Posted by NPR

She died some time this week, 47 years ago. Forty-seven years. I was driving down some street in Iowa City on my way to university when I heard the news on the radio. And there it was. The first thoughts are…No…No…what now?…who will sing those songs for us…who will know?…No…

When I got to the classroom it was silent. No one saying a word. The students in their chairs, the prof standing in front, leaning against the desk. In that silence, in that room on a beautiful day in Iowa City, we were struck. In the confusion of loss and sorrow

AP—Janis Joplin, Woodstock

it was as if we all knew, all at once, that words could not—should not—be spoken. There was that current underneath, that whirlpool of something else that made words insignificant. There would never be enough, never enough of anything. No one else spoke Soul to Soul. No one else could sing the Blues. She was lost to us, and it was we, we who could not save her.