For  Immediate Release:
14 February 2005
For More Information:
Holly Gleason for Joe's Garage

John Prine Joins Poet Laureate Ted Kooser 
1st Singer/Songwriter To Read/Play at Library of Congress March 9

    Washington, DC: Grammy-winning songwriter John Prine has always 
fashioned his craft, based on telling universal truths about people not so very 
different from us all. With a gentle eye, he coaxes meaning from mundane moments 
and major truths from things that go unseen -- and his gift of uncommon insight 
delivered with common language has earned the former postman and American 
songwriting icon an invitation to read -- and perhaps play a song or two -- March 9th in 
the Library of Congress' Coolidge Auditorium.

    Prine was invited by Ted Kooser, the current Poet Laureate. Sharing Prine's Midwestern 
roots, Kooser has been described as "a major poetic voice for rural and small town America 
and the first Poet Laureate chosen from the Great Plains."  The pair will come together for "A 
Literary Evening with John Prine and Ted Kooser," which promises to be a lively discussion of 
how and why lyrics in popular songs often mirror people's emotions and ideas of the world 
better than some contemporary poetry.

    "I have been following John Prine's music since his first album came out and have always been 
struck by his marvelous writing: its originality, its playful inventiveness, its poignancy, its ability to 
capture our times," explains Kooser. "For example, he did a better job of holding up the mirror of 
art to the '60s and '70s than any of our official literary poets. And none of our poets wrote anything better 
about Viet Nam than Prine's 'Sam Stone.'

    "Lyric poetry is called that because it once was sung, and accompanied by the lyre. All that's left of 
the music in contemporary poetry are things like assonance and alliteration and rhyme, Prine's writing and 
music returns us to that earlier way of delivering poetry."

    For Prine, who has captured the desolation of marriage ("Angel From Montgomery"), the unthinking jingo-ism 
of fill-in-the-blank patriotism ("Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Any More"), the isolation of the 
elderly ("Hello In There"), the innocence of romantic attraction ("I Just Want To Dance With You") and the weight 
of young male irresponsibility on their partners ("Unwed Fathers"), songwriting is as much about the people he 
sees as his own measured interpretation. Long a stalwart on the singer/songwriter circuit, The Missing Years, 
German Afternoons, Aimless Love, Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings and his upcoming Fair & Square -- due April 26th -- 
reveal an artist whose worldview has only become richer, clearer and wiser over time.

    "I've been asked to do a lot of things," says Prine with a big smile, "but this is definitely a first. And I don't even 
know how to quite respond to it. For a guy who carried mail, was in the service, did so-so in school, this is 
kind of beyond the stuff I usually think about. It's the kind of honor that's beyond. So, you can bet I'm looking forward 
to it - taking all these people in my songs to the Library of Congress and letting 'em look around a little bit. It should 
be great, and an honor, and everything else."

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