1) Whether Bob Dylan is a poet or not we can argue until the trains come home and still be none the wiser. My question to you: Why is ‘Poet’ the benchmark?
2) The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan roams at his own pace and actively avoids labels, sometimes he’s Poet, singer/songwriter, often The Jokerman, when he can be bothered the Rolling Stone, always the Song and Dance Man. Is it our inability to define that causes-us grief?
3) The Times They Are A-Changing goes without saying and so does the borders of literature. Weren’t the Troubadours musicians as well as poets? Isn’t old W.B. singing the Lake of Innisfree in that recording of his?
4) Another Side of Bob Dylan is author - he wrote the novel Tarantula and the award-winning Memoir - Chronicles.
5) Bringing it All Back Home - Bob Dylan as poetry’s gateway drug. Discuss.
6) On Highway 61 in the confines of Desolation Row: Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot are fighting in the captain’s tower.
7) Blonde on Blonde 1966 - when poetry went electric. The derision of the Poet Maudits the push-back from the members in their ivory squares, Walt Whitman and the Newport Convention. If only we thought of it first. If only we had an audience.
8) In John Wesley Harding Dylan alludes to the Bible seventy seven-times, but also rhymes Mouse with House.
9) Nashville Skyline is at heart a country album. Dylan’s music is steeped in tradition whether blues, folk or country please refer to Tradition and The Individual Talent.
10) 1969’s Self-Portrait is a terrible album, and Dylan’s first flop, just another example that God is fallible.
11) The day after a Bob Dylan concert is always a New Morning, all the songs he played he changed, reminds me of Derek Mahon.
12) Blood on Tracks 1975 - Two of love’s greatest songs in A Simple Twist Of Fate and Tangled-Up In Blue, but whereas in a traditional sonnet, there’s an edge, space and punctuation, in a song you are blind to proportion. A Bob Dylan song often finishes when you least expect it and always goes on for too long.
13) I have a Desire to treat Dylan’s words as verse. I know I shouldn’t but then again why is Allen Ginsberg standing in the corner?
14) Music sets the context as well as the tempo. It is the Mercy of the music that eases us into the lyrics, you cannot divorce the two. Why would you?
15) Good As He’s Been To You - Dylan’s voice has the ability to mangle words into rhymes the reader is unable to, leaving one dizzy and confused.
16) Like a Slow Train Coming headlong, see him approach the monocle with the Odyssey under his arm: ‘But it’s not literature.’ ‘What is?’ I say.
17) In the book Visions and Sin by the Infidel Christopher Ricks; Ricks brings Dylan into the academy and deconstructs. I’m grateful it exists but I have to admit, it is akin to listening Dylan live singing Blowing in the Wind. Painful and excruciating to read, makes you pine for the original.
18) Love and Theft - whether Bobby Zimmerman stole his name from the Welsh Bard is a red herring to get us literary types hyped up over nothing.
19) You thought the World Gone Wrong when Dylan won the Nobel Prize.
20) Throw your Norton out the cannon, settle for the Best of Bob Dylan, it might not be literature as we define it but it’s great song-writing nevertheless, and as the lines between mediums continue to blur take pleasure in the words of this pioneer. Who knows you might learn something.
Jamie Field
11 comments:
Interesting selection and commentary but no Street Legal? 😱
I've been listening to Bobby Z since 1963. He brought poetry to pop music... end of debate. 😉
A fascinating read. As you say there has long been a Troubadour tradition. Clearly not all song lyrics are poetry but equally clearly some are.
I've always thought that some of Dylan's talking blues was poetry first and song second. With folk roots and the Beat Poets connection he brought a literate touch to song-writing. You can imagine him narrating Subterranean Homesick Blues without musical accompaniment for instance. If that's not poetry, I don't know what is.
I never really 'got' Bob Dylan. Where to begin to learn something?
An interesting and entertaining appreciation, Jamie. Personally I would have kept quiet about 'Self-Portrait', a nadir in the canon. I agree about 'Blood On The Tracks', my favourite Dylan album and if Tif Kellaway is reading this I'd suggest that's the place to start and then work backwards and forwards. 'Street Legal' (not in your 20) is another favourite, along with 'Blonde On Blonde', 'John Wesley Harding', 'Highway 61 Revisited' and 'Desire'. Interesting that Dylan (in his Nobel acceptance speech) quoted 'The Odyssey' as a key inspiration.
An interesting and well researched article.
I get some of Dylan's songs. To me they work as songs but not poetry. And that's a good thing as why should a good song want to be a good poem. It is what it is. Be proud of that.
I've always thought of Dylan as more of a poet than a singer. (Let's be honest, he doesn't really sing anyway.)
Dylan is definitely a favourite, especially his pre-born-again years. I enjoyed your 20 album tour.
If only Dylan could sing though! (LOL)
Of course Dylan is a poet. No debate required.
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