Recommendations of the Editorial team
Last year, Joan Baez published her first book of poetry, When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance, in which she expresses her thoughts about her personal and family life and some of her fellow musicians.
A few months ago, however, she began to write completely different poems. “I saw two masked men grabbing a boy and wrote something about how they beat him up and dropped him through the cracks into a dungeon,” she says. “It was difficult. But that’s how it started; that was the first poem.”
Since then, Baez, long a leading voice in the world of folk music and activism, has continued to pursue contemporary poetry. The works alternate between sarcastic put-downs and celebratory statements and play on topics from the news, be it raids by the immigration agency ICE or our current Secretary of Homeland Security.
Poems about politics and society
“Little Green Worm”) is a pointed response to Donald Trump. “When I’m here and I look at my own yard and the trees and everything, it’s still as beautiful as ever,” she says. “And then there are times of great sadness and times of frustration, like everyone else. And I’ve found that poetry helps – just writing and putting it on paper or on the computer to keep my head above water.”
For now, Baez isn’t sure whether she’ll collect her growing collection of recent poems into a book, nor can she imagine them becoming songs, especially given their irregular structures. “I was talking to other songwriters because I thought, ‘Why isn’t this working?'” she says of an early attempt. “And they said that in their experience, setting poetry to music doesn’t work.”
In further diversion, Baez currently performs two days a week as part of the Soiled Dove, an old-fashioned circus in Alameda, California, where she dances and sings two songs in character. “It’s wild and crazy and exhausting,” she says. “But I always wanted to dance on stage, and it never really worked out. Now I’m doing all that, dancing and singing and stuff, with a blonde wig. This is a place where I can really, honestly, God, forget all this shitstorm.”
In another conversation with ROLLING STONE last spring, Baez explained, “Having fun has become an act of resistance.” Looking back on that statement a few months later, she reflects: “That’s still true, but I think it’s gone way beyond that now. That’s not enough anymore. You have to start creating positive disruption. People are asking, ‘What can I do?’ The answer is: “Get involved as a volunteer [irgendetwas]“, and they say, “Oh.” All I’m saying is that we may not be able to turn the tide yet, but we can definitely save some fish.”
LITTLE GREEN WORM: A NOTE TO THE PRESIDENT
By Joan Baez
“Since you are so comfortable
hiring people whose minds have
been hollowed out by worms,
I’ve been thinking about
a little green worm that has
worked its way into
your anterior insular cortex,
the part of the brain
where empathy originates.
Empathy is the ability to understand,
feel, and share the emotions of
another person.
It’s like a muscle,
which is to say:
you can develop it with practice.
The little green worm quickly devoured yours.
He then munched onward
until he came to
the prefrontal cortex,
which is involved in
impulse control
and regulating social behavior.
It’s meant to stop us from blurting out
vulgarities such as
“Grab her by the pussy” and
“Shithole countries” or accusing everyone
Mexican immigrants being criminals,
rapists, and drug dealers.
There is one of your outbursts however,
which remains both
unfiltered and true:
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue
and shoot someone,
and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
What’s a little green worm to do
but munch on to the cerebrum,
which is the big one, responsible for thought,
language, memory, reasoning and learning,
for all the functions that make up basic
intelligence.
But oh shit: there’s nothing there.”