A Night Without Armor : Poems

Rating:
Summary: "A Night Without Armor"
Review: I've learned that not all poetry lends itself to music--some thoughts need to be sung only against the silence. There are softer and less tangible parts of our selves that are so essential to peace, to openheartedness, to unfolding the vision and the spiritual realm of our lives, to exposing our souls.

Rating:
Summary: "A Night Without Armor"
Review: Writing poems and keeping journals since childhood, Jewel has been searching for truth and meaning, turning to her words to record, to discover, and to reflect. In "A Night Without Armor," her first collection of poetry, Jewel 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.

Rating:
Summary: This book is truly beatiful
Review: As I was reading this book, I found myself inspired by the words that lay before me. I was no longer thinking of committing suicide but was going to heal myself by writing poetry. Thankyou, Jewel, you truly saved my life!

Rating:
Summary: Jewel is a great Singer, Writer, and Overall person
Review: Get this book!!! Jewel has a way of writing poems that is sweet yet strong....she knows exactly the right words to put you in whatever mood you want to be in...my favorite poetry book..

Rating:
Summary: WORDS ARE USELESS TO DESCRIBE THIS BOOK
Review: Jewel Kilcher is the best poet I've ever had the chance to experience. Her honesty is so pure and fresh that it cuts right to the soul of anyone reading her poems. She is a beautiful angel who seems to know the inner workings of what makes us human all to well. I can only hope to meet someone in the flesh in the way I've meet Jewel in the spiritual.

Rating:
Summary: I liked it!!!
Review: I got the book from the library this past summer because I am a Jewel fan and I like poetry. Some of the poems were hard for me to understand, but some really touched me. I have one of her poems sitting at my desk everyday and every time i read it I feel what she is feeling. I like her poetry style! I recommend the book.

Rating:
Summary: I cant believe i read this
Review: I was at my sisters house, lookig threw her book collection. I saw jewel's a night without armor. I started reading the ridiculous poems and just being amazed at how bad an attempt of poetry someone can write. SO BAD!

Rating:
Summary: Love & Loss
Review: We are the living
and the living
must love the world
~Jewel

A Night Without Armor is an intricately crafted collection of honest expression and spontaneous revelation. Jewel Kilcher is not only a singer and songwriter, she is a truly gifted poet. Her love for the poems of Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Rumi, Yeats and Pablo Neruda flows through her poems in a mingling of mysterious longings and vision.

I spent an entire afternoon reading "a night without armor" and Jewel's intuitive understanding of life and descriptions of loneliness in the midst of popularity left me in a state of extended contemplation about beautiful moments and the cravings of the soul.

Jewel paints unforgettable scenes in vivid imagery. In "Communion" she shows a deep understanding of intimacy and her artistic descriptions capture environments in sensual words that slip over the pages in beautiful streams of inspired imaginings.

I have cast my heart
like a purpled fruit
toward the violent earth,
far from the Heaven
of your arms

Her words will at times take you by surprise and I found myself retracing my steps to understand the unique poetic forms and deeper meanings woven within complexity. I found myself reading "Wild Horse" three times before I could turn the page. "Still Life" and "Lost" are also equally interesting in form.

"Gold Fish" was a sweet innocent and playful surprise and her witty interpretation of life in Spivey Leaks made me laugh. "You Are Not" is a revealing look at belief that sharply contrasts with action.

Many of Jewel's poems are saturated in deep heart longing and many are resting in delicate moments of peaceful childhood memories from Alaska. There is a profound poem about her brother Shane and many poems about her childhood and family life in Alaska. "The Slow Migration of Glaciers" is a love poem to Alaska and explores Jewel's longings for home.

Struggling to hold back
the dawn
open-hearted lovers
cling to the sweet fruits
of last-minute kisses
so eager
to lose themselves
in the honey-thick gravity
of love so new

Jewel's love poems are unique and she delves into dreams, experience, loss, passion, trust, betrayal, fear, disappointment, uncertainty, longing, infatuation and kisses.

These poems are alive with emotion; they capture the beauty of Jewel's soul and make the world feel a little less lonely.

~TheRebeccaReview.com
Author of Moonbeam Moths


Rating:
Summary: Almost anybody could've written these.
Review: Walt Whitman, what have you wrought upon us?

The advent of free verse was like literary punk music: While a potentially liberating influence which could serve to wrest artistic expression from the elite, it also leveled the playing field to such an extent that almost anybody putting words into a "poetic" arrangement could now call his/her work "poetry".

I liked Jewel's early music a lot; I'd bought her record Pieces of You a whole year before "You Were Meant for Me" became a hit, before that song made a little neo-folk album (which had many tracks recorded live, acoustically) into a sales juggernaut. But even when I was listening to her songs, I never considered Jewel to be much of a lyricist. Her chief strengths were really melody, a simple guitar style, and her voice. Jewel's lyrics were almost always direct expressions of what she believes -- no hidden meanings, no craft, and almost never any surprising thoughts (after all, she was 20).

On her poetry, the problem burns right through. Stripped of the melodies at which she excelled, her writing is awfully sappy, worthy of high-school student scribbles. And it reads without much verbal (ie. poetic) flow. Have the layout artist put the verses and stanzas back together, and it sounds like undoctored prose. What use is the term "poetry" if it's just prose broken up? Sometimes Jewel does come up with interesting imagery, but if poetry is all image and no verbal artistry, then she should be doing photography or film work, not poetry.

Young readers with little experience reading poetry may respond to the artlessness of it and embrace the direct sentiments of this writing. But to them I would suggest: Write your own poetry, get your friends to do the same, and read one another's works. Chances are it'll be just as good as what's collected and published here. Even Jewel herself admitted that the publication of these poems was due to her fame as a musician, not her skill as a poet, and frankly, I don't think her writing comes close to being able to stand alone without her guitar and songwriting.

Rating:
Summary: Easy Read and Well Done!
Review: Jewel does a fine job in using language which evokes imagery of rustic secrets, peaceful solitude, relationships, etc. She expresses her love of the outdoors in a spiritual way. A major strength of this group of poems is that they are easy to read and don't take a lot of "analysis" to see what they actually are, to see their true beauty. I look forward to reading more of her poems. It is obvious that she loves life very much!