All That Glitters: Infinity Blues Should Have Clued Us in to Ryan Adams' Entitlement
The poems in the singer's second collection mix occasional brilliance with threats, violence, and an anger that apparently never abated, despite his assurance that he'd grown up through writing it.
By his own admission, Ryan Adams is not a good dude. At best, he was a bad boyfriend and husband. At worst, he was a serial abuser. Perhaps he still is. I’m not an investigative journalist, but I do believe women.
In recent years, “seven women—including Adams’ ex-wife Mandy Moore and singer/songwriter Phoebe Bridgers—accused Adams of championing rising female artists and then exploiting them and stifling their ambitions, often for his own sexual gain.” What was Adams’ response to these allegations and their aftermath?
“I felt like they were asking me to die,” Adams said, referencing cancel culture. “So I’m losing my life’s work, and my dream of who I am, my ability to provide for myself. And I now don’t have the emotional support to help fix this. The door has slammed and what am I going to do?”
What did he do? Continue to record and sell more albums and books. Adams has complained roundly about so-called “cancel culture,” but by all accounts continues to make art and live his life. What about what came before?
Bad Blood
Long before Adams’ abuse was uncovered, he was telling us who he was through his work. Take his song, “Sylvia Plath,” from his best-selling 2001 album, Gold. Far from an ode to the genius poet, the song is a wish-fulfillment fantasy about possession:
I wish I had a Sylvia Plath Busted tooth and a smile And cigarette ashes in her drink The kind that goes out and then sleeps for a week The kind that goes out on her own To give me a reason, for well, I don't know And maybe she'd take me to France Or maybe to Spain, and she'd ask me to dance In a mansion on the top of a hill She'd ash on the carpets And slip me a pill Then she'd get me pretty loaded on gin And maybe, she'd give me a bath How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath
Adams also wrote three books of poetry, all published in 2009: the year he married singer and actor Mandy Moore. Their contents, when read even semi-autobiographically, reveal a deep sense of entitlement, misogyny, and emotional immaturity that make one far less surprised to learn of Adams’ abuse in hindsight. I’ve fielded a few requests to cover Infinity Blues, and I think it’s worth discussing in terms of its place in a long, angry, entitled white male tradition that we have got to move on from. I mean seriously.
But the long and short of it is that the book isn’t very good, and even before the #MeToo era, the book feels uncomfortable and upsetting—like a teenage diary you really want to put down.
Harder Now That It's Over
Like Jimmy Stewart’s book of poetry, Infinity Blues is a book best suited for those who love Ryan Adams and want to feel closer to his celebrity, not for readers of poetry. One of the first things you notice about this volume is its size. At 286 pages, Infinity Blues is hefty. Typically, you only see volumes of poetry this long that are selected works by well-established poets with several books under their respective belts.
But when you’re already famous, no one edits you. If you want to write a poem called “Million-Year Fuckface Convention” about how you’re still mad at your mom for your dad leaving, not only can you write it, you can publish it in a lengthy tome. Bukowski is the first writer who comes to mind when you flip through Infinity Blues, and that’s not a compliment. Nick Cave gets it:
The poems feel inebriated and grimy, roughshod and scribbled in the middle of the night, supremely pissed or drunk or high. These are the kind of poems that feel good to write, to let out raw on the page. But the best poetry typically moves beyond the catharsis of the first draft by presenting something finely honed to the reader.
That’s not this book.
Adams covers his literary sins by penning a forward (dated October 2008) disavowing the writer of the poems (himself):
I no longer know the author of this book, for simply stopping long enough and writing it down was where I changed from a boy with his eyes squeezed shut to a man with his eyes wide open…
We now know that Adams’ worst and most self-centered behavior was still ahead of him. The boy who wrote these poems is the man we see today.
The volume was published by Brooklyn-based Akashic Books in 2009. Akashic has published the work of other already-famous folks and was started by musician Johnny Temple, whose admirable mission has been to “make literature more part of popular culture, not just a part of elitist culture.” And despite that worthy goal, it’s a shame that books by celebrities are the paving stones the press has chosen for its pathway to increased visibility for poetry.
I’m not arguing that Adams laid plans for his abuse of women in this book or any other. Rather, I’m arguing that Adams is partially the product of a steady literary diet of white men like his heroes Kerouac and Burroughs. That, coupled with his well-established fame as a singer-songwriter, inflates the book to such a degree that very juvenile and often violent writing is visible on a mass scale. This is bad for poetry and worse for the legions of young fans who gobbled the volume up.
Gimme Something Good
Adams’ poems blend cliché with sophomoric angst peppered by occasional original turns of phrase that make you wish each poem was half as good as its best line. Take the poem “SOS Searchlights,” for example. Here’s its opening:
It's too late to beg she is not coming back again and she was everything everything I ever saw, too perfect for words I prepare a knife and barricade the door but she will not miss me when I am gone
These lines are strongly reminiscent of the first poems that poets ever write purely because those poems are usually written in adolescence. But Adams was 35 years old when Infinity Blues was published. (It’s also worth noting that Adams’ exes have alleged that he threatened suicide in a bid to control them during their relationships with him—life imitating art? Something more?)
It’s possible that he’s been dragging these poems around for 20 years (though this poem contains a reference to documenting things with cell phones, which wasn’t a possibility in 1989) but the more obvious explanation is that the speaker of Adams’ poems demonstrates an emotional immaturity, time and time again. Should we go so far as to say that the poet is also emotionally immature? Best not. But one wonders.
Buried within poems like this one are a mélange of received language (trite, common phrases) and the odd brilliant line or metaphor. For example:
oh god no sleeping dogs lie if it breaks like a violin bowed to death
The worn-out “sleeping dogs lie” followed by the arresting simile of “like a violin bowed to death” is frustrating. It feels as if the poet has a great deal more potential and has chosen to forge ahead with the angst of a preteen in his thirties. Where Adams crafts his songs finely, his poems are shotgun blasts of self-pity and wannabe Beat “first-thought” musings. How I wish he would write a single poem as good as this lyric from his song “Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.”:
If I could I'd fold myself away like a card table
A concertina or a Murphy bed
I would but I wasn't made that way so you know instead
I'm open all night and the customers come to stay
And everybody tips but not enough to knock me over
I'm so tired
I just worked two shiftsBut the light of the moon leads the way towards the morning
And the sun, the sun's well on its way too soon, to know
Oh, my God
Oh, my God, whatever, etcetera
A concertina! A Murphy bed! Those crystalline details in his simile are so refreshing compared to the raw anger of his poetry.
Has the concept of free verse led Adams so far astray that he hasn’t bothered to shape or revise his poems at all? Does he erroneously believe that Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow” is truly spontaneous and always an overflow? It’s bad enough that poetry like this gives credence to the false idea that poetry is just an unedited spew of emotion. But what’s worse is that Adams’ emotional tidal waves are so often immature, violent, and misogynistic:
Cinderella between the legs where the balls are that's the wink that's the fucking subway rattle so fuck you and see it from the balls and the place where the fire is and where the hot comesfrom
I tire of books like these and men like these. Can we change the song?
Interesting article spoiled by lazy, quiet frankly vile, slurs on "white men" yawn.. yeah we're all kind of bored too, bored of the cliches and lazy thinking that seep out of the pores of articles like these.
Taylor Swift went on Saturday Night Live two years ago and sang a ten minute song about how Jake Gyllenhaal stole her scarf, a decade prior.
If musicians can't write/sing about prior relationships, it'll be the fucking end of music! Imbeciles.