites are: The Bony Ribs of Adam, Sara Said, The Strip Parts 1 and 2, New Moon, Someone To Know Me, Christmas in Hawaii, Red Roof Inn, Boston, and You Are Not. So with that being said, get this great collection of poems by Jewel today.
