Oh sweet Detroit. It’s hard times in the Motor City. Some days it is difficult for me to even look at the local newspapers online. The desperation is in the headlines—auto industry struggles, political pigpens, and general insecurity about life as we know it in Southeastern Michigan. But I was determined to find something….something that spoke to the hope we cling to for our region.
Who could’ve guessed that it’d be a poem by Jack White, of White Stripes fame…here's an introduction from the Detroit Free Press:
“…Frustrated by a sense that his thoughts about Detroit have been misrepresented since his departure two years ago, White offered to the Free Press a poem that he hopes will express "my feelings about the city itself, and how strong I believe it to be," as he says by way of introduction.
Raised in southwest Detroit, cutting his teeth in the downtown rock halls of the 1990s, White moved to Nashville in 2006. Since then, he has been quoted in media accounts lamenting what became of Detroit's music community, which he described as "super-negative" to the Associated Press. "I couldn't breathe anymore in that scene," he told Rolling Stone magazine for a story last month about his band the Raconteurs.
White tells the Free Press that "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."
Citing the inspirational Detroit forces that have fueled creators from Albert Kahn to Iggy Pop, he sets the scene: "The following poem is the Detroit from my mind. The Detroit that is in my heart. The home that encapsulates and envelops those who are truly blessed with the experience of living within its boundaries."
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