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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: You've got a lot of nerve
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Poetry is something else but this is not what pop stars set out to do. I doubt very much that they set out to write moving and considered, original works of poetry then compose music that fits them.
And I doubt very much that Dylan is a "pop star".
To equate all "popular" music and to therefore conclude, axiomatically, that it's not possible for the words of songs to be literature is wobbly reasoning. As is a statement to the effect that all of them have the same method of writing.
I'm not a Dylan fan by any means, but I fail to see how it makes sense to declare his words not to be capable of constituting poetry just because they are set to music. Poetry to music is thousands of years old, and in fact there is evidence that poetry-with-music might be older than poetry without music.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Also, when Dylan is (frequently) cited as one of the finest modern songwriters, it is not primarily because of his music but because of his words.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
I would only call him a pop star if I needed a category and couldn't think of another.
He was originally a folk singer. (IIRC, he and folk singer Joan Baez were an item, back in the day.) I suppose an argument could be made that, once he went electric at that folk festival, he was no longer a folk singer. But a lot of his songs and lyrics are rooted in acoustic folk music.
When I hear "pop music", I tend to think of Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, etc. Now, "*popular* music" casts a much wider net: Sinatra, ABBA, old sing-a-long songs, Helen Reddy, the Boston Pops orchestra, David Cassidy (back in the day).
Folk star, minstrel, troubadour, bard. But definitely not a pop star.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Bob Dylan is neither fashionable nor modern. In another century he would have stopped at writing poems. If what you mean by modern is post 19th century, then okay. But no-one does poetry any more.
As a retired English teacher brought up on rhyming iambic pentametres and similar forms, I can't make any sense of a lot of poetry published in periodicals by highly respected contemporary writers.
But I went to a bookshop last month and came out with three books of poetry: one by a cousin's husband, very pleasant stuff if not world-shattering; one by a former neighbour who writes about the local woodland; and Sam Hunt's latest – and he hasn't just been writing it for the last fifty years, but speaking it up and down the country, and very enjoyable I'm finding it. If anyone 'does poetry' it's Sam, and I'm sure his predecessors in the trade would admit it's the real thing.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
I didn't know how to feel about this yesterday, because, although I love Dylan, the odds on favorite this year was writer, Joyce Carol Oates. But the brilliant Ms Oates -- best living author to my mind -- praised the choice of Dylan for his poetic lyrics and his impact on the world.
His, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," had some influence on one of her best short stories, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been." In fact I've thought I detected a little bit of Dylan influence in lots of her work.
I just hope Oates is next.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
From Golden Key:
When I hear "pop music", I tend to think of Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, etc. Now, "*popular* music" casts a much wider net: Sinatra, ABBA, old sing-a-long songs, Helen Reddy, the Boston Pops orchestra, David Cassidy (back in the day).
Folk star, minstrel, troubadour, bard. But definitely not a pop star.
Pop music and popular music are the same thing, surely? The first is just an abbreviation for the second. I’d consider all the ones you listed (at least, the ones I’ve heard of) as falling into the same category, except possibly Sinatra, which is more "easy listening", basically because his songs don’t usually have the intrusive, dominant, usually fast-paced bass beat that seems to characterize so much of what floats around these days in retail outlets (and through neighbours’ walls or car stereos). A lot of what I’ve been exposed to over the years I haven’t found calming or easy to listen to, just grateful when it finally stops.
I’ll get down to the links you posted shortly. A colleague just sent one on to me which was interesting and original, and not a lot like the usual "oh babe I luuuuurve ya" kind of song, though if judged as actual poetry, I think I’ve read better. But that’s only one so I’ll see what some others are like.
What are the eligibility criteria for deciding on Nobel Prizes for the arts, does anyone know?
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Og: Thread Killer
Ship's token CN Mennonite
# 3200
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Posted
Bowie was and is more influential to today's music.
As was/is Prince.
Dylan was a proto influencer in pop music but those two artists have been WAY more important to music then Dylan.
What this has to do with literature? Danged if I know.
I believe that baby boomer nostalgia, either actual or reflected, played a role in this prize. Dylan is only considered good by people my age (early 50's) because other people tell us younger people he's good. By the time I got old enough to be listening to music of my own (non-radio driven) choice in the late 70's, Dylan was past it in our eyes.
He's a flashcard meme for us now.
