Blackbird Singing – Poems and Lyrics, 1965–1999 - Hardcover

The collection is fondly edited by populist poet and fellow Liverpudlian Adrian Mitchell who pleads that readers clean out their heads, "wash out the name and the fame" and read what's here. "Dinner Tickets", a poem written about childhood and being caught with a sexy drawing of a female nude in his pocket allows McCartney's deeper vulnerability to slip through. "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" shows off the wordplay McCartney favours--clever, simple and effective: "Sunday's on the phone to Monday,/ Tuesday's on the phone to me." The later poems reveal a more mature, sincere voice, distant from the quirky catching rhymes of "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da". "Standing Stone" unravels a strong, gutsy fable about a man using the power of imagination to fend off the enemy: He erects a standing stone, "a weathered finger to the sky" and learns to be "at peace with peace", watching a "blue sky laced with tight white webs;/ fields of high rye tickled skylarks,/ levitating stars." "Irish Language" boasts a rare streak of irony as the narrator admires the way "those Irish chappies" swill the language round their mouths and dribble it through their fingers, ending with the beautifully timed punch line: "The Beatles were a bunch of Micks". The book closes with poems dedicated to his late wife which are tender, sparse and reach for a startling honesty:

"clenched inside a glove
we sucked
each other's energy