Dylanology: Keats With a Guitar -- The Times Sure Are a-Changin´
As the queen's official poet, Motion, 47 years old, is the latest in a long procession of literary lions that includes Dryden, Wordsworth and Tennyson, so his pronouncement on Dylan's place in the canon surely raised some eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic.
-- TINA KELLEY
First, portions of an interview with Motion in the October edition of The Message, published by the London-based Poetry Society:
Q: How highly do you rate him? A: He's one of the great artists of the century. He comes on the scene at a very high level, then (with a few glitches here and there) extends himself steadily -- usually staying one step ahead of his audience.
Q: What is it about him you especially like? A: The concentration and surprise of his lyrics; the beauty of his melodies (and the rasp of his anger); the dramatic sympathy between the words and the music; the range of his devotions; the power of self-renewal; his wit; his surrealism; the truth to experience.
British literati have apparently been arguing for years about whether Dylan is as good a poet as Keats. Motion, the author of a recent biography titled "Keats" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), weighed in on the issue in The Message:
Q: What do you think about the Keats/Dylan debate? A: In one sense it's important to establish differences, and these can be described pretty simply. Keats didn't play the guitar, or write much for music (I mean: his words are free-standing in a sense that Dylan's aren't), and Dylan hasn't produced any book-length narrative poems. In other respects I think it's a false dichotomy. They each have their own brilliant and distinctive things to say, and neither -- in their greatness -- matters more or less than the other. But this doesn't mean that I think that all contemporary rock music, or . . whatever music, always and inevitably holds its own when compared to poetry proper. Most song lyrics rely heavily on their accompanying music; without their music, they're banal, repetitive, nothing-y. I don't find them rewarding as poems. This isn't meant to sound crusty or stick-in-the-mud. It just acknowledges the particular merits and opportunities of different forms. In other words: Dylan is an exception proving a more-or-less general rule. He doesn't (as Robert Lowell said he did) "lean on the crutch of his guitar."
On Oct. 7, a group of poets including Roddy Lumsden and John Burnside joined Motion for an online chat session on the Web site of the Poetry Society (www.poetrysociety.org), focusing (if chat sessions can be said to focus) on Dylan's lyrics. Highlights follow.
(andrewm) It's hard to say what direct effect BD has had on poets -- though there are some who carry echoes of his work in remembering ways. Mainly, I think it's a question of his being exemplary in the matter of openness. I mean, showing us in a very public way that it's ok to merge lyric, narrative, surreal etc. writing, and to demonstrate that it can be serious fun. . . . john; we know Keats could sing -- or did sing, at any rate. What do you think it was like?
(johnb) Not like a nightingale, I imagine. . . .
(andrewm) There's something in all this about how music proper has its own logic and 'meaning' of a non-verbal kind, which adds of course to the comparatively meaningful and logical words. And how this connects with the elements of poetry proper which do not aspire to logic and coherence as their first port of call. . . .
True to the medium, the discussion eventually turned to matters of pairing off:
(roddyl) I think there should be a 'dating' agency for poets/composers. . . . (andrewm) Dating agency here we come: Poet Laureate, 46, non-smoking meat-eater, lyrical, seeks musical ditto with view to possible etc. etc.. . . (johnb) Cheers, I'll off and have that toddy now. . . .
The discussion prompted online responses from a variety of Dylan enthusiasts, including this message directed to Motion from someone who identified himself as Pete Younger:
Bravo for sticking your head above the parapet on behalf of Dylan's lyrics. Were they the product of the lyricist half of a traditional song-writing duo critics would be less reluctant to see them as literary works in their own right. And the Nobel committee less perverse in ignoring (one of) the dominant artistic figures of our century. . . . Yet another remarkable and unique aspect of Dylan's art is his willingness to keep performing it and continually re-interpreting it for anybody who shows up. Never before has the dominant artist of a generation been available to mass scrutiny . . . Bob is out there every night (well he will be again in a few weeks) creating his art afresh -- lyrically and musically. Why doesn't everybody go to see the person through whom their lives will be remembered to future generations? Dylan cannot match Shakespeare's achievement in inventing several centuries of Western society by defining its complete emotional lexicon. But he has achieved something similar on a smaller scale for the second half of this century in establishing the permissible obsessions of his time. And that has been largely achieved by the verbal element of his oeuvre.
As for Dylan on Dylan, in a 1991 interview with Song Talk magazine the artist downplayed his poetic ambitions:
Song Talk: Van Morrison said that you are our greatest living poet. Do you think of yourself in those terms?
Dylan: Sometimes. It's within me. It's within me to put myself up and be a poet. But it's a dedication. It's a big dedication. Poets don't drive cars. (Laughs) Poets don't go to the supermarket. Poets don't empty the garbage. Poets aren't on the PTA Poets, you know, they don't go picket the Better Housing Bureau, or whatever. . . . Poets don't even speak on the telephone. Poets don't even talk to anybody. Poets do a lot of listening and . . . they behave in a gentlemanly way. And live by their own gentlemanly code. And die broke. Or drown in lakes. Poets usually have very unhappy endings.
And he cast his own vote for the most talented lyricist:
Dylan: To me, Hank Williams is still the best songwriter.
(story ends here. optional sidebar follows)
FROM "VISIONS OF JOHANNA" (1966)
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet? We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it. . . .
Louise, she's all right, she's just near She's delicate and seems like the mirror But she just makes it all too concise and too clear That Johanna's not here The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. . . .
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles See the primitive wallflower freeze When the jelly-faced women all sneeze Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze I can't find my knees" Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel. . . .
As for Dylan on Dylan, in a 1991 interview with Song Talk magazine the artist downplayed his poetic ambitions:
Song Talk: Van Morrison said that you are our greatest living poet. Do you think of yourself in those terms?
Dylan: Sometimes. It's within me. It's within me to put myself up and be a poet. But it's a dedication. It's a big dedication. Poets don't drive cars. (Laughs) Poets don't go to the supermarket. Poets don't empty the garbage. Poets aren't on the PTA Poets, you know, they don't go picket the Better Housing Bureau, or whatever. . . . Poets don't even speak on the telephone. Poets don't even talk to anybody. Poets do a lot of listening and . . . they behave in a gentlemanly way. And live by their own gentlemanly code. And die broke. Or drown in lakes. Poets usually have very unhappy endings.
And he cast his own vote for the most talented lyricist:
Dylan: To me, Hank Williams is still the best songwriter.
(story ends here. optional sidebar follows)
FROM "VISIONS OF JOHANNA" (1966)
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet? We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it. . . .
Louise, she's all right, she's just near She's delicate and seems like the mirror But she just makes it all too concise and too clear That Johanna's not here The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place. . . .
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles See the primitive wallflower freeze When the jelly-faced women all sneeze Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze I can't find my knees" Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel. . . .
The fiddler, he now steps to the road He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed On the back of the fish truck that loads While my conscience explodes The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.
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ndrew Motion, the British poet laureate, created quite the stir this fall when he hailed Bob Dylan as one of the greatest artists of the century and proclaimed "Visions of Johanna," from Dylan's 1966 album "Blonde on Blonde," the best song lyric ever written. 