There is no way a 70's or 80's starting icon would get a prize like this as the generations who grew up listening to Bowie and Prince are not as self-obsessed with our youth being the greatest ever. We know our youth was the greatest ever but don't need to give prizes out to prove it over other people's youth - we just do memes and listicles and youtube lists. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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I wish I was seeking justice loving mercy and walking humbly but... "Cease to lament for that thou canst not help, And study help for that which thou lament'st."
Posts: 5025 | From: Toronto | Registered: Aug 2002
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Og: Thread Killer
Ship's token CN Mennonite
# 3200
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Posted
And yes I fully expect somebody to tell me they are in the 50's or 40's and love Dylan.
To that I have only four words:
Go find The Ramones
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I wish I was seeking justice loving mercy and walking humbly but... "Cease to lament for that thou canst not help, And study help for that which thou lament'st."
Posts: 5025 | From: Toronto | Registered: Aug 2002
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
This is what I said on the thread in Heaven.
quote:
Never been as impressed with Bob Dylan as a lot of other people seem to be, but there have been some fairly odd awards for the Literature prize over the years.
I think most people would allow Kipling, Yeats, Shaw, Eliott, Hemingway and several others their places in the first rank of Anglophone writers alive since 1901. But I don't think many people would admit Pearl Buck or Doris Lessing to that pantheon.
It's difficult to evaluate some of the ones who wrote in other languages. Knut Hamsun turned out to be a quisling, and also seems to have been a racist.
Dylan has never woven for me, the sort of magic that he seems to spin for others. He crystallises much that was facile about the sixties - and I go back that far - Woodstock and a whole lot hackneyed emotions that were wafting in the Zeitgeist.
As it happens, I've a bit of experience over the years of fitting words to music and music to words. What works as 'just words', what goes to music, and what doesn't really work if you take the music away are none of them the same thing. The notion that something can't be literature if you can sing it has to be nonsense.
The real question, though, isn't really 'does what he wrote count as literature?' It's whether as literature, is it any good? As it doesn't do it for me, I'd put him with Pearl Buck or Doris Lessing rather than with Kipling, Yeats, Shaw, Eliott and Hemingway.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
Bowie was and is more influential to today's music.
As was/is Prince.
Dylan was a proto influencer in pop music but those two artists have been WAY more important to music then Dylan.
That is an indictment of modern music. Dylan, Bowie and Prince all deserve a far better legacy and as others have said, Dylan wasn't a major influencer of pop, although there are lighter echoes in, say, Squeeze and The Beautiful South.
quote:
What this has to do with literature? Danged if I know.
I believe that baby boomer nostalgia, either actual or reflected, played a role in this prize. Dylan is only considered good by people my age (early 50's) because other people tell us younger people he's good. By the time I got old enough to be listening to music of my own (non-radio driven) choice in the late 70's, Dylan was past it in our eyes.
He's a flashcard meme for us now.
But the "non-radio driven choice" is minimal nowadays, given the shift of influence from live to recorded music.
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
Maybe Pearl Buck and Dylan have one thing in common and that is that they broke new ground. Pearl Buck's work seems patronizing, almost racist, today but it was just the opposite when she wrote, "The Good Earth," and gave people a view into Chinese culture that westerners hadn't had before. The average American suburbanite could suddenly see members of that vast inscrutable country as individuals with cares and concerns like we had. Dylan came along when music was almost entirely made up of love songs, and demonstrated that lyrics could be about social issues and -- like good literature -- help explain us to ourselves.
I know Og hates us oldies, we've heard it all before, but we are giving prizes to people our age now partly because they are old and it's time to recognize their body of work while they are still with us.
Cheer up Og, we'll all be dead soon.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Some of these lyrics and songs bear up well. Over the years. Outside of specific contexts. Like a Rolling Stone holds up. We all probably have our preferences. FWIW, Ring Them Bells.
A lovely song. I read it out to my wife, and we fell silent, over its beauty.
Cadences from the Bible, I guess, and also traditional ballads, but he does remind me of T. S. Eliot, the whimsy, and darkness, the declamatory voice and the ordinary speaking voice, American vernacular in this case.
I can see I'll have to buy the Ricks book, to check out more.
