Dylan and Ginsberg - The greater poet?

[Nateskate]

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg new each other, and respected each other. http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/keenan/b1965-6.htmlRecently, I had the pleasure to interview Barbara Remington who illustrated the first official U.S Lord of the Rings books, and she was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. She spoke fondly of a time where a gathering of friends sat around and listened to Allen Ginsberg quoting Dylan Lyrics. http://www.andwerve.com/august06_featured_artist My question is twofold: 1) If Bob Dylan never put words to music, where would he stand as an American Poet? Would the poetry world have viewed him with reverence? 2) Have any of Dylan's lyrics moved you as poetic verse. Feel free to share them. Thanks,N Marion
See more Dylan/Ginsberg pictures here: http://writeof.tripod.com/cyber/bobdylan.htm

[ddgryphon]

"Oh, but if I had the stars from the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean,
I'd forsake them all for your sweet kiss,
For that's all I'm wishin' to be ownin'."

I'm not sure most of his work can stand alone as poetry -- though he writes truly fantastic lyrics. He is really a "Folk Poet" in the tradition of things like "Lilly of the West" "Hangman" or "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" but with a good bit of Woody Guthrie thrown in (that angry protest).

I lapse again into Dylan Lyrics:

"And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch as you're lowered
Down to your death bed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
Till I'm sure that you're dead"

I've got a ton of this in my head because I am a huge fan of his work. Cohen's work however stands alone, apart fromt the music, much better as poetry (and I think he's a better poet). Ultimately Ginsberg is and will be important, though I think he has more flashes of brilliance than actual involving work (YMMV) he deserves respect and is important.

There's my obligatory Love Dylan, but Cohen's a better poet bit. Now to the actual questions:

1.) Dylan would have some stature if he could have won the Universities over, and I don't see that as something he was going to do within the system. He is one of those brilliant people that is eventually respected for what he does, but would have been shunned by the intelligentsia at large -- in much the same way others feel they are outside of the movers and shakers in the poetic world which is basically the universities.

I've already shared a couple, there are many more:

"My love she speaks like silence
Without ideas or violence
She doesn't have to say she's faithful
Yet she's true like ice like fire."

"My name it is nothing
My age it is less
The country I come from
Is called the midwest
I's taught and brought up there
the laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side"

"Oh the history books tell it
they tell it so well,
The Calvary charged
and the Indians fell
The Calvary Charged and
The Indians died
Oh, the country was young then
With God on its Side"

"A bullet from the back of a bush
Took Medgar Evers Blood
A trigger fired a bullet to his name
the handle hid out in the dark
he hand lit the spark
two eyes to the aim
behind a man's brian
but he can't be blamed
he's only a pawn in their game"

And I never grow tired of finding appropriate moments to use the phrase:

"Don't shoot, I dig farmers!"

So many others -- whatever else you may say about Dylan, he is one of the most prolific artists --ever. Talk about someone who writes like his face is on fire -- he's your man.

[wordsheff]

He's my favorite musician of all-time and I can't imagine anyone surpassing him, but his lyrics when scrutinized seem to be void of a core; the language, the phrasing...everything about them is poetic, but in the end they don't seem to unify into that one big thing a good poem does.

A few pieces in his catalogue stand alone: It's alright, Ma (I'm only bleeding) (his version of HOWL), ballad of a thin man (his try at love song of j alfred prufrock), Desolation Row (an amazing poem), Boots of Spanish Leather (the one DDG quoted first, which is actually in a Norton's Anthology), It's all over now, baby blue (simple, but DOES build into something the way I see it - as a portrayal of the circular nature of relationships)...there are more, but in general anything outside of his big three albums...Bringing it all back home, hwy 61 revisited and Blonde on Blonde...can NOT really stand alone on paper. It is in those three that you find the poetry Dylan is known for.

I think Ginsberg was a language/poetry enthusiast and championed anyone who went out there with something original and powerful, which Dylan did. I do not believe Ginsberg's praise for him should necessarily mean that Dylan must have been a great "poet."

I believe Dylan defies categorization, his work definitely influences my writing and the writing of many of today's great writers, but I think the greatest singer/songwriter of the 20th century judged solely on lyrics would pale in comparison to the great poets of the century.

I don't think after those three albums I listed above that he even tried to write poetry anymore, anyway. Listen to Nashville Skyline for proof of that (with the exception of Lay Lady Lay, an exercize in wordplay and alliteration...and cliches ("You can have your cake and eat it too")).

-WS

[wordsheff]

Oh, sorry, John Wesley Harding...ambitious poetry but you could tell he was losing confidence as a writer. A guy who used to make 6 minute songs no problem suddenly makes an album of songs all around the 3 minute mark. Now, that is no sign of losing confidence, but when taken into account with Nashville Skyline then the horrible New Morning, you begin to see what I mean.

