I agree with this, Robin.
For me, there is no need to measure what Dylan does by the standards of written poetry. Many of his songs simply don’t read on the page as powerfully as he sings and performs them. For a long time, I tried to deny this, thinking I was underselling him if I didn’t argue that what he is doing is strictly the equivalent of written poetry. By thinking this, I was assuming that written poetry was automatically a superior art than songs are, and that because I valued Dylan so highly, it was my duty as a fan to make sure he was allowed to enter the “hallowed halls of poetry”, so to speak. I now see that as a mistaken aim. I now see that even if song and poetry are not the same, one is not better than the other. And so to say that Dylan’s art is one of song is not to say that his art is less than poetry. As Robin says, to limit him to written poetry standards diminishes what he actually does.
On Sat, 29 Oct 2016 13:56:26 Robin Hamilton wrote:
Hi, Tim,
I think when you suggest that the support for Dylan on the list is minimal, you're rather downplaying the position of someone like me who feels that Dylan is indeed a major artist and deserves recognition as such. And further, that his work, whatever we call it, is better than (at least) 99% of whatever is found on the page and called a poem today.
But given that this opinion is shared by even such an academically respectable figure as Christopher Ricks, and on the music side by Wilfred Mellors, I hardly think he's under-recognised by whatever we chose to call the establishment.
That said, I feel that the words of his songs alone, read on the page, aren't, to say the least, as powerful as the same words sung by Dylan, and probably neither is as effective as the experience (which I haven't had) of watching Dylan perform live on a stage.
If you want to call what Dylan does, guitar, harmonica, voice, and all, a poem, then all I can say is we're using the word in different senses.
That's no big deal, simply a terminological disagreement over how we slice and dice the Imaginative Experience Cake.
What bothers me much more is, and I may be misreading you here, is an apparent assertion that the words alone are Wholly Admirable. This seems to me to both misconceive what Dylan does, and to diminish him as an artist. Sure, individual lines stand out, and many can stand on their own, but to rip them out of the whole -- it's like taking a soliloquy from a Shakespeare play and holding it up for admiration, while ignoring the rest of the five acts. It can be been done, Choice Flowers From Shakespeare, but the end result ain't particularly satisfying.
Hey, did you notice that in the Telegraph interview today, where he bemusedly wondered what the hell the fuss was about -- or those may have been the words of the other figure in the dialogue -- he referenced "Willie McTell" as one of maybe five of what he thought were his best pieces?
WTG!
Robin
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