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Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell
From the celebrated novelist and memoirist, a gorgeous account of how Joni Mitchell’s work has shaped his artistry throughout his life.
From the moment Paul Lisicky heard Joni Mitchell while growing up in New Jersey, he recognized she was that rarity among musicians—a talent whose combination of introspection, liberation, and deep musicality set her apart from any other artist of the time. As a young man, Paul was a budding songwriter who took his cues from Mitchell’s mysteries and idiosyncrasies. But as he matured, he set his guitar aside and lost himself in prose, a practice that would eventually take him to the Iowa Writers� Workshop and into the professional world of letters.
As the decades passed, Paul’s connection to Mitchell’s artistry only deepened. Joni’s music was a constant, a guide to life and an artist’s manual in one. As Paul navigated love and heartbreak and imaginative struggles and the vicissitudes of a creative career, he would return again and again to the lessons found in Joni’s songs, to the solace and challenges that only her musicianship could give.
Song So Wild and Blue is a gorgeously written, beautifully intimate, and unique tribute to the woman whose artistry shaped generations of creators and thinkers. Lisicky offers his own coming-of-adulthood as testimony to the power of songwriting and staying true to your creative vision. A guide to life that is part memoir, part biography, and part homage, Song So Wild and Blue is a joy for devoted Joni enthusiasts, budding writers, and artists of all stripes.
From the moment Paul Lisicky heard Joni Mitchell while growing up in New Jersey, he recognized she was that rarity among musicians—a talent whose combination of introspection, liberation, and deep musicality set her apart from any other artist of the time. As a young man, Paul was a budding songwriter who took his cues from Mitchell’s mysteries and idiosyncrasies. But as he matured, he set his guitar aside and lost himself in prose, a practice that would eventually take him to the Iowa Writers� Workshop and into the professional world of letters.
As the decades passed, Paul’s connection to Mitchell’s artistry only deepened. Joni’s music was a constant, a guide to life and an artist’s manual in one. As Paul navigated love and heartbreak and imaginative struggles and the vicissitudes of a creative career, he would return again and again to the lessons found in Joni’s songs, to the solace and challenges that only her musicianship could give.
Song So Wild and Blue is a gorgeously written, beautifully intimate, and unique tribute to the woman whose artistry shaped generations of creators and thinkers. Lisicky offers his own coming-of-adulthood as testimony to the power of songwriting and staying true to your creative vision. A guide to life that is part memoir, part biography, and part homage, Song So Wild and Blue is a joy for devoted Joni enthusiasts, budding writers, and artists of all stripes.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published February 25, 2025
28 people are currently reading
3,776 people want to read
About the author
Paul Lisicky
23Ìýbooks253ÌýfollowersPAUL LISICKY is the author of The Narrow Door, Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, Fence, The Iowa Review, The Offing, Ploughshares, Tin House, and many other anthologies and magazines. A graduate of the Iowa Writersâ€� Workshop, he’s the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a fellow. He has taught in the writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Rutgers University-Newark, and Sarah Lawrence College. He teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden. .
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 28, 2025
A beautifully written love song to Joni Mitchell, and to life.
October 6, 2024
Reviewing a memoir feels risky - like, will anything you say be interpreted, for good or ill, as a comment on the actual person rather than the book that they wrote? I fretted about this for a day before sitting down to write this.
Lisicky has spent a lot of time in his life hating himself, or at best feeling inadequate, which is completely understandable, and it was important for him to write that out so that to one degree or another it could go away. Because I picked up this book due to the Mitchell connection, I sometimes felt impatient with that - like, Oh for heaven's sake you're perfectly good - can we talk more about Joni? The experience he and his partner have, traveling from the east coast to Vancouver to hear one of Mitchell's last live appearances, is compellingly recounted and I hope therapeutic for him.