[Godfather]

Hmmm... I'll have to agree with all ye three above me, mainly.

Ginsberg, a great poet. But poets, even great, are mostly only recognised in the reading and writing worlds.

Dylans influence, however, stretches farther than a solitary poets normally can. He is a poet, not a musician. But his poetry is better appreciated with music.

He himself said "I consider myself a poet first, and a musician second". Well Bob, I think you're right again.

[Nateskate]

Dylan is unique. I think his best prose stands up as good as most any poet's works. This is assuming you can cut each poetic verse out of song and hold it to the light. If you were asked to take each song and look for the poem within (not necessarily the whole song) few of his songs don't have at least one poetic verse that stands up very well.

Allen Ginsberg's poetry is dark and wouldn't appeal to many. One of the reasons he came to fame was the time in which he wrote. In that day it was considered cutting edge and novel. Years pass, and many people say much the same thing, and he'd just blend in. (I suppose) If he wrote today, alot of his works might not have seen the light of day.

In the longrun, I think Dylan's words will outlive Ginsbergs. That isn't an insult to Ginsberg, but praise of Dylan.

[Lucy_Lou]

I have to say I love Bob Dylan, I think he's much more important to poetry/song writing than most people think.
Theres nothing he's done that I don't like. Last thoughts on Woody Guthrie, was fantastic.

[KellyAssauer]

When I read your question, it came to me again, that moment from so long ago, I must have been nineteen, it was late spring, maybe early summer. I was in my father’s car, driving, it was a Saturday morning. I was alone in the little four-door Fiat, a car the color of blue that turned toward purple at dusk. The interior was the same tan of cigarette butts. The radio was off and I had just rolled down a gentle grade of back country road north of Butler, Pennsylvania. The sky was blue as well, almost cloudless, the color of a headlight beam through a cobalt glass. I don’t remember what I was doing there, but I remember I had too much cash in my pocket, all the bills were paid and I had to stop the car at a T-intersection. I waited for the traffic to lessen. I don’t know how long I sat there looking out across the valley, it could have been a few minutes, it could have been an hour. I’d had plenty of opportunities to continue on, but I couldn’t decide which way to turn. Eventually fate came up behind me in a brown pickup truck and forced a decision. I think I might of turned right, or was it left? I don't remmeber which way but I can recallr that moment better than I do the face of old lovers, and I think back upon it more often, always wondering 'what if' I’d turned the other way, what would have happened to my life then? That doesn’t answer your question, but it’s what came to mind and I wrote it down in a Ginsberg kind of way, and yes, if I think about it, there was probably a cassette of ‘Blood on the Tracks’ sticking half way out of the car’s tape player. I hope it's some kind of answer?

[wordsheff]

Here are excerpts of what I consider fine examples of both writers (hope this is legal):

Desolation Row - Bob Dylan
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row
...
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row


It's Alright, Ma (I'm only bleeding) - Dylan (think of Howl's theme when you read this)
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing...

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

Howl - Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson,
illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, (sorry i don't have this how it appears in the published versions)
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
---

My Favorite Ginsberg...A Supermarket in California -I included the entire thing b/c it's shorter than the rest

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat


---

My opinion is Ginsberg's works are no more poetry than the two of Dylan. Here is where most people find Dylan not to be a poet-

Songs like these:

Wiggle Wiggle

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a gypsy queen,

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle all dressed in green,

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle 'til the moon is blue,

Wiggle 'til the moon sees you.

Lenny Bruce

Maybe he had some problems, maybe some things that he couldn't work out

But he sure was funny and he sure told the truth and he knew what he was talkin'

about. Never robbed any churches nor cut off any babies' heads,

He just took the folks in high places and he shined a light in their beds.

He's on some other shore, he didn't wanna live anymore.
[FONT=Courier, Courier New]


--Okay, i'll admit, those were some of the worst examples I could think of, and all poets are guilty of writing some kind of bad poetry, especially as the need to be great for publishing begins to fade as fame increases,
but Bob sunk very low at some points and even now in his second wave of amazing creativity (like the mid-60s, only that wave was much higher and much more short lived) even now he doesn't try for the poetry he did in that legendary
culture changing mid 60s period.

Anyway, this is a topic I could probably go on about, and I get the feeling I'm starting to ramble.
I'm of the opinion Bob was capable of poetry and could have maybe been in a poet if he so chose, but as it is, his poetry career was brief, spanning only those magical, mystical three albums of 65 and 66
(and maybe it reappeared in Blood on the Tracks of '74) and whether he is a poet to anyone or not can not change the fact that he has been the centuries most versatile and talented musicians and what he did with poetry
in the 60s forever changed rock music.

Ok, whew...a little longwinded but i think that about says how i feel.

-WS