With that single sentence, Sara Danius of the Swedish Academy this morning awarded literature's most prestigious prize to the Picasso of popular music, the metamorphic genius who synthesized Beat poetry, folk lyricism and rock n roll rhythms into some of the most intoxicating artworks of the second half of the 20th century. Any doubts that Bob is in fact a poet can be laid to rest by quoting any of the many passages in his works that exhibit a linguistic and imagistic artistry equal to that of the best modern poets in our language:
Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy bench
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
--"Mr. Tambourine Man"
At his best, especially in his works of the mid-1960s, Dylan is a major member of the American tradition of prophetic public poetry that begins with Walt Whitman, continues through Hart Crane, infuses Woody Guthrie, and informs Allen Ginsberg, who bequeathed it directly to Dylan.
In celebration of this year's Nobel, here's my personal playlist (in no particular order) of Bob at his poetic best.
- Masters of War
- A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
- My Back Pages
- Subterranean Homesick Blues
- Mr. Tambourine Man
- Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
- Visions of Johanna
- It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
- Like a Rolling Stone
- Tombstone Blues
- Ballad of a Thin Man
- Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
- Desolation Row
- Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
- Tangled Up In Blue
- Hurricane
- Blind Willie McTell
- Changing of the Guards
- Jokerman
- Song to Woody
- Maggie's Farm
- Highlands
- All Along the Watchtower
- When I Paint My Masterpiece
- Chimes of Freedom
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