69 pages • 2-hour read
Poems & Prayers
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Section 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 1 Summary: “Greenlights Intermezzo”
The poem is a chronological summary of the events and trajectory of McConaughey’s life. The poem tries to answer the question of how we move forward in life despite its challenges.
McConaughey outlines the ups and down of his life so far. He went through rites of passage, threatened someone to save himself, worked hard, built tree houses, lost a lawsuit, defended his father, traded in a red sports car, kept a handshake deal, chose a path and embraced it fully.
He traveled, was inspired by heroes, and lost loved ones but made sure to remember them for life. He received gifts from strangers on the German autobahn, lost things and found them, made big plans and fulfilled them. He became famous, then lost his way, then discovered that the truth was right in front of him. He got arrested and was bailed out and became a local folk hero. He picked a fight with God, wrestled in the sand, and became a fraud but started again. He married and had children, approached life aggressively with ambition, and experienced unbroken success. He never wants life to end.
Section 1 Analysis
In terms of the number of lines, this is the longest poem in the book. Most of the lines are short, some consisting of only two syllables, while others are much longer, between 13 and 18 syllables. It is one of very few poems in the collection that does not rhyme.
Although McConaughey does not go into the details of the life events he alludes to, readers of his memoir Greenlights (See: Background) may recognize many of them. When he was 10 years old, McConaughey built a 13-story tree house in Piney Woods, near his family home. The lost lawsuit was over a facial cosmetic that the family claimed worsened Matthew’s adolescent acne. In high school, he acquired a seemingly cool red sports car; when girls lost interest in it, he traded it back in for his old truck. After high school, he spent a year in Australia as a foreign exchange student. He refused the local Rotary Club’s request to sign a document agreeing to stay for the whole year, instead insisting on a handshake deal. At 19, he defended his father against a bar bouncer by punching the man and winning the resulting fight.
When he told his father he wanted to attend film school rather than law school, his father gave his approval, with the caveat, “don’t half-ass it” (Greenlights, New York: Crown, 2020, p. 96), which explains the presence of that phrase in the poem (Line 32). The autobahn gift was from Johan, the owner of a motorcycle shop in Germany, who rented brand-new bikes dirt cheap to McConaughey and his two friends. When one friend totaled his bike in Italy, Johan replaced it with another brand-new one.
In 1996, McConaughey starred in the movie A Time to Kill and became famous. In 1999, he was arrested for playing his bongo drums too loudly, being in possession of marijuana, and resisting arrest. Despite being naked, McConaughey refused a blanket and was escorted into the street. After the local newspaper picked up the story and gave out his address, his house became a tourist attraction.
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