The poetry that inspired Jeff Buckley
Voices as incredible as the one belonging to Jeff Buckley don’t come around too often. Unfortunately, after releasing one record, Grace, Buckley, with all his potential, was taken away too soon. At the age of 30, the singer went for a swim from which he never returned, drowning in the Mississippi River.
Yet, his legacy lives on as one of the most influential artists to emerge from the 1990s, and his music is widely celebrated today for its emotional and lyrical complexity. Not only did Buckley possess an otherworldly voice, but he was also an extremely gifted guitar player and writer, with all his talents combining to create a masterful body of work.
Even when Buckley was covering other artists’ songs, such as ‘Lilac Wine’, ‘The Other Woman’ and ‘Hallelujah’, he imbued the pieces with his own distinctive style. Yet, his penchant for covers wasn’t a reflection of an aversion to writing. Buckley knew how to pen a stunningly poetic track, with songs like ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ and ‘Morning Theft’ suggesting that even if Buckley didn’t have the vocal pipes he was gifted with, he’d get by just fine as a writer.
Buckley took inspiration from many different writers and musicians when writing his own songs. Musically, Buckley looked back to folk artists like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and, of course, his own father, Tim Buckley, from whom he was estranged. Elsewhere, he loved the work of Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the rich tones of Nina Simone, and Led Zeppelin, calling Robert Plant “my man”.
However, when it came to his literary inspirations, Buckley had an extensive book collection, which he no doubt looked to for ideas when writing his lyrics. He owned a lot of poetry, with Rainer Maria Rilke proving to be a particular favourite. Not only did Buckley own Dunio Elegies, Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations Poems from the Book of Hours, but he also owned his epistolary collection Letters to a Young Poet.
Buckley was also a fan of the classic American poet Walt Whitman, owning Leaves of Grass and From the Soil. Of course, no poetry collection is complete without copies of Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell and Illuminations, alongside some Charles Baudelaire – Buckley-owned Paris Spleen. The singer also owned the Selected Poems of confessional poet Anne Sexton and modernist writer T.S Eliot.
Check out Buckley’s complete poetry collection below.
The poetry that inspired Jeff Buckley:
- Dunio Elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke
- Poems from the Book of Hours – Rilke
- Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations – Rilke
- Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
- From This Soil – Whitman
- The Odyssey – Homer
- Early Work, 1970-1979 – Patti Smith
- You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense – Charles Bukowski
- Selected Poems of Ezra Pound
- The Complete Lyrics – Hank Williams
- A Haiku Journey: Basho’s Narrow Road to a Far Province – Matsuo Basho
- Paris Spleen – Charles Baudelaire
- The Captain’s Verses – Pablo Neruda
- Selected Poems – T.S. Eliot
- A Season in Hell and Illuminations – Arthur Rimbaud
- Writing and Drawings – Bob Dylan
- Ode to Walt Whitman – Federico Garcia Lorca
- New Poems: 1962 – Robert Graves
- Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems – Jim Carroll
- Selected Poems of Anne Sexton – Anne Sexton
- Selected Poems – John Shaw Neilson
- Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge – Demore Schwartz
- The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara – Frank O’Hara
- Poems – Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Space: And Other Poems – Eliot Katz
- Tim Buckley Lyrics
