POEMS & PRAYERS
by an 18\u002Dyear\u002Dold (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all\u002Dwe\u002Dcan\u002Deat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental\u003B only when he writes of life\u002Dchanging events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job."
Based on 570 Goodreads ratings
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This is a collection of short spiritual poems and prayers rather than a single narrative, put together to be accessible without talking down to a young reader working through big questions. The langu...
Our Review
This is a collection of short spiritual poems and prayers rather than a single narrative, put together to be accessible without talking down to a young reader working through big questions. The language stays plain enough that a kid can follow the meaning on a first read, while the subject matter, gratitude, kindness, wonder at the world, is handled with enough sincerity that it doesn't read like a lesson dressed up in verse. At 209 pages it's a substantial collection rather than a slim pamphlet, giving a family plenty of material to return to instead of exhausting it in one sitting.
It's built for dipping in and out of rather than reading start to finish, which makes it useful as a bedtime piece some nights and a conversation starter on others, whenever a kid brings up a question about faith or meaning that doesn't have an easy answer. The collection stays deliberately open in its approach, speaking across different belief systems rather than a single tradition, which broadens who it's actually useful for. It holds a 4.15 average across 570 Goodreads ratings, a well-established number for a poetry-and-prayer collection, a category that typically draws a smaller crowd than fiction does.
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