“Backswing”

McConaughey is an avid golfer. His understanding of golfing technique provides the inspiration for this poem, which describes the moment of stillness in the “takeaway,” as the golfer pulls the club back before executing the backswing. As time seems suspended, the golfer feels perfectly poised between past and future, “between fate and free will” (Line 6). This balance is accompanied by a deep feeling of inner peace, “where our sovereign soul is safe at home” (Line 11). 

“Time to Trade”

The poem’s literal and figurative settings are liminal spaces. The speaker swings on a porch hammock, a place that is neither inside the house nor fully outside of it, on a piece of furniture that both is and isn’t a bed. More figuratively, the speaker describes himself as being in a “waiting room” (Line 2) and a “vestibule” (Line 4), transitional spaces that point to his in-between mental state, poised between wakefulness and sleep. 

In this tranquil atmosphere and relaxed state of mind, the speaker decides to linger in the liminality rather than picking one kind of consciousness over another. He stays awake to dream with his eyes open, blurring the distinction between waking, sleeping, and dreaming—between reality and imagination. 

The final stanza treats time as something that is negotiable and can be traded, but only “if I wanted to keep it” (Line 12). He wants to experience time on his own terms, adapted to his own desire.

“Back to the Future”

The poem suggests that time is cyclical. The future repeats the past. Our aspirations and plans are laudable, but we tend to lapse into old mistakes: We pray but go on sinning. This highlights the contradictory or paradoxical nature of human experience. We aim for one thing but get another. 

Paradoxically, despite this cyclicality, life does not conform to rational expectations—a logical approach only prompts us to “ask why” (Line 8). Instead, McConaughey suggests accepting our inability to exit the loop: Doing this allows us to tap into seemingly opposing motivations in a productive way.

Most of the poem uses contradiction to prescribe proactive behaviors to readers; typically, the advice is to manage the past for the sake of the future. “We leave so we can go” (Line 3) suggests changing our experience of the past. “We rebel so we can abide” (Line 6) describes breaking past negative patterns so we can live more easily. “We laugh so we can cry” (Line 7) and “we smile so we can frown” (Line 13) imply that our emotions are all interconnected. “We get ahead to slow down” (Line 9) suggests that rushing is less satisfying than savoring our surroundings. “We get high to look around” (Line 10) urges us to find new perspectives on life. “We get dirty to get clean” (Line 15) shows the importance of overcoming messy or challenging circumstances before feeling at peace. 

“Memory”

The poem is in praise of memory, personified as a female being that is creative, maternal, and mentoring. 

In her role as an emotive caretaker, memory is contrasted with conscience: Conscience judges, while memory is always patient and caring, even in “our neural void” (Line 3), or forgetfulness. 

As a creative force, memory is a poet, arranging events to convey meaning and connect past and present. Memory is connected to the imagination, where she “surprises us with chances, / she flies and floats from clouds to boats / and with our dreams she dances” (Lines 10-12). 

She is also an ever-present guide who sits “on our shoulder as we greet each day” (Line 15), influencing how we think and behave. 

The poem ends by contrasting memory as an abstract concept with our individual mental capacity for remembering. Memory is its generic form keeps a complete and indelible record; however, our conscious recall is fallible and incomplete: “Memory never forgets. / Even though we do” (Lines 17-18).  

“Barbiturate Logic”

The poet juxtaposes two forces driving him: his inner life and his power to affect the world outside of himself. He believes that slowing down his thoughts will make him more effective, powerful, and a better storyteller. 

The title refers to barbiturates, a class of sedative-hypnotic drugs that can make a user feel more relaxed. Barbiturates work by increasing gamma-aminobutric acid, a brain chemical that slows down neural activity. 

In a podcast interview with Chris Williamson, McConaughey described this poem as a funny way to reflect on his tendency to overthink. 

“Twice the Time”

This poem is about regret; its speaker wants to find an acceptable rhythm to processing the past, and the future. The speaker bemoans the fact that he lives too much in the future; he is always rushing instead of being fully in the present moment. But his haste is a form of magical thinking, as if he could make up for time lost: “[A] moment ahead’s gonna double up the past one, / and an hour later’s gonna make up for the last one” (Lines 3-4). However, time is not malleable; lost time cannot be recovered, fixed, or changed. The speaker takes a dismal view of what he is experiencing, with a rueful sense of the inescapability of forward time: “[D]ying is a one-way debit, / so I’m getting ahead to find equal credit” (Lines 7-8). 

“Karmic Grace”

Karma is primarily a concept from Hinduism and Buddhism, which hold that the total moral value of a person’s actions in one life dictate their status in future lives. The title mention of grace, or the Christian concept of divine beneficence, allows McConaughey to connect karma to the Christian idea of the afterlife as a one-time judgment of similar merits: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7). He also references the idea of karma that has become commonplace outside of its spiritual meanings: The pop wisdom that whatever you do in life, good or bad, comes back to you in some way or another. 

However, the poem points out that karma is not immediate: If you do good to others, they will not necessarily respond in kind. Instead, karma operates via “the laws of the universe” (Line 6), which ensure that at some point, the equivalent of the good that you gave out will come to you from somewhere else. Karma is thus both predictable and unpredictable. 

“More Time”

This poem considers ways of prolonging time, or at least getting the feeling that one has done so. We cannot manipulate time in reality; it ticks by at a constant speed. However, we can nevertheless alter how we perceive time passing, making it feel subjective and elastic. 

The poem’s speaker describes listening to music in a bar. At two o’clock in the morning, he is ready to leave when a new band starts tuning up, so he orders more wine and luxuriates in the feeling that he has gained time by continuing doing something he is enjoying. 

A different experience of extended time occurs in the next stanza. When he writes the wrong year on his checks, 2010 when it is still 2009, he feels like he is “early” (Line 12) and can reclaim the time he has mentally thought gone. 

In a final example, when a relationship he thought would be permanent ends because “sometimes love just loses its shine” (Line 17), acting quickly to sever a connection that does not feel right, gives him more time to find true love.