I don't see how Dylan's lyrics will pass as literature without the music. There isn't a Nobel prize for music is there?

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

What do the third and fourth lines mean, if anything? I thnk Dylan is well short of the Beatles in this line. Or Simon and Garfunkel. Or Cole Porter. Or even Leonard Cohen. I don't think I know anything by Bruce Springsteen. Or do I?

About half the Nobel prizes for literature are for gluggers. Tagore, for God's sake. And nothing for Hardy or Larkin or Auden.

Yeah, I think Stallings' response is the perfect one for this.

I have my qualms about it being Dylan (not lyricists in general), but that's a persuasive a case as can be made for him.

You may be correct in your first comment, John. I think as concerns popular music, the lyrics and the musical accompaniment are contingent on each other.

I'm puzzled, however, by your question What do the third and fourth lines mean, if anything? I wish I had a dollar for every time you've mentioned on these boards that the sound of a poem is by far the most important thing and that "meaning" is of little or no consequence. If I recall correctly, Wallace Stevens is your favorite American poet, and the "meaning" of his poems is often a puzzle to many readers. Stevens himself said he didn't know what some of his poems meant.

Richard

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...-bob-dylan.php
Scott Johnson has an affectionate post at Powerline with links to some of his favorite covers, all singers better than Dylan. Odetta, Joan Baez, The Byrds joined live by the author in Tambourine Man, which I think is the closest he ever got to great poetry. It's an acid trip, and I used to listen to it tripping. We wouldn't have "Lucy in the Sky" without it.

But Dylan means them to mean something. He is writing political stuff. The case of Stevens (no Nobel there either) is a special one. Dylan's lines are duff.

I find this another interesting take:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/fe...-prize-w444799

It's pop culture critic Rob Sheffield using Emerson and Shakespeare to argue that Dylan may not be "poetry" but is nonetheless a deserving recipient of the "most gaudy" literary prize.

Well, as concerns the "white dove" in Dylan's lyrics, it's probably not a difficult or great leap to conclude that the dove has something to with peace, since it's an ancient and universal symbol for peace, love, and hope. One is not under any obligation to embrace Dylan's lyrics as great poetry, but to declare the lines you mention as obscure and beyond meaning is rather nonsensical.

Richard

I did read Aliki's excellent piece in TLS. Like our friend Housman, the Border Ballads are my earliest influence, Robert Burns close behind.

The Bob Dylan controversy, in some ways, seems to revolve around the question of the role twentieth-century small-ensemble guitar-and-vocal music (I'm deliberately phrasing this to collapse distinctions between country, folk, blues, rock, funk, etc.). There are questions of influence, of representation, even of seriousness. And that's fine. But here's where I come from. (Okay, white, American, male, forty, and moving right along....) I am a poet because of small-ensemble guitar music. Not so much direct influence, though it is a frequent source of allusion, but more actually turning me on to things. It wasn't always pretty (thanks for the Khalil Gibran phase when I was fourteen, assholes!), but I discovered the Surrealists, say, through goth rock. Much of what I know about French Symbolist poetry started with rock music as well. And I sure wasn't going to pick up the capacity of rhyme to intensify a point, strikingly make a surprising connection, make a dirty joke funnier, or just hold a stanza together through sheer rhetorical force from the trickle of contemporary poetry that reached a teenager in central Oklahoma in the 1990s and mostly bored me silly. Just as one can work backwards from Jimmy Page and find Robert Johnson, so too can one work backwards from the Cure and find Arthur Rimbaud. I liked the poetry the musicians were reading better than the poetry the poets seemed to like.

Also, as my colleague Fernando Velasquez Pomar pointed out yesterday, similar objections have been raised to playwrights getting the Nobel because, you know, you have to see it performed to get the whole effect. I suppose this sort of thing is a problem if one limits literature to that which is meant to be read silently. Preferably in a drawing room.

And to quote another colleague, isn't every year Joyce Carol Oates doesn't win a victory of sorts?

Maybe Dylan did go to the crossroads. He did have some truly awful songs (the Medgar Evers song, whatever that's called). I think Ginsberg referred to him as a vessel. I'd agree with that.

