In our fraught modern world, poets are rarely celebrities. But celebrities sometimes get their poems published. Certain people (disgruntled scribblers) may scoff at this. What do Megan Fox, James Franco, and David Duchovny have to express in verse that’s so much more compelling than, say, the writings of Houston poet laureate Reyes Ramirez or Dallas poet laureate Mag Gabbert? Few scribes ever reach the lofty professional rung that allows them to enter “poet”on their tax forms rather than “poet who also bartends.” And now here comes Oscar-winning movie star, tequila purveyor, and University of Texas “professor of practice”Matthew McConaughey rhyming his way into what is sure to be prime real estate on the poetry shelf at your local bookstore.

McConaughey’s new book,Poems & Prayers  (out September 16, from Crown), is described by the publisher as “an inspiring, faith-filled, and often hilarious collection of personal poetry and prayers about navigating the rodeo of life and chasing down the original dream, belief.” Its cover makes use of the same sepia-toned photography as his bestselling 2020 memoir,Greenlights. In both images, McConaughey is looking into the distance, pensive as can be. He’s achill bard communing with an unseen muse. One major difference is that on the cover ofPoems & Prayers, the author dons a shirt that is unbuttoned to a dangerous degree, revealing a titillating plunge of skin. He looks a little like Percy Bysshe Shelley—by way of Uvalde and Longview—and I’m not mad about it.

I spent most of my formative years in Houston, not too far from Longview. I read a lot of poetry back then, mostly by Shelley and Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath. As I got older and had to contend with work, my son’s soccer doubleheaders, and other adult responsibilities, poetry took a back seat. A way back seat, so distant I hardly paid attention.

After spending many years in California, I returned to Texas in 2019. One of the first sure signs I was home came when I heardMcConaughey’s dulcet drawl on KUT radio, announcing a test of the Austin area’s emergency alert system. I was barreling down the highway when the spot came on, and I thought I was experiencing auditory hallucinations. What other state, and what other celebrity, would collaborate in such a weird, wonderful way? I doubt Reese Witherspoon, Robert De Niro, or Meryl Streep provide the voice oftheir home state’s emergency alerts. It was that voice, the lilt of Wooderson inDazed and Confused and Rust Cohle inTrue Detective, that lured me toPoems & Prayers.

Also, fine. Something else lured me—my innate skepticism whenever an actor ventures into literary terrain. I readGreenlightsand found it entertaining, playful, and laid-back, which is what we want from him, right? No one wants to read a McConaughey memoir that sounds like Marcel Proust. 

But poems? And prayers? Yet, as he writes in a section of the book called “Faith & Doubt”: 

We need skeptics, not cynics. 
One’s discerning, the other doesn’t believe.

In one of his many recentInstagram posts, McConaughey saysPoems & Prayers is “more than a book, it’s a buddy.” Inanother, he riffs about his upcoming promotional swing through five cities onthe Poems & Prayers Revival Tour while fluttering his hand in the air and tapping on the book to emphasize that poetry is musical; there’s rhythm in it. McConaughey, unlike many writers, seems so utterly confident in his work. As a writer myself, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and I wanted to challenge the cynic in me. I wanted to see if I, like McConaughey, couldbelieve.I decided to pull a Henry David Thoreau and take that “buddy” of a book into the woods and read it cover to cover, with a discerning ear and a somewhat open mind.

On a late August morning, I grabbed my advance copy ofPoems & Prayers and inched my bare feet into flip-flops. (Typically, I wear boots to trek down to the creek behind my house, to ward off snakes and late summer sticker burs. But this being a McConaughey book, flip-flops felt appropriate, sticker burs be damned.) I hoisted a camping chair over my shoulder and called my dog, Indy, who sprinted ahead in pursuit of birds and squirrels. 

It was 85 degrees and breezy. Cicadas and crickets vibrated and buzzed all around. Since I was there to immerse myself in poetry, I turned off my phone, but only after I took a photo of the book artfully perched on a log and posted it to Instagram. I settled into my camping chair beneath a canopy of lilac and pecan trees near the bank of the creek, doused myself in bug spray, and openedPoems & Prayers.

It begins with a brief introduction in which McConaughey waxes, well, poetic about living during a time in which his belief is challenged by “an epidemic of half-cocked logic.” He doesn’t want to settle for ambivalence and mundanity; he wants to rediscover the magic of life. I nodded my head in agreement with his pithy proclamations. And then I read a line I liked so much I underlined it, just like I used to do with poems I loved back in high school:

Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.

