Last Thoughts On Bob Dylan (Part 2)

Continued from last post



Probably the most glowing and unexpected praise comes from Christopher Ricks who is the Professor of Poetry at Oxford and Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. In 2004 Ricks wrote a book called "Dylan’s Visions of Sin" which compared him favorably with classic poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson and T.S. Eliot.

In a 2004 New York Times article called "Dylan, Master Poet? Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"
written by Charles McGrath. Ricks is quoted as saying ''A day doesn't go by when I don't listen to Dylan or at least think about him and his art,'' Mr. Ricks said in a recent interview -- on the afternoon, as it happened, of Mr. Dylan's 63rd birthday. ''I just think we're terrifically lucky to be alive at a time20when he is.''


How true, how true. But also, what the fuck are you talking about? You teach at Oxford and you can’t tell the difference between a poem someone wrote and someone scribbling down the first shit that comes into his head?

Bob Dylan is not a great poet. He’s not even a good poet. He wrote a number of great lines and a sea of garbage. He wont be regarded "with the awe reserved for Blake [William Blake], Whitman, Picasso and the like". He is a once great rock singer who said fuck you to a stupid audience. And that's all, and let that be enough. But i guess that's not enough.


Here’s some lines from his song Chimes of Freedom

"Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations"


"Disrobed
faceless
forms
of
no
position"- Bob Dylan



Here's some more, These are from his song Gates of Eden


With a time-rusted compass bladeAladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Side saddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden

So true. And never better said.

I’m deliberately picking lines here and someone could legitimately say that you can do that with any writer to try and make them look a certain way. True, true. All I can say is that there’s a lot more lines I could have picked but I don’t feel like writing an article that long.


Inconsistent and apathetic, he's the spark of something that never developed. Unable to tell the difference between the good parts of his songs and the bad, a long time ago he stopped caring which was which. And what's worse, and what has fostered his decline are the critics who can't tell the difference either. But there's too much invested in their God at this point to admit their mistake.



His greatest skill was his heartlessness. His greatest asset was his taste in music. His greatest line, and all he's left till the end of time, "play fucking loud".