I have always been a big listener of women singer-song writers because for some reason it appears to me that women bring a kind of, perhaps I can call it, gentleness to song however hard the theme they may be dealing with. Back in the days of Napster, when I was drilling through the substratum of western music and amassing a library of mp3s (which Jehovah smote to undifferentiated bits by unleashing a plague on my hard drive), a substantial presence in that collection were these women singer-song writers starting from Joan Baez's covers and originals, such as those to be found in 'Diamonds and Rust' (a brilliant juxtaposition for an album title), from way back in the flower power 60s, to more recent songs, inflected with bluegrass, country, and backcountry Appalachia, sung by Gillian Welch in "Time (The Revelator)" for these god infested millennial end times.

Among all these ladies, Joni Mitchell however remains, distinct and unique to my ear, and also to my eye. Yes, I say eye because Ms. Mitchell's song lyrics approach the formal grace of poetry, in ways that seem to be effortless. Most poets, I suspect, want their sentences to take off the page and don the airy garments of song, while most songwriters want their lyrics to have the internal symmetry and structure of good poems. I am too lazy to dig out a book of essays in which Octavio Paz elaborates more formally and stylistically on these concurrences and differences.

So yes, back to Joni Mitchell's songs or poems. Let's take this song "Hejira" (which comes from the album "Hejira"). Now that is an very unusual name for a song. Unless you are somewhat familiar with the "East" you wouldn't know that Hejira means exodus or escape to a more desirable or congenial place than where one is. It more commonly refers to the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 which marked the beginning of the Muslim era. Now let's take a look at the first stanza of the lyric:

"I'm traveling in some vehicle I'm sitting in some cafe A defector from the petty wars That shell shock love away There's comfort in melancholy When there's no need to explain It's just as natural as the weather In this moody sky today In our possessive coupling So much could not be expressed So now I'm returning to myself These things that you and I suppressed I see something of myself in everyone Just at this moment of the world As snow gathers like bolts of lace Waltzing on a bridal girl"

Two brilliant turns of phrase: "A defector from the petty wars/ That shell shock love away" and "As snow gathers like bolts of lace/ Waltzing on a bridal girl".

"You know it never has been easy Whether you do or you do not resign Whether you travel the breadth of extremities Or stick to some straighter line Now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock They're either going to thaw out or freeze Listen... Strains of Benny Goodman Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees I'm porous with travel fever But you know I'm so glad to be on my own Still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger Can set up trembling in my bones I know - no one's going to show me everything We come and go unknown Each so deep and so superficial Between the forceps and the stone"

Another killer: "I am porous with travel fever". Also "forcpes and stone".

"Well I looked at the granite markers Those tribute to finality - to eternity And then I looked at myself here Chicken scratching for my immortality In the church they light the candles And the wax rolls down like tears There's the hope and the hopelessness I've witnessed all these years We're only particles of change I know, I know Orbiting around the sun. But it is hard to have that point of view When I'm always hung up on someone. White flags of winter chimneys Waving truce against the moon In the mirrors of a modern bank From the window of my hotel room"

"White flags of winter chimneys..." is a brilliant transformation of a concrete image into an inner psychological state of truce.

"I'm traveling in some vehicle I'm sitting in some cafe A defector from the petty wars Until love sucks me back that way"

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