A Review: Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art * Words and Wisdom

Title of Work: Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art * Words and Wisdom
Author: Robert Santelli
Format:
Published:
Started:
Finished: 2025-09-29\

Posted: Goodreads
Rating: 5/5

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Wow… wow wow wow.

I’m obsessed with this book – the cartoons and the paintings and the songs and the stories and Woody Guthrie, the man himself.

Everything we consume makes us different somehow as it passes through, but it’s usually hard to notice. Every once in a while you stop to take stock and, oh, I guess I’m not all the same as I was before. A little softer, a little wider. New hair and sympathies where you didn’t have them last you checked. Other patches thinning. You see you’ve let go of things you never thought you’d lose and now you’re squeezing tight to things you never thought you’d have.

Then there’s the rare occasion where you get to watch it happen. You get to feel something working on you and mixing you all up, putting ideas into you that you hadn’t thought to think yet. This can happen for better or for worse, of course. This one seems for better.

I spent a lot of hours with this book, soaking up the art and the artist as best I could. My head was all over the place, and I was running back and forth between his notes and mine. A few nights, I lost track of time and was screwed up the next day from not enough sleep. I’m sad to finish it, to bring it back to the library. If I can, I’ll get a copy for my own stacks but, either way –

thanks Woody for what you made, and for what you changed.