THE PASSIONATE EYE: The Collected Writing of Suzanne Vega, Harper Entertainment, April 2001

"Today I am

A small blue thing

Like a marble

Or an eye

With my knees against my mouth

I am perfectly round

I am watching you..."

Nobody ever told me as a kid to keep journals! But this is certainly one of the lessons to be learned from reading THE PASSIONATE EYE. Suzanne Vega is the extraordinary songwriter/singer who is perhaps best-known for the 1980s Top 40 hits "Luka" and "Tom's Diner." Fortunately, she kept her journals.

"...With a long and slender body

And the sweetest softest hands

And we'll blow away forever soon

And go on to different lands

And please do not ever look for me

But with me you will stay

And you will hear yourself in song

Blowing by one day

Oh, hold me like a baby

That will not fall asleep

Curl me up inside you

And let me hear you through the heat..."

In THE PASSIONATE EYE Ms. Vega has created a lively collage of her work--journal entries, poems, interviews, short stories, and of course, her songs. Included are writings going as far back as nine years old. The second lesson to be learned from reading this book is that no piece of writing is ever finished (until, perhaps, it is actually published). In many conversations I've had with authors, they frequently talk about their stacks of unpublished work which they periodically review in hopes of building something new from the ashes. Suzanne shows how the themes from her adolescent musings on the streets of New York City come back years later to get captured in verses of experience.

"In the ironbound section near Avenue L

where the Portuguese women come to see what you sell

the clouds so low the morning so slow

as the wires cut through the sky

The beams and bridges cut the light on the ground

into little triangles and the rails run round

through the rust and the heat

the light and sweet coffee color of her skin..."

First published in 1999, the revised paperback edition will be released later this month. It will include lyrics to some of the new songs on her next CD which will be released in August. A copy of the hardcover edition is the absolutely most worn book on my adolescent daughter's shelves--a tried and true friend since it's publication. It is certainly a must-have for teens and YA collections.

Richie Partington

Richie's Picks

BudNotBuddy@aol.com

"...And something is cracking

I don't know where

Ice on the sidewalk

Brittle branches

In the air

The sun

Is blinding

Dizzy golden, dancing green

Through the park in the afternoon

Wondering where the hell

I have been..."