Dylan

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bayswater
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Dylan

Post by bayswater »

Not a whisper here about Dylan and the Nobel prize for literature.

The interesting thing about the news reports on the award -- it's the first time the prize went to a musician. I always thought of him as a poet, not a musician.
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HCMarkus
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Re: Dylan

Post by HCMarkus »

bayswater wrote:I always thought of him as a poet, not a musician.
That's 'cause YOU are a musician!

Cool for Mr. D, though. My neighbor was just listening to "Stoned" as I was working down at the Rancho Bohemia corral, and I liked hearing it.
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Gravity Jim
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Re: Dylan

Post by Gravity Jim »

A smear on the face of the Nobel, IMO. Pure pandering for "now" people.

Bob Dylan, despite borrowing the name of a great one, is no poet. He's not fit to clean W.H. Auden's pen, and calling what he does "literature" is beyond the pale.

I love pop music, but even I have to admit that it is meaningless in the face of great literature. Bob Dylan's entire body of work doesn't contain 1/10 the insight or artful grace of a single book by any great novelist.
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bayswater
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Re: Dylan

Post by bayswater »

Well, I never really liked Dylan as a musician or a lyricist, but he did inspire a lot of people and communicated to them in a way that few can, so that has to count for a lot.

I saw him twice, being dragged along by friends who were fans. The first time was one of the first electric concerts. Couldn't hear him over the band. The second time he was on his own. Mostly I remember is he spend about half the time trying without success to tune the b-string.
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HCMarkus
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Re: Dylan

Post by HCMarkus »

bayswater wrote:Well, I never really liked Dylan as a musician or a lyricist, but he did inspire a lot of people and communicated to them in a way that few can, so that has to count for a lot.
Indeed. It has been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
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BKK-OZ
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Re: Dylan

Post by BKK-OZ »

I've been an avid reader and ardent lover of poetry, especially American poetry, all my life. So I think I have a reasonable frame of reference from which to assess this kind of literature.

Sure, Mr Dylan (mostly) has worked in the folk song tradition. But before blithely dismissing his poetry as unimportant because it's part of an oral, sung genre, remember that Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were, in their day, just lyrics to popular, common tunes.

Mr Dylan is an extraordinary talent, and he has had a significant cultural impact. Mr Dylan deserves a seat at the table of great American poets. His work holds up well when considered alongside the works arising from a lineage that includes Dickinson, Emerson and Whitman, through to Roethke, Frost and cummings, and beyond.
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despite their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platforms ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God Bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.
Cheers,
BK

…string theory says that all subatomic particles of the universe are nothing but musical notes. A, B-flat, C-sharp, correspond to electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and what have you. Therefore, physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies we can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings and the mind of God… it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
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terrybritton
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Re: Dylan

Post by terrybritton »

Good choice, BK.

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Gravity Jim
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Re: Dylan

Post by Gravity Jim »

There simply isn't any Bob Dylan work that can be labeled as "Poetry." Certainly not when compared to actual poets. Perhaps people should read some real poetry as part of their education, and I certainly don't mean pop culture hacks like Robert Zimmerman and Rod McKuen.

They're just songs. Influential, new and surprising for their time, but not poetry, and certainly not literature.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Compare this to this load of crap:

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it's not that way
I wasn't born to lose you
I want you, I want you
I want you so bad
Honey, I want you.

The prosecution rests.
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bayswater
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Re: Dylan

Post by bayswater »

LOL. When I read the first couple of lines in your post, I was going to suggest exactly that comparison as one that some might use to argue that Dylan is a poet. But on further thought, I realized the comparison is not useful for either argument because Nobel recipients have to be alive.
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Gravity Jim
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Re: Dylan

Post by Gravity Jim »

bayswater wrote:LOL. When I read the first couple of lines in your post, I was going to suggest exactly that comparison as one that some might use to argue that Dylan is a poet. But on further thought, I realized the comparison is not useful for either argument because Nobel recipients have to be alive.
Well, I'm not suggesting that Shelley should have been given the award this year. More like sort of that Bob Dylan should never have been given that award. :)
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Re: Dylan

Post by BKK-OZ »

Gravity Jim wrote:There simply isn't any Bob Dylan work that can be labeled as "Poetry."
Given that the sum total of your argument is 'I don't like it, so it's no good', my rejoinder here is:
'Nup, you are wrong.'
Perhaps people should read some real poetry as part of their education
Perhaps you should entertain the possibility that some 'people' have read and studied more poetry than you.
They're just songs.
So were the Illiad and the Odyssey.
Just a fact, not a criticism.
The prosecution rests.
No, you give up and effectively concede without providing any logical, defensible argument, much less any real evidence to support your opinion.
Cheers,
BK

…string theory says that all subatomic particles of the universe are nothing but musical notes. A, B-flat, C-sharp, correspond to electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and what have you. Therefore, physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies we can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings and the mind of God… it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
- M Kaku
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Gravity Jim
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Re: Dylan

Post by Gravity Jim »

I can't entertain that possibility, because anyone who had studied or read a great deal of poetry would agree that Bob Dylan is no poet. Calling him one is in the same league with "Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitarist who ever lived."

I don't think Dylan qualifies as a poet or his work as literature because he simply doesn't work hard enough at. His lazy scansion, cheap rock-and-roll rhyme schemes and reliance on pothead surrealism means he simply wasn't ever working hard enough to stand next to Auden or Coleridge or, frankly, anyone. That's my opinion, which is a bit more than "I don't like it."

