Jack White: On Detroit

 As songwriters would agree, verse is one heck of a means to clear up emotional misconception, and that is just what White Stripes frontman and Raconteurs member Jack White has set out to do.

As songwriters would agree, verse is one heck of a means to clear up emotional misconception, and that is just what White Stripes frontman and Raconteurs member Jack White has set out to do.

White, one of our era’s most acclaimed songwriters, moved from hometown Detroit to Nashville two years ago to escape certain “negativities” that were getting in his way. According to a 2006 interview with the Associated Press, White found Detroit “so super-negative” that “it drained” him and forced him to go “somewhere where [he] could breathe again.” “You can’t stay in your hometown,” he said, “because they’ll just turn on you.”

Well, it sounded like some of Detroit’s citizenry might have had its feelings hurt, and White has become frustrated by his words towards Rock City being misrepresented in his time away from home. With a desire to demonstrate his true feelings towards his roots and to clear up any confusion, White recently penned a love poem about the city, printed this past Sunday by the Detroit Free Press.

“The poem is the Detroit from my mind,” White told reporters. “It’s the Detroit that is in my heart. It is a home that encapsulates and envelops those who are truly blessed with the experience of living within its boundaries.”

He addressed some of his 2006 comments with release of the poem, saying: “Those expressions of mine have never been a representation of my feelings about Detroit the city, a town that I have strong feelings about… nor were they expressions about its citizens.”

Jack White’s “Courageous Dream’s Concern,” as printed Sunday by the Detroit Free Press:

I have driven slow 
Three miles an hour or so, 
Through Highland Park, Heidelberg
and the Cass Corridor 
I’ve hopped on the Michigan 
And transferred to the Woodward 
And heard the good word 
blaring from an a.m. radio
I love the worn-through tracks 
of trolley trains breaking through 
their concrete vaults 
As I ride the Fort Street or the Baker
Just making my way home…