I love Joni Mitchell's music too, but I am nowhere near as dedicated a fan as Lisicky. I think Court and Spark was the peak of my fandom. So the part of this book that talks about her evolving songs made me want to go back and listen again to the seemingly endless variety of the work, which is probably part of what Lisicky wanted to accomplish. I don't know how much research he did about her life so I don't know how close to her actual experience some of the sequences are, it did make me wonder.
This book works on two levels: a gay man's coming of age saga, and a life lived with a thread of Mitchell's music always running through it. You can read it either way but you will enjoy it most if you want to read it both ways. Lisicky is a graceful writer and Mitchell is one of the greatest popular musicians of the 20th century, so you really can't lose whichever way you come to the book. Just be prepared that it's not a book about Joni Mitchell, it's a book about Paul Lisicky.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.
Lisicky has spent a lot of time in his life hating himself, or at best feeling inadequate, which is completely understandable, and it was important for him to write that out so that to one degree or another it could go away. Because I picked up this book due to the Mitchell connection, I sometimes felt impatient with that - like, Oh for heaven's sake you're perfectly good - can we talk more about Joni? The experience he and his partner have, traveling from the east coast to Vancouver to hear one of Mitchell's last live appearances, is compellingly recounted and I hope therapeutic for him.
I love Joni Mitchell's music too, but I am nowhere near as dedicated a fan as Lisicky. I think Court and Spark was the peak of my fandom. So the part of this book that talks about her evolving songs made me want to go back and listen again to the seemingly endless variety of the work, which is probably part of what Lisicky wanted to accomplish. I don't know how much research he did about her life so I don't know how close to her actual experience some of the sequences are, it did make me wonder.
This book works on two levels: a gay man's coming of age saga, and a life lived with a thread of Mitchell's music always running through it. You can read it either way but you will enjoy it most if you want to read it both ways. Lisicky is a graceful writer and Mitchell is one of the greatest popular musicians of the 20th century, so you really can't lose whichever way you come to the book. Just be prepared that it's not a book about Joni Mitchell, it's a book about Paul Lisicky.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.
April 12, 2025
This unique book is a combination tribute and memoir, as one artist follows and learns from the creative path of another artist.
Lisicky, author of six previous books, does a deep dive into the music and personality of Joni Mitchell. But don't open this book expecting long praises of early master works like "For Free." He's more interested in Joni's odd path, her insistence on growing from folk to jazz and from pretty face to challenging artist.
In the early chapters, I knew most of the songs he mentioned. I saw Joni in concert, I owned her albums. It was easy to connect the music with the memoir.
But I don't know Joni's later music with at all the same depth. Time spent healing from illness, or working a album-long thread of jazz great Charles Mingus, inspired and influenced Lisicky's own work. There are many worrisome departures, and many gratifying arrivals.
I rarely quote passages at length, but here's a sample to convince you that this book is speaking to you and your creative impulse:
"(Joni's songs) showed me that you can take what others saw as awkwardness, limitation -- failing -- an aspect of ridicule, and spin in into pure gold. The songs knew that this gold was irreplaceable, a substance ten times more powerful than the rote, mechanized ways we move through the calendar from one day to the next. They knew something about the hard, enduring pleasures of difficulty, of throwing out the old plans and making something new out of the broken pieces, again and again. They trusted in bewilderment, in a line-by-line path of discovery, in which the song tried to find itself, become itself through the process of testing, thinking, going the unexpected route. As for ease of production, ease of engagement, ease as a goal, the force the tech giants expect us to champion in this age? The songs knew that ease is a deceptive god, only destined to exhaust and drain us and steal our delight. Here's to delight."
Amen.
Lisicky, author of six previous books, does a deep dive into the music and personality of Joni Mitchell. But don't open this book expecting long praises of early master works like "For Free." He's more interested in Joni's odd path, her insistence on growing from folk to jazz and from pretty face to challenging artist.
In the early chapters, I knew most of the songs he mentioned. I saw Joni in concert, I owned her albums. It was easy to connect the music with the memoir.