John, you surprise me about the lines you question:

How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?

It doesn't take much familiarity with the Bible to see a connection to the story of Noah and the Ark, in which Noah sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from the land. The first time it returned because it had nowhere to land. The second time it returned with an olive branch in its mouth. The third time it did not return. The dove in that story seems pretty clearly connected to the hope for a better future, with the ability to sleep in the sand representing both peace and safety. I think the lines are evocative even for someone who does not know the biblical story, but the allusion adds a lot of depth. It is the ability of Dylan to link to symbolic levels and reference other literature that lifts his lyrics way above most popular song lyrics (and I say that as someone who values lyrics of many current songwriters).

Susan

I think in choosing Blowingin the Wind you have a fairly easy target too, John. It may be possibly his most famous song but it's a long way from being his best. It does have duff lines I agree. It clunks badly and I always skip it.

I can never take 'how many ears must one man have/before he can hear people cry' too seriously.

The white dove never bothered me (for reasons Susan pointed out). But lines like this one did. Some other skirt the edge for me, like 'Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly / Before they're forever banned?.'

As far as Bruce Springsteen, I think he's both underrated and overrated depending on what people seem to want him for. He writes heartbreaking stuff sometimes. The Tom Joad album is a short story collection. Here's Straight Time:

Got out of prison back in '86. I found a wife
Walked the clean and narrow path
Just tryin' to stay out and stay alive
Got a job at the rendering plant, it ain't gonna make me rich
In the darkness before dinner comes
Sometimes I can feel the itch
I got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line
I'm sick of doin' straight time

My uncle's at the evenin' table, makes his living runnin' hot cars
Slips me a hundred dollar bill, says
"Charlie you best remember who your friends are."
Got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line
I ain't makin' straight time

Eight years in and it feels like you're gonna die
But you get used to anything
Sooner or later it just becomes your life

Kitchen floor in the evening, tossin' my little babies high
Mary's smiling but she's watching me out of the corner of her eye
Seems you can't get any more than half free
I step out onto the front porch and suck the cold air deep inside of me
Got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line
I'm sick of doin' straight time

In the basement, huntin' gun and a hacksaw
Sip a beer and thirteen inches of barrel drop to the floor

Come home late that evening, can't get the smell from my hands
Lay my head down on the pillow
And go driftin' off into foreign lands

Dylan played "Blowin' in the Wind" last night in Las Vegas and did not say a word about his new Laureate status. (I think this song and "Like a Rolling Stone" are the two best known ones and the two that appear on setlists most often.) However, he has said in the past that he had to move beyond "finger-pointing songs"--as he derisively described his early "protest" material (like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Only a Pawn in the Game," the Medgar Evers song referenced by James, which I like much better than James does)--in order to get to what came later: the wild mid 60s high-point, the devastating Blood on the Tracks, the born-again phase, the great songs scattered throughout the career, and the startling late-career rejuvenation.

It might be fun for some of us to do a Good-Dylan and Bad-Dylan thread. Like Mark says, it get a lot better than "Blowin'". It gets a lot worse, too.

And Quincy, I couldn't agree more. I leaned what satire was from the Dead Kennedy's. 'Kill the Poor' is basically Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' in a loud three minute burst.

Poets have held differing opinions on Bob Dylan for awhile now. In Ezra Pound: The Voice of Silence, Alan Levy wrote that when Allen Ginsberg and his entourage visited Italy during the late ‘60s, they were “horrified” to learn that Pound had never heard of Dylan. In the words of Olga Rudge, Ginsberg “covered that gap in Ezra’s education by sending him several Dylan records, which Ezra didn’t enjoy at all.” Ironically, the first time I ever heard of Pound was through "Desolation Row."

Overrated and underrated. Yeah, I get that. Springsteen's The River I think is overdone. And I still like it. And the 80's were the 80's.

*I listened to it again and this always gets to me (about a poor couple married in their teens): I act like I don't remember and Mary acts like she don't care. And: There's a dream alive that don't come true or is it something worse...

