POETRY IS COOL

Love, death, and more of life’s big topics get a lyrical treatment in this autobiographical book of rhymes.

Not all of us grow up to be rock stars, but many of us have dreamed of becoming one. At a tender age, we may have filled notebooks with rhyming refrains inspired by those of our favorite artists on the radio—ones that lean on familiar rhymes like “heart” and “apart,” “sad” and “mad.” Without an instrument to accompany those refrains, they could even be called poems. Lyon has done just that. His collection of original song lyrics runs a gamut of topics, from childhood memories to romantic and familial love to war and death—plus two inexplicable odes to frogs. “When I was here, I had a voice, a mind, and a thought or two, but most of all, I could feel,” the author writes by way of introduction. “And what I could feel, I could mostly express, in song.” While the lyrics are meant to convey personal moments from the author’s life, their generic platitudes could apply to just about anyone, not unlike pop songs. Unique details from Lyon’s life are found instead in photographs interspersed throughout the book. Readers have to do a fair share of guesswork to draw parallels between those photos and their accompanying songs (which, to the author’s credit, read as fairly catchy). In “Respectable Lady,” a lyric that follows a photo of the author’s three sisters, the speaker rhapsodizes, “She can melt my heart with one look into my eye / Let me tell you something about my lady / She’s respectable / Respectable Lady.” Lyon’s lust for life and rhymes is undeniably touching, but readers won’t encounter anything here that they couldn’t find in the margins of their old schoolbooks or in the Billboard Top 40.

An ostensibly personal collection of verse made impersonal by lyric and thematic tropes.