Next up in our week featuring female artists is the song “Poetry Man” by Phoebe Snow. This was the song that put Ms. Snow on the map; released as a single in December of 1974, it rose early the following year to #5 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100, and to #1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Chart.
“Poetry Man,” which was written by Ms. Snow, is an unabashed love letter to the singer’s then-current paramour. My take is that her lover is a younger man, although I could be wrong about that:
You make me laugh
‘Cause your eyes they light the night
They look right through me
La-la-la-la
You bashful boy
You’re hiding something sweet
Please give it to me yeah, to me
Oh, oh, talk to me some more
You don’t have to go
You’re the poetry man
You make things all rhyme, yeah, yeah
Here’s how Ms. Snow remembers it:
“I was having a relationship with somebody. From the [lyrics] ‘Home’s that place you go each day to see your wife,’ you can probably deduce that the guy was married. It was a bad thing to do. [And] it turn[ed] out he was not a particularly great guy… But I got a lovely romantic sonnet out of it.”
It was not, as some have surmised, about Jackson Browne, which some people thought because she played on the same bill with him in the early ’70s and he wrote nice, poetic lyrics. Ms. Snow’s response was to laugh at the notion:
“People thought it was about Jackson because I [opened his] shows… I can’t tell you who ‘Poetry Man’ was about, it was nobody famous.”
Phoebe Snow was born (as Phoebe Ann Laub) in 1950 in New York City, but was raised in nearby Teaneck, New Jersey. After attending college (Shimer College in Mount Carroll, Illinois) she started playing guitar and singing at amateur nights in various Greenwich Village clubs. She was discovered by Shelter Records co-owner Denny Cordell while playing at The Bitter End, and she released her first album, the self-titled Phoebe Snow, in 1974. That album contained “Poetry Man,” and it led off what should have been a long and successful career.
Starting in 1975, however, Ms. Snow took a long and somewhat intermittent hiatus from recording and performing to care for her daughter Valerie Rose, who was born with severe brain damage. Phoebe decided not to institutionalize her daughter, instead caring for her at home until Valerie passed away in 2007, aged 31.
After Valerie’s death, Phoebe Snow returned to performing and to singing on other artists’ records. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in January of 2010 and slipped into a coma. Phoebe Snow passed away on April 26, 2011. She was 60 years old.
Now it’s time for your daily bonus video of the day. It’s Phoebe Snow performing “Poetry Man” on the June 20, 1975, episode of The Midnight Special. Enjoy.