I unashamedly love good rock lyrics. I tingle when I hear them. The whole 'do they work on the page' is irrelevant.

Having said that, here's one more. On the page. Nick Cave's 'the Curse of Milhaven': surely the best song about a little girl serial killer ever written.


I live in a town called Millhaven
And it's small and it's mean and it's cold
But if you come around just as the sun goes down
You can watch the whole town turn to gold
It's around about then that I used to go a-roaming
Singing La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they all gotta die
My name is Loretta but I prefer Lottie
I'm closing in on my fifteenth year
And if you think you have seen a pair of eyes more green
Then you sure didn't see them around here
My hair is yellow and I'm always a-combing
La la la la La la la lie
Mama often told me we all got to die
You must have heard about The Curse Of Millhaven
How last Christmas Bill Blake's little boy didn't come home
They found him next week in One Mile Creek
His head bashed in and his pockets full of stones
Well, just imagine all the wailing and moaning
La la la la La la la lie
Even little Billy Blake's boy, he had to die
Then Professor O'Rye from Millhaven High
Found nailed to his door his prize-winning terrier
Then next day the old fool brought little Biko to school
And we all had to watch as he buried her
His eulogy to Biko had all the tears a-flowing
La la la la La la la lie
Even God's little creatures, they have to die
Our little town fell into a state of shock
A lot of people were saying things that made little sense
Then the next thing you know the head of Handyman Joe
Was found in the fountain of the Mayor's residence
Foul play can really get a small town going
La la la la La la la lie
Even God's children all have to die
Then, in a cruel twist of fate, old Mrs Colgate
Was stabbed but the job was not complete
The last thing she said before the cops pronounced her dead
Was, "My killer is Loretta and she lives across the street!"
Twenty cops burst through my door without even phoning
La la la la La la la lie
The young ones, the old ones, they all gotta die
Yes, it is I, Lottie. The Curse Of Millhaven
I've struck horror in the heart of this town
Like my eyes ain't green and my hair ain't yellow
It's more like the other way around
I gotta pretty little mouth underneath all the foaming
La la la la La la la lie
Sooner or later we all gotta die
Since I was no bigger than a weavil they've been saying I was evil
That if "bad" was a boot that I'd fit it
That I'm a wicked young lady, but I've been trying hard lately
O fuck it! I'm a monster! I admit it!
It makes me so mad my blood really starts a-going
La la la la La la la lie
Mama always told me that we all gotta die
Yeah, I drowned the Blakey kid, stabbed Mrs. Colgate, I admit
Did the handyman with his circular saw in his garden shed
But I never crucified little Biko, that was two junior high school psychos
Stinky Bohoon and his friend with the pumpkin-sized head
I'll sing to the lot, now you got me going
La la la la La la la lie
All God's children have all gotta die
There were all the others, all our sisters and brothers
You assumed were accidents, best forgotten
Recall the children who broke through the ice on Lake Tahoo?
Everyone assumed the "Warning" signs had followed them to the bottom
Well, they're underneath the house where I do quite a bit of stowing
La la la la La la la lie
Even twenty little children, they had to die
And the fire of '91 that razed the Bella Vista slum
There was the biggest shit-fight this country's ever seen
Insurance companies ruined, land lords getting sued
All cause of wee girl with a can of gasoline
Those flames really roared when the wind started blowing
La la la la La la la lie
Rich man, poor man, all got to die
Well I confessed to all these crimes and they put me on trial
I was laughing when they took me away
Off to the asylum in an old black Mariah
It ain't home, but you know, it's fucking better than jail
It ain't such bad old place to have a home in
La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they all gotta die
Now I got shrinks that will not rest with their endless Rorschach tests
I keep telling them they're out to get me
They ask me if I feel remorse and I answer, "Why of course!
There is so much more I could have done if they'd let me!"
So it's Rorschach and Prozac and everything is groovy
Singing La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they all have to die
La la la la La la la lie
I'm happy as a lark and everything is fine
Singing La la la la La la la lie
Yeah, everything is groovy and everything is fine
Singing La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they gotta die

Bedtime now...:)

I have nothing new to add to this thread other than to say that I think Dylan's win is well deserved. I can think of few singer-songwriter-poets who have had a more wide-ranging influence. Leonard Cohen is the only one who comes close, and I suspect many who question Dylan's win wouldn't question a Cohen win quite so much...

