Synopsis
New York Times best seller
As seen on The Oprah Winfrey Show
Writing poems and keeping journals since childhood, Jewel has been searching for truth and meaning, turning to her words to record, to discover and to reflect.
In A Night Without Armor, her first collection of poetry, Jewel explores the fire of first love, the fading of passion, the giving of trust, the lessons of betrayal and the healing of intimacy.
She delves into matters of the home, the comfort of family, the beauty of Alaska, and the dislocation of divorce.
And then there are the images of the road, the people, the bars, the planes, places exotic and mundane, loneliness and friendship.
Frank and honest, serious and suddenly playful, A Night Without Armor is a talented artist's intimate portrait of what makes us uniquely human.
Library Journal
For people who don't regularly follow MTV (which unfortunately includes most of those who listen to poetry), Jewel will seem to have sprung up out of nowhere. But the 23-year-old Alaska native has four albums to her credit and several web sites. A veteran of the coffee-house scene around San Diego, she brings to mind those New York spots of the late 1950s, where Dylan Thomas played and where there was an open poetry mike. Moreover, Jewel's poems are reasonably good. Sure, there are too many prepositions and some cliched images; an attempt to be philosophical is laughable; and many "poems" are nothing more than fragments. But a lot of the material is also straightforward and deeply honest, e.g., "I am told I am adored by millions, but no one calls." Certainly, she's as good as Leonard Cohen and deserves serious attention from poetry lovers. Released simultaneously as a book, CD, and cassette.--Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York