The poetry of Matthew McConaughey – “Poems are also prayers that rhyme”

Make no mistake, Matthew McConaughey can write poetry. He can rhyme. He can play around with forms and styles, and build words like the syllables are mixed-up Scrabble tiles, and still produce something you can read and understand. I did not know that he is a poet. I only knew about his acting when I picked up “Poems & Prayers”. I was quite surprised. I read a couple of pages every day and I can say that there is only one thing that felt a bit odd: he rhymes. A lot.

He rhymes really well. He prefers the ABAB scheme and he can make just about any idea fit. He is as prolific as Leonard Cohen with his end rhymes. He has a myriad of ways and words to get the lines to rhyme. At times I felt that the lines scanned so well, so formally and rhythmically, that they could be lyrics, rather than poems. I preferred the poems where he used no rhyme scheme, or a looser style, or segued from the quatrain form.

The poet’s voice

However, that’s just my personal preference. These poems are distinguished less by their form than by being deeply personal, deeply honest and revealing, consistent in the philosophies that they express, and highly idiosyncratic. You read these, and you can almost hear McConaughey say the words in that low-pitched drawl of his. The poems were written over many years, and are about different phases in his life, from when he was young and sometimes in trouble, to his life now, as a mature family man. Moreover, a family man who is devoutly Christian. Unlike other people, he is not afraid to tell it like it is. He is a Christian, and he talks to God. He writes poems, and he writes prayers.

As he explains in the Introduction (verbatim, in caps, no title):

“MUSICAL BRIDGES FROM THE MUNDANE.
POEMS ARE A SATURDAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK.
THEY ILLUMINATE BELIEF.
INVITING NEW WAYS TO SEEK.
POEMS ARE SONGS OF ROMANCE.
WITH OURSELVES, OTHERS, SPACE, PLACE, AND TIME.
HYMNS OF HOLY LANGUAGE.
ANGELIC DITTIES OF THE DIVINE.
POEMS ARE ALSO PRAYERS.
THAT RHYME.”

(p. 17)

Use of poetic devices

In this one you can see his unusual use of meter and rhyme, with 3 lines that rhyme out of 4 and 3 lines out of 6: week/belief/seek; time/divine/rhyme. This irregular rhyme scheme places the emphasis on the reason for the poems in the book: “poems are also prayers/that rhyme”.  He describes poems as “musical bridges”, so he is probably aware of how much like lyrics some of his poems sound.

These lines are also typical of his clever use of metaphor and visual puns, and poetic devices including half-rhymes, alliteration, assonance (repetition of vowels), consonance (repetition of consonants), humour, and onomatopoeia (imitation of sounds). In “Musical Bridges…”, above, he uses consonance when he writes, wittily, “…angelic ditties of the divine”. I thought it was “deities” the first time I read it – as I’m sure he was alluding, due to the other words like “angelic” and “divine”.

Simple, not basic

You could unpack, in the same way, every poem and motto, saying, or adage in this book. They look simple since they are often in an informal, conversational style, but every one of them has depth. Look deeper, and you’ll find out what’s the meaning behind the meaning.

Many poems are about his career as an actor. Sometimes I just couldn’t understand what he was saying because that ephemeral world, with its challenges and complexities, is completely foreign to me. Same as some of the daily living about which he writes, using slang. I had to Google a few, like this one:

“SKINNY COWS AND DOLLAR BILLS

Put ‘em up by the fence line
and on the outside of your money clip.

Don’t advertise you got fat heifers
and Benjies on the inside.”

(p. 37) “Benjies” and “fat heifers” are high value dollar bills – “Benjie” refers to Benjamin Franklin’s image on the bill. Skinny cows are a metaphor for poverty.

But the fact that he wrote so many poems and prayers about those times tell me that they are significant. Others, about his wife (Camila Alves, to whom he has been married since 2012), and his family life, are so delightfully human and honest that I enjoyed them and have re-read them often. 

Is he any good as a poet?

McConaughey is an award-winning actor with an established, successful career. He has long since expanded his performances from being a romantic lead to acting in serious dramas such as Dallas Buyers Club, and Interstellar. In 2019, he officially became a professor of practice for the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the Moody College of Communication at his alma mater, University of Texas-Austin, where he had served as a visiting instructor since 2015. However, talent and skill in one form of art does not mean you are as good at another form of art.

So, why should you read this?

In the first place, because it is good, even outstanding, poetry. Second, because the poet’s voice is unique. And thirdly, because you might learn something from people like McConaughey who have achieved self-actualization and self-knowledge with some difficulty. This man has sat down, like a monk in a cave, and studied his navel. He has pondered under a tree like Archimedes, and when an apple fell on his head he learned from it.

He has wandered into, and allowed himself to take a hard look at the seven circles of hell, like Dante Alighieri. Like Saul of Tarsus, he has been on a road to Damascus, struck blind and lost from having encountered God, and feeling his way forward. Like all humans, everywhere, he has been broken, exhausted, off the rails, confused – and cautiously, quietly hopeful. And perhaps, at this stage of his life, a little wiser.

Some examples

Here are a few of my favourite poems from this anthology. Others are longer and deeper, but these I particularly enjoyed. There are so many poems (from p. 15 to p. 203), and ideas are expressed in verse, as mottoes, or as abstract, simple line drawings by Ian Dingman (example below).

Also, in each section he explains how and why he wrote the poems. There are many elements to enjoy. So, while the poems, below, are quoted out of context, but they can certainly exist on their own merit, without explanation.

“DEUCES

Forty miles south of Poteet
looking for a lid to rest my seat
with my stomach in knots,
my prostate in a pinch,
the clock was ticking,
I was grumpy as a grinch.
With the sun now rising,
just past six a.m.
found a roadside loo,
and I went on in.
I passed a janitor
who was on his way out,
which gave me faith
and relieved my doubt.
See, I consider a porta-potty
an absolute win
long as the first butt in the mornin’s mine
on the porce-lin.”

(p. 43)
Ain’t that the truth! I think it’s full of witty double entendres.

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“DAUGHTER’S BED

Need to lie down and rest my head,
think I’ll take a nap in my daughter’s bed.
Hopin’ on a hunch it’ll clear my mind,
slow down my clock, get me back on time.

What do I forgive and where’s the buck stops here?
Been forty-eight days since I had a beer.
I ain’t quit nothin’, just hadn’t had any since,
takin’ a peek on the other side of the fence.

It’s not any harder and it’s just as easy
spend a bit more time tryin’ to please me.
Weary and unrested, the sun’s goin’ away,
and I’m stuck here just starting my day.

Take care of the kids, love on their mother,
look in the mirror, sometimes see another.
To see women as sisters and men as my brothers,
hopin’ to pull it off here under these covers.

Here on the innocence of cleaner sheets,
a place where the pillow never cheats.
Where the nightmare this time is just a cold sweat,
not a reminder of an unpaid debt.

Cus sometimes we need to lie down and rest our head,
take a little nap in our daughter’s bed.
Hope on a hunch it’ll clear our mind,
slow down our clocks, get us back on time.”

(p. 121)
Well, haven’t you ever napped in someone else’s clean and tidy bed, because your own is a tangled, sweaty reminder of bad nights?

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The next one has no title:

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“Once a week I cry for thanks
so my soul can catch its breath.
Because when you’re gone I’ll miss you
I love you until your death.
Tears of joy for both hope and pain
to have and lose what I have left.”

(p. 111)
Yes. I get it.

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Also by Matthew McConaughey