Despite having a background in music and generally being a music collector and audiophile, I've never owned anything by Dylan (excluding covers, of course), yet there is no question in my mind that he deserves the top prize for literature, however broadly defined.

Didn't want to slight the 80's. Maybe the Nobel will go to Morrissey some day. A vibrant underground.

Now you're talking, James..;)

I'm a big Leonard Cohen fan, but I don't think he's Nobel material like Dylan.

Good Dylan/Bad Dylan?

Off the top of my head, his late-career bests for me include Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door, and Mississippi. But I also love "Standing in the Doorway." I'm sure I'm missing some others that come close. On that album, Make You Feel My Love is the weakest. And Highlands is a lot of fun, though a different sort of experience (and also shows that Dylan was indeed influenced by Burns).

His recent Sinatra covers? Not great. But unlike many, I do like his voice a lot.

Some of you may not know about his Theme Time Radio series. It's really a wonderful series of about fifty one-hour shows in which he chats about and introduces songs that he likes by others, each show involving a different theme. He's wonderfully knowledgeable about music history and brings many great anecdotes and songs you may not have heard before. He also tells some very cheesy jokes along the way.

No one can get away with expressing deep indignation the way Dylan can. He can be a haranguing prophet. Someone mentioned satire. With “Idiot Wind,” one of my favorites of his, he lets it out so clearly and so heart-breakingly that the fact he manages never to sound self-indulgent is all the more incredible for the force of his rage. But it is also quite sad. The language is bald but artful. Unforgettable lyrics. You don't want to be in this man's cross hairs.

This song could most surely apply to our contemporary From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.

Idiot Wind

Someone's got it in for me
They're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick
But when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky
People see me all the time
And they just can't remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas
Images and distorted facts
Even you, yesterday
You had to ask me where it was at
I couldn't believe after all these years
You didn't know me better than that
Sweet lady
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the back roads headin' south
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
I ran into the fortune-teller
Who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven't known peace and quiet
For so long I can't remember what it's like
There's a lone soldier on the cross
Smoke pourin' out of a boxcar door
You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done
In the final end he won the wars
After losin' every battle
I woke up on the roadside
Daydreamin' 'bout the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare
Shoot through my head and are makin' me see stars
You hurt the ones that I love best
And cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch
Flies buzzin' around your eyes
Blood on your saddle
Idiot wind
Blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
It was gravity which pulled us down
And destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage
But it just wasn't enough to change my heart
Now everything's a little upside down
As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What's good is bad, what's bad is good
You'll find out when you reach the top
You're on the bottom
I noticed at the ceremony
Your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can't remember your face anymore
Your mouth has changed
Your eyes don't look into mine
The priest wore black on the seventh day
And sat stone-faced while the building burned
I waited for you on the running boards
Near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned
Slowly into autumn
Idiot wind
Blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
I can't feel you anymore
I can't even touch the books you've read
Every time I crawl past your door
I been wishin' I was somebody else instead
Down the highway, down the tracks
Down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars
Hounded by your memory
And all your ragin' glory
I been double-crossed now
For the very last time and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast
On the borderline which separated you from me
You'll never know the hurt I suffered
Nor the pain I rise above,
And I'll never know the same about you
Your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry
Idiot wind
Blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots, babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

Anyone know how to find the Academy's citation the news reports refer to and quote? I've done a web search and visited nobelprize.org, but I haven't found it.

At least one of the greatest of our times. It is hard to think of a creative writer of words in the last 50-100 years who has had more impact and influence on people in general, other artists in particular, and our society at large.

David R.

Thanks for that formulation, Quincy. I identify a lot with it. Though I will say also that I have also been directly influenced by Dylan, John Prine, Paul Simon, and others. And I will add that many of my favorite current creative writers of words (call them poets, songwriters, whatever) are from "the small-ensemble guitar music" category -- Jason Isbell and Gillian Welch jump straight to mind.

