Forever Words

Johnny Cash

“My father,” John Carter Cash writes in the foreword, “had many faces.” We know a bunch of them through Kris Kristofferson’s song Pilgrim: poet, picker, prophet, pusher, user, seeker. This focuses on the poet, although the rest are as evident in his poetry as they were in his songs. Plain and direct in style, they’re variously deep, funny, holy, carnal, light, dark, personal, philosophical or righteously angry on behalf of the downtrodden or the planet. Compiled from a stash of some 200 works, they’re illustrated with facsimiles of his handwriting, the occasional doodle (Don’t Make A Movie About Me, a fine, wry piece) and three photos: youth, adulthood and old age. The oldest poem, The Things We’re Frightened At, Cash wrote at age 12. His last, Forever, written days before his death at age 71, appears halfway through this strong collection and stops you in your tracks.