One of the great voices of our age, combining the demotic and the prophetic.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Pop music and popular music are the same thing, surely? The first is just an abbreviation for the second. I’d consider all the ones you listed (at least, the ones I’ve heard of) as falling into the same category, except possibly Sinatra, which is more "easy listening", basically because his songs don’t usually have the intrusive, dominant, usually fast-paced bass beat that seems to characterize so much of what floats around these days in retail outlets (and through neighbours’ walls or car stereos).
You make an equation then immediately turn around and negate it. Popular music means "not classical." It's the music of the people. Frank Sinatra is definitely popular music. But he's not "pop" which took on a separate existence from its etymological roots some time in the 1950s or 1960s.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
The Nobel committee were certainly being cute when they cited "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition", in relation to Dylan. Nicely done.
I enjoyed the rant from Irvine Welsh (a Dylan fan), "an ill-conceived nostalgia award, wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies."
Oh envy, thy sting is merciless.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
If it's marketed primarily as a song it is is not primarily intended as literature.
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
. . . although I do feel that songs belong in the Music category, not the Literature category.
So what is the basis, apart from personal opinion, for excluding song lyrics/poems written with the intention that they be sung from literature? How are you defining "literature"?
In the OED online, I see this definition: "Without defining word: written work valued for superior or lasting artistic merit." Seems like that can easily include texts intended for singing.
The Wiki specifically includes texts intended to be sung:
quote:
Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. More restrictively, it is writing considered as an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage. Its Latin root literatura/litteratura (derived itself from littera: letter or handwriting) was used to refer to all written accounts, though contemporary definitions extend the term to include texts that are spoken or sung (oral literature).
Poetry written for singing is still the written word. I don't see how or why the addition of music takes away an literary value of the words themselves.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Pop music and popular music are the same thing, surely? The first is just an abbreviation for the second. I’d consider all the ones you listed (at least, the ones I’ve heard of) as falling into the same category, except possibly Sinatra, which is more "easy listening", basically because his songs don’t usually have the intrusive, dominant, usually fast-paced bass beat that seems to characterize so much of what floats around these days in retail outlets (and through neighbours’ walls or car stereos).
You make an equation then immediately turn around and negate it. Popular music means "not classical." It's the music of the people. Frank Sinatra is definitely popular music. But he's not "pop" which took on a separate existence from its etymological roots some time in the 1950s or 1960s.
Exactly.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
I'm still just floored by someone taking a stand against something they haven't even investigated. Jeez. If someone jumps willy-nilly into a thread and expresses iron-clad views and then admits that they haven't even read a word on the subject, they get ripped a new one.
If Ariel had said that having read or heard some Dylan works, they couldn't be said to qualify as literature, that's acceptable as an informed opinion. As it stands, it sounds like elitist prejudice.
[ 14. October 2016, 15:50: Message edited by: Lyda*Rose ]
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I was rather impressed that someone should venture a view, without having apparently heard or read Dylan. I think this will be my policy from now on. You know that Uzbekistan novelist that everyone is raving about - absolute tripe.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
Bowie was and is more influential to today's music.
As was/is Prince.
Dylan was a proto influencer in pop music but those two artists have been WAY more important to music then Dylan.
Hm. Not quite sure I agree. Dylan is a bridge from folk and blues and balladeers into rock and pop. He brought the grit into the conscious-raising music in a way the shiny pop of Bowie and Prince do not. Not knocking them in any way shape or form; but their influence is more in the direction of style, Dylan's is more towards substance.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
The real question, though, isn't really 'does what he wrote count as literature?' It's whether as literature, is it any good? As it doesn't do it for me, I'd put him with Pearl Buck or Doris Lessing rather than with Kipling, Yeats, Shaw, Eliott and Hemingway.
Not valid comparisons, IMO. The structural difference make direct comparisons difficult.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Oh, and seriously Og? People can only honestly like music from their own era?
listens to excepts from own collection .... Mozart ... Robert Johnson ... Beatles ... Sinatra ...
O. M. F. G.
You are right, old music sucks!
Thank you for lifting the scales from my eyes, now excuse me, I must now go to iTunes and stock up on One Direction.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
As it stands, it sounds like elitist prejudice.
Surely, it sounds like base prejudice. The elite, of which I am one, think Dylan getting the award is a splendid idea.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
I'm still just floored by someone taking a stand against something they haven't even investigated. Jeez. If someone jumps willy-nilly into a thread and expresses iron-clad views and then admits that they haven't even read a word on the subject, they get ripped a new one.
