Successful tunesmith proves that good songwriters seldom make great poets

Jewel Kircher (sic) is now reputedly the highest paid poet in the world, securing a telephone figure advance for her volume of verse on the strength of having sold 10 million copies in America of her debut album, Pieces Of You. That she is a better paid poet than, say, the Nobel prize winner, Seamus Heaney, is preposterous, although it's hardly her fault. Her publishers should know, however, that great songwriters do not necessarily make great poets. Bob Dylan undoubtedly is both, Leonard Cohen, too. Yet they are extraordinary and exceptional geniuses, and even as fine a songsmith as Joni Mitchell can seem unconvincing when her lyrics are separated from their melodies and printed as verse.

Jewel is a sensitive, touching and emotional songwriter. Some of the same qualities are present in her poetry, and many of the poems are about her childhood. But too often they mistake sentimentality for profundity and the blindingly obvious for gifted insight. You can get away with that in song; indeed, it can often add to the simple charm. In the black and white of naked print, it can be embarrassing. The best poems here sound as if they ought to be songs. The least successful should never have been allowed to escape from Jewel's juvenile notebooks.

Above average, inoffensive, gawky adolescents' diary full of first fumbles, mysterious hormonal workings, sprouting breasts, not forgetting the ravishing wastelands of Alaska. Three months on the New York best sellers list following a $2 million signing-on fee.

All songwriters are, in one sense, poets but few choose to take up that mantle and actually publish their words. Alaskan singer-songwriter Jewel believes that "not all poetry lends itself to music - some thoughts need to be sung only against the silence." So a bit of hush please for A Night Without Armor, the collected verse of a reflective and extremely verbose young woman. Taken from the journal Jewel has kept since childhood, these poems are most interesting for their insight into the quirks of her impoverished rural upbringing: "August spent/filling empty milk cartons/canning and preserving the syrups, jams and jellies/that would sustain us/through another pale December" (Home). Her more abstract musings are less effective as the language isn't vivid enough to convey or inspire any real emotion, but hidden among these mainly self-indulgent outpourings is the odd thought-provoking observation: "Can you imagine/how silent/a plane crash would be/if you were deaf?/How unbearably loud a rape?" (Shush).

A blonde, guitar strumming, multimedia phenomenon, Jewel is one of the most respected artists in popular music today. Her haunting debut album, Pieces Of You, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. With songs such as Who Will Save Your Soul and You Were Meant For Me dominating the top of the charts and four years of continuous touring, Jewel has established herself as a talented superstar. This year she will be touring in the UK and Ireland and appears in her first major motion picture debut To Live On, directed by Ang Lee (The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility).

This Alaskan singer, who dated Sean Penn, is much more than just a music industry success. Before her gifted songwriting comes an even more individual art: poetry. It is these heartfelt poems that reveal her youthful musings on everything from sexuality to fame to homelessness. There are images of the road, the people, the bars, the planes, the places exotic and mundane, loneliness and friendship.

Frank and honest, serious and suddenly playful this collection of poems taken from her journal, is a talented artist's intimate portrait of what makes us uniquely human. Intimate and inspiring, these words will be embraced by a dedicated following hungering for more and varying works from Jewel.