Sean, to say that Dylan should only write songs from a rich person’s perspective because he is rich assumes that poetry is always confessional. This idea of the confessional and “sincere” poet as being the ideal of what a poet should be, only really came into predominance with Wordsworth, so it is a relatively new concept in poetry. To use it as the measure for acceptable poetry or songs is, I think, a little too constraining. As Tim said in an earlier post: ‘Dylan is often a story-teller, but there is always an emotional bind between the story and his delivery of it’. Besides, it would be very boring (and alienating for non-rich audiences) if rich songwriters only wrote songs that reflected their current lifestyles.
On 14 Oct 2016, at 25:09, Sean Carey wrote:
In "Time Out Of Mind" we have the theme of a broken hearted song writer down on his luck. If any other equally megarich artist did this he would have had little sympathy. I would accept the young bluesmen or women writing such lyrics but not Dylan.
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