In an interview with listen.com, Phoebe Snow explained: "That was the second song I ever wrote in my whole life; the first one so lame I hardly remember it. It was just an exercise for me. I was trying so hard to be this hip and a groovy person. I was so stupid. The second one, 'Poetry Man,' came about because I was really getting the hang of guitar picking and I had these open chords, not open tuning, open chords. And I was having a relationship with somebody. From the words you can probably deduce that the guy was married. It was a bad thing to do. But I got a lovely romantic sonnet out of it. As it turns out, he was not a particularly great guy either. I turned it into this ode to romance. It's funny looking back on it - I sat there and hunched over the guitar and said 'I'm gonna finish this.' I was in the throes of young romance."
The Phoebe Snow album was released when she was 22 years old. She toured with Jackson Browne, but a promising career was cut short when Snow's daughter was born with brain-damage and Phoebe stayed home to care for her. Snow had one other hit: "Gone At Last," which she recorded with Paul Simon and The Jessy Dixon Singers. That one hit #23 US in 1975.
Queen Latifah recorded this for her 2007 album Trav'lin' Light.
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