If Ariel had said that having read or heard some Dylan works, they couldn't be said to qualify as literature, that's acceptable as an informed opinion. As it stands, it sounds like elitist prejudice.
All right. I give in. Music is literature, books are art, poetry is dead, and David Beckham will be awarded a Nobel Prize for philanthropy next year because his footballing skills have made millions happy.
I think Og has a point: it's a nostalgia thing. Enjoy your nostalgia, celebrate the elevation of one of your greats. I don't share your feelings and I can't see why people think he deserves a Nobel Prize, but I didn't grow up with this stuff and coming to it cold, it has no resonance or emotional meaning for me. I don't see it primarily as poetry set to music, or anything other as other than music and therefore in the wrong award category - and I don't have to have listened to any of it to know that it's music, surely.
I did ask upthread if anyone knew what the Nobel definition of "literature" is because it's obviously broader than I expected, but I shall go and look this up for myself.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
I did ask upthread if anyone knew what the Nobel definition of "literature" is because it's obviously broader than I expected, but I shall go and look this up for myself.
As I suggested upthread, when a banker can get the Peace prize, and a politician the same for campaigning on climate change, you'll really have to ask the Swedish Academy. It's their award after all.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I think most people would allow Kipling, Yeats, Shaw, Eliott, Hemingway and several others their places in the first rank of Anglophone writers alive since 1901. But I don't think many people would admit Pearl Buck or Doris Lessing to that pantheon.
I think there are more people who admire Lessing than you're prepared to admit.
The Nobel gets awarded to one hundred people every century (more or less). I don't think anyone would bat an eyelid if you put Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett onto a list of one hundred writers of all time. Pearl Buck would look eccentric if you put her on, I suppose(*), but Doris Lessing would I think be sensible either way.
(*) I have never read her, so I am just following her reputation as the person who unfairly beat Woolf.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
I think Dylan most definitely was a pop star (as the term was used at the time--it's got somewhat different connotations now) for a couple of years in the '60s, more so in the UK than the US. He had 4 Top 10 hits in the US, 6 in the UK (6 & 10 Top 20, respectively), not to mention the covers by the Byrds, Sonny and Cher, the Turtles, Manfred Mann, etc. If you see the documentary "Don't Look Back" (about his '65 UK tour), it's not Beatlemania, but it's leaning that way.
However, the pop star thing never sat easily on him, and he was always more than that. I happen to believe that his songwriting has continued to improve over time (though with some awful lapses in judgment from the late '70s into the '90s, including holding back some of his best songs, like "Blind Willie McTell"), and he's better now than he was in the '60s--I love to listen to those three classic albums from '65-'66, but some of those lyrics are just amphetamine-fueled word salad (the bridge to "Ballad of a Thin Man" is particularly egregious). His work over the past 20 years strikes me as deeper and better crafted than most of what he did back then. But I listened to "Blood on the Tracks" last night, and it hasn't lost any of its power.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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Gwai
Host
# 11076
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I think most people would allow Kipling, Yeats, Shaw, Eliott, Hemingway and several others their places in the first rank of Anglophone writers alive since 1901. But I don't think many people would admit Pearl Buck or Doris Lessing to that pantheon.
I think there are more people who admire Lessing than you're prepared to admit.
The Nobel gets awarded to one hundred people every century (more or less). I don't think anyone would bat an eyelid if you put Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett onto a list of one hundred writers of all time.
Particularly if we disallow everyone who dies before their greatness is noticed.
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
As it happens, I've a bit of experience over the years of fitting words to music and music to words. What works as 'just words', what goes to music, and what doesn't really work if you take the music away are none of them the same thing.
Perfectly put.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Pop music and popular music are the same thing, surely? The first is just an abbreviation for the second. I’d consider all the ones you listed (at least, the ones I’ve heard of) as falling into the same category, except possibly Sinatra, which is more "easy listening", basically because his songs don’t usually have the intrusive, dominant, usually fast-paced bass beat that seems to characterize so much of what floats around these days in retail outlets (and through neighbours’ walls or car stereos).
You make an equation then immediately turn around and negate it. Popular music means "not classical." It's the music of the people. Frank Sinatra is definitely popular music. But he's not "pop" which took on a separate existence from its etymological roots some time in the 1950s or 1960s.
And similarly, "classical" music is not even synonymous with itself. In many contexts, people talk about "classical music" and mean everything from Bach through to Brahms to Rachmaninov to people composing things today.