Another indirect influence for me has the result of direct influence of songwriters in general. As a kid, hearing words by Dylan, Simon, Taupin, Townshend, the Beatles (Harrison for me as much as L-Mc), and indeed reading them on lyric sheets, had a huge impact on my understanding of the power, pleasure, and impact craftily written words. That has stuck with me my whole life and extended to many, many other songwriters from all genres as I have become aware of them throughout my life.

I appreciate that the Nobel Committee specifically connected Dylan to a tradition of American songwriting. It is, whatever else it also is, a literary tradition, and Dylan is an absolutely important figure in it.

David R.

I have a few mixed feelings about this award, but I generally applaud it. Dylan is a composer (lyricist and musician) and a performer (singer and musician). In such cases is is hard to separate the three roles; most song lyrics fall rather flat on the page, but we can still appreciate the verbal dexterity of Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Fields, Hart, Sondheim, and many others. As a performer, vocally and instrumentally, he has been a tremendous influence. As a musical composer he has written many songs that "stick" after many years; if you gave me the title of any of the songs in something early like "The Freewheeling Bob Dylan" I could still passably hum you the melodies of most of them and recite the lyrics of a few. The problem is that there is no Nobel Prize in the Arts. Are his lyrics "literature" at all, poetry specifically? I think so. If "literature" is something to be read, then all of Dylan's lyrics are in print for those who choose to read instead of listen. Many of them are memorable, and they have reached millions more people than the words of any poet of the last century. Because the Nobel so often goes, justly or unjustly, to writers with humanitarian concerns (Pearl Buck?) I would argue that Dylan's long career has been consistent in many of these concerns and that they have moved many, many people to action. Maybe the Civil Rights Movement or the Anti-Vietnam War protests would have still happened without "Blowin' in the Wind" or "Masters of War," but Dylan's songs were at the forefront as anthems, as rallying cries. His work has had a huge impact on the world of the last half-century, mostly for good, I think. I have no serious objections to his receiving the prize. I congratulate him on it. After all, I came to poetry through song lyrics, listening to them and performing them, and they were the first "lyrical" words to make an impression on me in spite of my English teachers' attempts to make me appreciate Famous Poetry. I did that later, on my own.

By the criteria of the Nobel Prize itself, artists with an "idealistic tendency" are to be favored, so the factors that Sam mentioned indeed ought to carry a good deal of weight.

But I repeat. It ain't literature unles the words can stand by themselves. And they can't. As I said before, Cole Porter wrote much better words. And so did W.S. Gilbert.

As for commitment and all. Balls to that.

But I repeat. It ain't literature unles the words can stand by themselves. And they can't. As I said before, Cole Porter wrote much better words. And Lorenz Hart. And W.S. Gilbert.

As for commitment and all. Balls to that.

I'd be curious to know, John, if Blowin' In The Wind is the only Dylan song you are remotely familiar with.

Nemo

I'm sure he knows The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower and many others.

Don't these words stand by themselves?

Shelter from the Storm

Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I’ll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved
Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin’ there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

Now there’s a wall between us, somethin’ there’s been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

I’ve heard newborn babies wailin’ like a mournin’ dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an’ they gave me a lethal dose
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

I think the point is made there Roger. Though on the album I'm sure on verse 6 he sings 'uneventful morn'. Which is better!

John, (and anyone else who wants to listen…ha!)

I don't think anyone, even those cheering this award, are arguing that Bob Dylan is a great 'page' poet. But what he does, at its best, is clearly poetry, from someone with a very individual voice. The songwriters you mention are all brilliant: there's nothing wittier or more joyous to hear than 'Anything Goes' (especially sung by Porter himself) even if half the references to specific socialites and '30s Hollywood require a fairly arcane knowledge of the times.

But they are all writing the songwriter's equivalent of light verse.