But I don't know Joni's later music with at all the same depth. Time spent healing from illness, or working a album-long thread of jazz great Charles Mingus, inspired and influenced Lisicky's own work. There are many worrisome departures, and many gratifying arrivals.
I rarely quote passages at length, but here's a sample to convince you that this book is speaking to you and your creative impulse:
"(Joni's songs) showed me that you can take what others saw as awkwardness, limitation -- failing -- an aspect of ridicule, and spin in into pure gold. The songs knew that this gold was irreplaceable, a substance ten times more powerful than the rote, mechanized ways we move through the calendar from one day to the next. They knew something about the hard, enduring pleasures of difficulty, of throwing out the old plans and making something new out of the broken pieces, again and again. They trusted in bewilderment, in a line-by-line path of discovery, in which the song tried to find itself, become itself through the process of testing, thinking, going the unexpected route. As for ease of production, ease of engagement, ease as a goal, the force the tech giants expect us to champion in this age? The songs knew that ease is a deceptive god, only destined to exhaust and drain us and steal our delight. Here's to delight."
Amen.
April 1, 2025
To be honest, I'm not a Joni Mitchell fan, but this book made me want to be! I loved the fluidity of this book: is it a memoir, is it a tribute, is it a coming-of-age story? It's all those things and more. The way Lisicky weaves his personal journey with Mitchell's artistry creates something that transcends typical music biography. His vivid descriptions of how her songs affected him emotionally made me understand music's power in a new way. This book made me crave a connection to an artist as strong as his connection to Mitchell. But please note: You don't need to be a Joni Mitchell fan to enjoy Licisky's memoir. I'm sure I missed many references, but I still was engaged and enthralled by this beautifully written story.
March 8, 2025
This is a wonderfully unusual memoir that explores how Joni Mitchell's music deeply influenced Paul Lisicky, from the making of his own music, to his writing, to the very way he lived his life.
Paul's exquisite prose mirrors (and pays homage to) Joni's brilliance. He explores how Joni unsettles our very ideas of what a song, what art, "should be."
As Paul says, "Maybe that's what I'd been craving all along: representations of the world that reassured me that it was stranger than all the standard ways it had been interpreted."
Joni offered this to him--and he shows us how and why such a slant deeply matters.
Paul's exquisite prose mirrors (and pays homage to) Joni's brilliance. He explores how Joni unsettles our very ideas of what a song, what art, "should be."
As Paul says, "Maybe that's what I'd been craving all along: representations of the world that reassured me that it was stranger than all the standard ways it had been interpreted."
Joni offered this to him--and he shows us how and why such a slant deeply matters.
March 4, 2025
Paul Lisicky’s new memoir about being othered as gay, finding his path in life, and being passionate about the music of Joni Mitchell is a love letter to the singer I also adored and listened to every day of high school and beyond. Lisicky began singing and playing guitar, later turned to writing, earned an MFA, and wrote 7 books, but never stopped being moved to tears and inspired by Joni’s melodies and lyrics, her unusual tunings and fingerings, and her deep insight into life and love and humanity.
March 13, 2025
A beautifully written book for anyone who has been moved by the music in our lives. Lisicky's writing is vulnerable and poetic, mirroring the significant influence of Joni Mitchell's music and lyrics. A Song So Wild and Blue is part love story of friendship, lovers, family, music, and life. I highly recommend reading A Song So Wild and Blue by Paul Lisiscky.
March 16, 2025
A gorgeous memoir - as in his previous work, Lisicky writes beautifully about the forces that shaped him. Here, he uses the lens of Joni Mitchell's work to allow us to access his development as a writer. He writes with eloquence and grace about his relationships, his sexuality, his insecurities, his humanity. A moving portrait / tribute.
March 20, 2025
This is a really interesting book for all of us who are fans of Joni Mitchell.
April 10, 2025
Wonderfully written love letter to the impact of Joni’s music on the authors life
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