But within the "classical music" world, none of those composers are classical. Bach is from the Baroque era, Brahms from the Romantic, Rachmaninov is a super-late example of Romantic and so on. Classical means a particular era from around the 1750s or 1760s to about the 1820s.
It's like anything. The more familiar you are with it, the more it gets divided into more detailed sub-categories. I agree, Dylan is only "popular music" in the very broadest, "not classical" sense.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
All right. I give in. Music is literature, books are art, poetry is dead, and David Beckham will be awarded a Nobel Prize for philanthropy next year because his footballing skills have made millions happy.
Now you're just making awful category errors. Bob Dylan was not awarded the prize for music.
Okay? If he had written instrumental music, you know that stuff without words (which, I note in passing, some people equate with "classical" in an equally wrong blanket categorization) we wouldn't be having this discussion. He was awarded the prize FOR WORDS.
Now, explain to me why the fact that those words are sung turns them into "music"? Do they suddenly become written on a 5-line stave instead of in the Latin alphabet?
Do the poems of Goethe, Heine, Pushkin, Baudelaire and Verlaine suddenly stop being poems because various classical composers set their words to music? It's the same words.
[ 14. October 2016, 22:50: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Okay I admit to using "classical" in the pedestrian sense to refer to what is more correctly called "art" music. I am fully aware that the classical period is generally distinguished from the baroque and romantic periods, and that the boundaries are hazy, and roughly where to slot the bigger names. I'm not a total Philistine.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
That wasn't directed at you particularly, more at Ariel about the danger of labels. It was following on from your contribution, not replying to it as a counter.
[ 15. October 2016, 01:28: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Pax.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Ariel: quote:
I think Og has a point: it's a nostalgia thing. Enjoy your nostalgia, celebrate the elevation of one of your greats. I don't share your feelings and I can't see why people think he deserves a Nobel Prize, but I didn't grow up with this stuff and coming to it cold, it has no resonance or emotional meaning for me. I don't see it primarily as poetry set to music, or anything other as other than music and therefore in the wrong award category - and I don't have to have listened to any of it to know that it's music, surely.
So you are still judging his work without having read any of it. Tsk.
Although after all this kerfuffle, I seriously doubt if there is a chance in hell you would come up with anything favorable to say about his work.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
So you are still judging his work without having read any of it. Tsk.
Although after all this kerfuffle, I seriously doubt if there is a chance in hell you would come up with anything favorable to say about his work.
As I said above, I've read the links that people have sent me and as I said, one of the links was quite interesting and original and I can see that it's poetic. Although it was not intended primarily to be read as poetry.
I find it hard to believe that candidates from what must surely be a large, international pool of writers, poets and playwrights, fell short of the standard to be outdone by a musician, but I never expected agreement, and you're all pleased with the result of the award, so I'll leave it at that.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Sorry, I misunderstood. Okay, your opinion is your opinion. That's fine. At least now that you have gone to the source, it is informed.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
but I never expected agreement, and you're all pleased with the result of the award, so I'll leave it at that.
Pleased doesn't enter into it. Though some may be, obviously Zappa is, much of this discussion has been about you choosing to exclude anything accompanied by music. If you were arguing that other poets deserved it more than Dylan, that would be opinion.
The definition, and history, of poetry does not exclude song.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Og: Thread Killer
Ship's token CN Mennonite
# 3200
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Posted
The assumption I haven't heard Dylan is based on what exactly?
I personally have on my Spotify music from the 50's through to a couple of weeks ago, plus a lot of classical. Including some Dylan.
I stand by what I say. Dylan's memory is cultivated by a generation that doesn't see much good in music that has occurred since. I see little of him, either lyrically or musically, in decent pop music since then (and I don't have an issue with the word pop - some of it is crap a lot of it is just good enough to catch the ear, some of it is finely crafted art).
Nobel prizes for Literature are given for memories of what used to be. That's Dylan.
Now if you don't mind me, I'm going to go listen to the intricacies of a pure pop Carly Rae Jepsen song. (Run Away with Me)
[ 15. October 2016, 19:51: Message edited by: Og: Thread Killer ]
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I wish I was seeking justice loving mercy and walking humbly but... "Cease to lament for that thou canst not help, And study help for that which thou lament'st."
