Musician Jack White pens poem about Detroit

Motor City native writes that city is ‘always rising from the ashes’

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updated 3:01 p.m. ET July 6, 2008

DETROIT - Singer-guitarist Jack White has penned a poem expressing his strong feelings for Detroit to clear up any misconceptions about how the White Stripes frontman feels about his hometown.

White said he was frustrated by a sense that his thoughts about the Motor City were misrepresented since he moved to Nashville two years ago. So, White wrote a poem titled “Courageous Dream’s Concern” that was published Sunday by the Detroit Free Press. He says it asserts his “feelings about the city itself, and how strong I believe it to be.”

Part of the poem reads: “Detroit, you hold what one’s been seeking, Holding off the coward-armies weakling, Always rising from the ashes not returning to the earth.”

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White, also a member of the Raconteurs, told the Free Press that the poem represents his true feelings about the city.

“The ... poem is the Detroit from my mind,” he said. “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.”

White told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview that he had to leave Detroit because he “couldn’t take the negativity anymore.” In other media accounts, he was quoted as lamenting what had become of Detroit’s music community.

He addressed those comments in his statements to the newspaper, saying: “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.”