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> On 22 Oct 2016, at 16:20, Jamie McKendrick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> Tim, don't get hung up on my 'literature' taunt - I didn't expect quite this degree of literalism on the list. It was just a mild provocation as I said, with a nod towards the core meaning of the word.
> As I also said 'literature' is a relatively recent and therefore, obviously, problematic category. The ancient Greeks, and the Romans from whom the word has been circuitously derived, had no such encompassing category.
> Your view of Dylan as a poet is perfectly valid but I don't for the most part share it.
> Regarding Jeff - hi Jeff - I have read you're article about Dylan and disagree radically with most of it and especially with your whole argument about abstraction. We've had this disagreement some years back and it never progressed beyond rudimentary opposition so I'm relieved your energy levels are steering you off the topic. Being much older, I find Sent from my iPad
> Incidentally there's an excellent article in today's Guardian relating Dylan to an earlier (Nobel) poet/songwriter Rabindranath Tagore by the novelist Amit Chaudhuri - himself a gifted singer and songwriter ('This is not Fusion' is his first CD). Some of what he writes would run counter to my arguments but I find myself in agreement with most of it, including his ability to understand the differing exigencies of poem and lyric.
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> Jamie
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>> On 22 Oct 2016, at 12:58, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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>> I agree with David with regard to this logic. Poetical qualities (however we define them) are within the lyric whether it is with music or not - they are therefore 'literature'. I tried to say this early in the discussion re Dylan, maybe the music helps put the phrase in the brain but once it's there the phrase, line, lyric stays in the brain as words and what it is that those words do to you - how that cannot be literature I just don't get, unless a definition of 'literature' is so limited that it contradicts itself e.g. poor poems on the page.
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>>> On 22 Oct 2016, at 12:47, David Lace wrote:
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>>> True, Robin that is the “dictionary” distinction between them. But Jamie seems to be saying that without the music the lyrics of a song are without any “poetical” qualities. But as I said before, many poems are without poetical qualities, yet are considered literature. I’m not saying here, by the way, that all songs are poetical, many are obviously not, but many are.
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>>> -----------------Original Message--------------------
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>>> Robin Hamilton wrote:
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>>> Short answer, lyrics need music, poetry doesn't. Houseman is easier to set to music than Donne.
