To understand the strange poetic imagery, one must look at southern California in the mid-1960s. Songwriter Jimmy Webb was just 20 years old, driving through Los Angeles and nursing intense heartache. Webb had fallen hard for a young woman named Susan Horton. Horton worked at a life insurance office located directly across from MacArthur Park, a public green space west of downtown Los Angeles known for its man-made lake, concrete paths, and recreational paddleboats.
During their courtship, the couple met inside the park for lunch. They sat near the water, walked under sycamore trees, and watched older men hunched over concrete gaming tables. The park served as the backdrop for the relationship's sweetest peaks and its eventual, crushing dissolution. Horton eventually broke things off and married someone else, devastating the young composer.
Webb did not write abstract fiction. Instead, he treated his notebook like a camera. Every odd fragment found throughout the verses, the yellow cotton dress foaming like beer, the striped pairs of pants, the birds like tender chicks, was a direct snapshot of their afternoons together. When Webb sat at the piano to construct what would become an emotional catharsis, he simply assembled the visual residue of that lost romance.
