The Second Spring: Twenty-Four Songs

Ten years ago, in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, Joseph Bottum took on the overarching problem of the emptiness inherent in so much that passes for music, that white noise we hear everywhere - and was soundly attacked for doing so. In the interim, he has come back to the problem, to dig into the vast riches to be found in forgotten folk ditties, ballads, hymns, and popular tunes, and has sought to revivify them with lyrics worthy of their haunting melodies, which somehow cut to the marrow of the soul. In this, he has succeeded beyond what one would have thought possible, by way of a fierce critical intelligence and a terrific sense of the comedy of errors we call the human condition. Let the music and the lyrics and the brilliance even of his footnotes wash over you, and see what it does for you. My guess is that the hissing sound-bite Muzak of public and private spaces will never sound the same to you again. Without irony, new possibilities - such as poets like Hopkins, the young Pound, and Auden hoped for - will begin to reveal themselves as surely as the fresh dawn rising. - Paul Mariani