Dylan did something different and unprecedented: an attempt to marry influences from more 'serious' poetry with popular song. He started as a 50s rock n roll singer in his teens and, through self-discovery and a magpie's instict, brought to a wide audience (in the important first 15 years of his career) the American and European folk song tradition, caustic political polemic, surrealism and symbolism, Beat poetry, modernism, Blakean apocalyptic visions and a new confessional complexity to the 'love song', that had a huge impact on a generation.

He did all this, not with the best poetry ever written (or even close, maybe), but with words (poetry, of course it is!) that were strong and distinctive enough to make millions sit up and listen, and with the alchemy of combining these words with an arresting stage presence, a mystique, and hugely powerful music. And he was damn funny and sexy when he was young!

I wasn't one of this generation, being a 44 year old whippersnapper, so this isn't baby boomer nostalgia. But I became a huge fan in my teens and still am. And no amount of griping will convince me he doesn't deserve recognition. Whether he deserves the Nobel Prize I have no idea, but that to me seems a side issue to the tired arguments that are being re-treaded here. It would be sheer churlishness to deny that Bob Dylan has been anything other than a force for good in the spread of poetry appreciation in the last 50 years, even if only as a catalyst to the discovery of 'better' things. I can't think of anyone who's done more.

And John, just to be clear, I usually enjoy your churlishness hugely. I've never questioned you before, powerful figure that you clearly are round these 'sphereian parts. But we're not talking about Brexit, or Trump, or Carol Ann Duffy. We're talking about Bob Dylan! Important stuff...;)

Good stuff, Mark. I agree with everything you say there--except that for me Dylan at his best IS among the very best poetry ever written. Best ever, that is, in his chosen corner of the big tent of poetry: writing powerful verse to be sung. Yes, a Richard Wilbur (or whoever) can kick Dylan's butt in his corner of the tent, but vice versa! I mean, have you heard Wilbur's 80s albums?

I guess the debate over Dylan's appropriateness as a laureate seems to breaking down into three questions:

--whether poetry-song is or isn't "literature";

--whether Dylan is "great" enough;

--whether some other candidate or kind of candidate would have been better for aesthetic or cultural or representational or economic or political (in the broadest sense) reasons.

...probably all questions of taste, to some degree, that we won't resolve here...

I think it is worth pausing for a moment to imagine the difficulty (even foolhardiness) of picking only one such laureate a year when it involves comparing effectively all the "great" living (and they do keep dying) writers in the world--say, a Minnesotan songwriter to a Basque one to a Croatian novelist to a playwright from Vietnam to a Belorusian journalist to a poet from Egypt to a short story writer from Sri Lanka...--and then factoring in all the other concerns about idealism, politics, representation (didn't we give it to a Minnesotan six years ago?), etc...


I'll also say that I remember fondly (although I disagreed with it) an audacious essay in a tribute issue of Q magazine (I think it was for the 40th anniversary of Dylan's recording career, so in 2002...), which exhilaratingly argued the counter-position that, yes, Dylan certainly deserves credit as the figure who connected "pop music" with "poetry"... and that it's a shame it was he because he wasn't actually any good at either. The essay, in particular, said that Paul McCartney never got his due because music criticism focuses so excessively on words that it overrates a Dylan or a Lennon (don't see it, myself, but he's been hailed in this thread...) and underrated a "melodic genius" like Macca...

You're right, Mark. I think the sung version is best and the page version is best. Which is to say in the context of the 'quicker' song "uneventful" creates an immediate contrast with what has just been sung, while on the 'slower' page "long-forgotten" is more resonant for the piece as a whole.

Duncan

Dylan's melodies are often quite fine as well, don't you think? While sometimes he borrows familiar traditional melodies, he often makes up his own that strike me as quite good (I'm no musician so I can't explain why). From Blowin' in the Wind to Tryin' to Get to Heaven, his melodies are simple yet inventive. And as a bandleader, I think, he is also quite fine. I know he has great musicians working with him, but the arrangements he came up with in the last few albums are sublime. (And to tread on more controversial territory, I also love his voice. The phrasing and expressiveness of it, the range of emotions he controls with his intonations, his rhythmic sense, captivate me).