Though if I were to pick a living lyric singer to give the Nobel to, Dylan wouldn't have been my first choice. If pressed, I'd probably have picked Claudi Martí both because he's a stronger artist, and because Nobel-level recognition of his accomplishment would do a good deal to bolster attention for and interest in the fairly endangered language that he composes in.

This doesn't mean diddley. It means, in fact, fractionally less than diddley. If Jaufré Rudel and Bernart de Ventadorn hadn't set their words to music, history would've forgotten their existence (instead of transforming them into objects of romantic fantasy, as it has done.) And I suspect you will cast about in vain seeking a soul with a single hoot to give that this is the case.

If All Along The Watchtower had never been set to music, it would still be a brilliant poem. Though the music adds to it considerably. The fact that it wouldn't be as famous as it is doesn't really make this less the case.

That's a great post, AZ--alternately persuasive (on the value of oral literature), informative (Vysotsky), inscrutable (the orgy eunuch), and inflammatory (I'll bite: why is Toni Morrison preposterous?).

I thought I'd said my bit here, but I think it worth pointing out what is implicit in your post: this is a Literature prize, not a poetry one. In this sense, the Slate article that Max linked us to was enjoyable but unpersuasive. Maybe the Wilbur looks better on the page than the Dylan, but so what? Beckett and Pinter got their prizes for plays, and they would fail this test, too--just as Wilbur would lose the comparison if it were held on a stage (plus his 80s albums had a shit drum sound). And the 2015 winner was a journalist/oral historian! Once you decide to give a best fruit of the year award, you're going to be comparing apples and oranges. To do so fairly, you can't punish the oranges for being neither red nor green.

So, again, I think the most relevant questions are whether song-poems are literature (and, like AZ, the Greeks, and others, I think they are) and whether Dylan's song-poems are worthy of such an honor (for me, yup).

There's also the prize's stated idealistic goal...

"Man of Constant Sorrow," Dylan's version, is absolutely out of this world. "All Along the Watch Tower," Dylan's song (is that right? Getting old), was, imo, best done by Jimi.

I can offer anecdotal evidence as to whether the lyrics 'work' on their own, without the music.
I was 15 when I got into Bob Dylan, from a cassette tape of the original 'Greatest Hits' (the one that only had about 12 songs on it). I can't remember how I acquired it, nobody else I knew was really a fan. I think it may have been my auntie's.
I played it to death, then started repeatedly borrowing the 'Collected Lyrics 1962-1985' from the local library. I couldn't afford to buy any more albums and this of course was long before YouTube/Spotify and its ilk (this would have been the late 80s). So I read and re-read lyrics like these long before I eventually heard them sung:

Well, John the Baptist, after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, "Tell me, great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying, "Death to all those who would whimper and cry"
And, dropping a barbell, he points to the sky
Saying, "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken"

and

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-coloured Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

and

A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs and couldn't help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil
I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending 'neath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you

and

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet ?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise she's all right she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.



Now, yes I was 15. But I was utterly spellbound. And from that I read some stuff (again, pre-Internet of course) and discovered the Beats, then Rimbaud, then to Blake, Whitman, to Eliot, to the 17th century metaphysical poets, to the Romantics, to Yeats, to Auden and Plath and Larkin. To finally realising that I was into this thing. Called poetry.

So yeah. Utterly subjective, but I say well done Bob. And thanks.

What point are you making by posting that link James? That Dylan was just a Woody Guthrie imitator? Maybe for a couple of years when he was barely out of his teens, but I think he soon morphed into something pretty unique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCipKmyngLY

No

I was born in Hibbing and Mom once told me "A nice little boy named Bobby Zimmerman sang to you when he pushed your stroller." She didn't know. Mom! I don't regard Dylan as a mere poet but as the greatest artist of our times. I am thrilled!

James. Ok. Haha. And that's a beautiful song. I love the detail of 'partly raised' (though I don't think he wrote that one)

Tim. What a story! Beats my anecdote about going to the library..