And the truth is, I do like a lot of Bob Dylan songs. But liking a pop song doesn't make it art or literature or worthy of a prestigious prize.

BTW, this isn't an argument. It's just an expression of opinion. I would have thought any dullard would have recognized "the prosecution rests" as a jocuarlism, so you can screw off with that "You give up" BS. I'm not trying to convince you or anybody of anything ... you wanna think Bob Dylan is a deep, skilled poet, go ahead on. I am secure in my opinion, as always, that you are wrong on this score, and so is the Nobel committee. With a few minutes, I could undoubtedly name a dozen writers more worthy of the prize.
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BKK-OZ
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Re: Dylan

Post by BKK-OZ »

Gravity Jim wrote:...you can screw off...
Typical bully-boy stuff from you.
Tiresome in the extreme.

Bye.
Cheers,
BK

…string theory says that all subatomic particles of the universe are nothing but musical notes. A, B-flat, C-sharp, correspond to electrons, neutrinos, quarks, and what have you. Therefore, physics is nothing but the laws of harmony of these strings. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies we can play on these strings. The universe is a symphony of strings and the mind of God… it is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace.
- M Kaku
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Re: Dylan

Post by Shooshie »

I've read many poetry books, including textbooks from colleges noted for their attention to modern poetry, which reference Dylan often and bring him into comparisons with modern poets. That's interesting to me.

A member of many poetry societies who has won contests and been asked to read many times, I'm also a life-long musician, so I'm acutely aware of the differences between song and poetry, but also of the overlap. It's no stretch to include song in the annals of the poetry of any age. Many musical and poetic forms borrowed from each other. Of course, we all know that most opera is fine literature set to music, taking liberties with the form to make it work, musically. Gilbert & Sullivan parodied that very thing getting huge laughs out of the extremes that result from the often ridiculous repetitions due to form or the odd emphasis of prepositions and articles because of the way a musical line works out. Great composers didn't usually let that happen.

But we're talking about pop music, a genre unique to our time because of the pandering to popular tastes for tons of money. Sometimes it seems like the more banal, the more sales. But there are exceptions. Paul Simon, Lennon & McCartney, Dylan, Pink Floyd... you can make your own list. Not all they did was fine literature, but some of it was outstanding. Dylan seemed to draw on a well of experience as a 17 year old kid that few adults can claim. How did a kid write "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right?"

Society changed radically during that time. A huge population — hundreds of millions, if not billions worldwide — lived in crowded or suburban conditions where much of the poetry of Yeats, Shelley, or even Frost, MacLeish, and all their contemporaries felt detached, foreign, without any reference points to which the children of the mid 20th century could relate, and maybe Ginsberg's crowd felt a little too carnal and violent. We can't just dismiss those people as Philistines because their birth conditions did not lead them into lives that fit the poetry of their parents or the modern academes. Where is their literature? Yes, I know the poets of their generation; some personally. But for so many people, it was the folk singers of that era who shined the light on social problems, relationship issues, man's inhumanity to man, and all that. Dylan certainly was one of the major voices.

I think Dylan would be the last one to think that his songs would become classical literature, but the authors don't always have a say in that. Scholars draft talented writers into the fold because of their brilliance, their effect on people, and their effect on other artists. Hardly a poet alive today can claim to be free of Dylan's influence, and that's surely one of the reasons he was presented as a candidate for a Nobel Prize. Dylan's response to the prize illustrates what I just said: he disagrees with them. But what's done is done.

Looking at the move from a positive light, rather than as pandering to the masses or shamelessly sucking up to celebrity, we can see that it sets standards that can be inspirational to young songwriters. It establishes that even popular music bears a responsibility to tell the story of our times, to convey the issues facing a generation, and to preserve history for future generations, and to do it intelligently. It can't all be Milli Vanilli or artless and empty divas.

I've read the works of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and other Nobel winners, and while Steinbeck probably deserved it, Hemingway is extremely overrated. He wrote a lot of great paragraphs and short descriptions that should live forever, but the plots to his novels could be trite and often resembled movie scripts with bad dialog and contrived outcomes (and rapidly did become trite movies). If Hemingway can be a Nobel winner, I see no problem with Dylan being one, for his song lyrics often manage to compress unspeakable situations into a few lines. That said, for every Nobel-worthy song, he wrote a dozen pieces of junk. But the same can be said of almost any poet, writer or artist. Not even J.S. Bach or Shakespeare fired on all cylinders all the time.

Do I think Dylan deserved a Nobel Prize? It's none of my business what the Nobel people do. They can give their prize to my garbage collectors if they want. But should popular music be studied for its moments of genius and greatness? Absolutely. If not, we're limiting the advancement of civilization to the Academy, which has become perhaps the most irrelevant and useless contributor to the arts in all of society, other than as teachers, curators and commentators. I believe the Nobel move was a smart one, putting the most talented people of the age back in command of the arts, a positive step toward relegating the Ph.D's to their more natural position as historians, not content providers.

Smart music always deserves to be heard and rewarded when it's also good music. We've seen great composers of smart music emerge from America, including Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. They deserve their accolades. But so do the above named pop artists, and many others. Having a Nobel on the table means that the arbiters of taste will not be limited to the David Geffens of the world. (who once told my manager that she should fire me, because I didn't use Pro-Tools, and therefore couldn't possibly know what I was doing.) Yeah, Geffen gave us Joni, and maybe she deserves a Nobel, too, but at least we have a body of scholars observing us seriously now, and they aren't motivated merely by number of units sold.

Shooshie
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Re: Dylan

Post by frankf »

Interesting read Shooshie. Thanks for posting this.
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