There are brief explainers throughout the book. In the first, he writes that the book contains four decades of poems and prayers he’s been writing since he was eighteen, “back when I started reading Byron in the bathtub in Australia.” Lordy. This poet really knows how to hook readers with a visual. The temperature outside ticked up. I kicked off my flip-flops.

As I kept reading, any lurking cynicism melted away. Or maybe I was just profusely sweating because it was nearing 90 degrees and the whole Australian bathtub thing had revved my resting heart rate. 

The book is largely about throwing off doubt and rediscovering your ability to believe in . . . something. Nature, love, the compassion of humankind, family bonds, life’s pleasures. He writes about the best burrito he ever ate and the difference between a good man and a nice guy. The poems may not win a Pulitzer, but he’s well intentioned, dammit. 

As I read and sweated and listened to Indy splash in the water, I started to feel pretty all right.  I agreed with the poet that we should cast off complacency in this fractured world of ours and find meaning. I also giggled as I read, since along the way he rhymes “salad” with “valid,” “de-bate” with “re-bate,” and “skeptic” with “septic.” I don’t know if an award-winning poet likeMaggie Smith would wield language in this way, but these verses unlocked joy as I sat out there by Brushy Creek on a summer day, my phone off and my feet bare. In fact, now I was definitely feeling—you guessed it— alright, alright, alright.

In a nod (maybe?) to Dylan Thomas in a section called “Man Up,” McConaughey writes that “the universe is designed to kill us” and that to find peace “we must rage.” This being McConaughey, the dude wholoves a good bumper sticker and, as he wrote inGreenlights,once did peyote in a cage with a mountain lion, there are also some playfully ridiculous lines in the book. Take, for example, a poem titled “Deuces,” from the section “Navigation & Livin’ Ditties.” It starts with him being “forty miles south of Poteet,” searching for a toilet. He eventually finds a porta-potty and manages to rhyme “win” with “porce-lin.”

What is poetry without a little risk, right? 

I readPoems & Prayers cover to cover that day, which I considered a win. The last time I just sat in nature, still and focused, with a book of poetry, happened too long ago for me to recollect. When I trekked home and got back to livin’, as our rhymester might say, I decided to ask a few full-time Texas poets what they thought about another celebrity publishing a book of odes and ditties.

First, I talked to Gabbert, the Dallas poet laureate, who also teaches at Southern Methodist University. “I have a lot of thoughts,” she said. Gabbert hadn’t yet read the book, but when I recited a few lines from “Deuces,” she said, “Yeah, we don’t have porcelain in porta-potties. If I were teaching this, I would say one of the keys to poetry is precision. But I love that he’s bringing porta-potties into a poem.”

In defense of our bard, maybe celebrities actually do get porce-lin porta-potties? More outrageous things have happened.

“I’m not one who is afraid of the, like, overcommercialization of poetry,” Gabbert added. “Poetry is important. It helps us process and celebrate and grieve and understand our situation in the context of humanity at large.” 

Or, as McConaughey writes, poems “illuminate belief.” Even if you’re writing one aboutCandy Crush, which he does. 

Denton-based poet Joaquin Zihuatanejo (who counts himself as one of the few people who can write “poet” on his tax forms) came up in the DFW spoken-word scene and served as Dallas’s first poet laureate, so he knows his way around a stanza. He also knows that some poets might get salty about another celebrity muscling their way into the market. But Zihuatanejo said he read and “dug”Greenlights. “Poetry must be two things,” he told me. “It must be written in lines, and it must be the truth. Or your version of the truth.” 

In that sense,Poems & Prayers fits the bill. Like Gabbert, Zihuatanejo plans to read McConaughey’s book or, better yet, listen to the audio version, so he can experience the full impact. “Anything good for poetry is good for me,” he said.

When I sat by the creek that day, I paused at a three-line stanza in a section called “Love Stories,” which I believe counts as one of the book’s prayers. There was an illustration of a little saguaro cactus above the words:

May our heart
Carry our feet.
Amen.

I couldn’t ask my dog what the hell it meant. My phone was off, so I couldn’t google it. I was stumped—maybe because I was 110 pages in, and the sun’s blaze was melting my brain. As I pondered that prayer, I remembered all those underlines and question marks I’d written in my poetry books as a high school student. Back then, I loved being stumped, going deeper, seeking symbolism. 

Maybe the meaning of these three little lines is ridiculously simple. A few days after my sojourn in the woods, it clicked. Ibelieve McConaughey is saying we should lead with our hearts, follow our hearts, let our hearts guide us. It’s an adage as old as time. Maybe even a little cliché. Somehow, though, when I hear it in McConaughey’s voice—in his intonation that can turn an emergency alert into a moment of zen—I’m all in.

Poems & Prayers

By Matthew McConaughey

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