Posts: 5025 | From: Toronto | Registered: Aug 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
Dylan's memory is cultivated by a generation that doesn't see much good in music that has occurred since.
What's your evidence of this?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Ambivalence
Apprentice
# 16165
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
As a retired English teacher brought up on rhyming iambic pentametres and similar forms, I can't make any sense of a lot of poetry published in periodicals by highly respected contemporary writers.
As an amateur of Middle English (Scots, whatever), I thought of the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy when I saw this thread; performance poetry, for a royal audience, scatological and filthy and very much akin to 'the dozens.' Poetry ain't necessarily refined by nature.
I'm no great fan of Dylan's - not for his music nor his lyrics neither - but I recognise I'm in a minority in the latter view. I don't think his lyrics are "tight" and considered; I think they're a scattergun scattering that isn't so clever, though he certainly has some nice turns of phrase. Scorpio sphinx and all; not especially meaningful, but it sounds good...
I don't know what other sorts of things win the same prize, but I suspect I wouldn't rate them too highly either. ^^
Posts: 22 | From: Peterlee | Registered: Jan 2011
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
The assumption I haven't heard Dylan is based on what exactly?
I think those comments were directed at Ariel.
quote:
I stand by what I say. Dylan's memory is cultivated by a generation that doesn't see much good in music that has occurred since. I see little of him, either lyrically or musically, in decent pop music since then (and I don't have an issue with the word pop - some of it is crap a lot of it is just good enough to catch the ear, some of it is finely crafted art).
Jack White self-acknowledges a connection. The whole singer-songwriter folk rock genre is his baby. Jewel and Fiona Apple are his love children. Sarah McLachlan, Beth Orton, KT Tunstall, Keb Mo. Yeah, not pop, but then neither was Dylan.
Not to mention the really old people/groups that were influenced by him and then spread that, like Neil Young, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, etc.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ambivalence:
I don't think his lyrics are "tight" and considered; I think they're a scattergun scattering that isn't so clever, though he certainly has some nice turns of phrase. Scorpio sphinx and all; not especially meaningful, but it sounds good...
By what definition does poetry need to be meaningful?
Poetry, like any other artform, gains as much meaning from the audience as it does the creator. This works in subtraction as well as addition.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Latchkey Kid
Shipmate
# 12444
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Posted
That voice, Zappa, was pretty much perfect for the lines of
Well, the wind keeps a-blowin' me
Up and down the street
With my hat in my hand
And my boots on my feet
Watch out so you don't step on me
and it is better to hear the sarcasm than just read
Well, lookit here buddy
You want to be like me
Pull out your six-shooter
And rob every bank you can see
Tell the judge I said it was all right
Yes!
And on the track, but not on the lyrics printed on the album, he introduces the song/poetry with
Unlike most of the songs nowadays bein’ written in Tin Pan alley
That’s where most of the folksongs come from nowadays
This is a song that wasn’t written up there
This was written somewhere down in the United States
Woody Guthrie called him a folk-singer, in contrast to Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, and some others he described only as singers of folk songs.
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'You must never give way for an answer. An answer is always the stretch of road that's behind you. Only a question can point the way forward.'
Mika; in Hello? Is Anybody There?, Jostein Gaardner
Posts: 2592 | From: The wizardest little town in Oz | Registered: Mar 2007
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sonata3
Shipmate
# 13653
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Posted
I don't expect to prove anything with this, but I found it interesting that Dylan, in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, noted that one of his albums was "an entire album based on Chekhov stories - critics thought it was autobiographical - that was fine." (It has been suggested that "Blood on the Tracks" is the album he was referring to). The 2001 "Love and Theft" references novelist Junichi Saga. Whether literature or not, Dylan's later work references a broad range of serious literary work.
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"I prefer neurotic people; I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface." Stephen Sondheim
Posts: 386 | From: Between two big lakes | Registered: Apr 2008
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Ambivalence:
I don't think his lyrics are "tight" and considered; I think they're a scattergun scattering that isn't so clever, though he certainly has some nice turns of phrase. Scorpio sphinx and all; not especially meaningful, but it sounds good...
By what definition does poetry need to be meaningful?
Poetry, like any other artform, gains as much meaning from the audience as it does the creator. This works in subtraction as well as addition.
"A poem should not mean
But be."
Ars Poetica, by Archibald MacLeish
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ambivalence:
I don't think his lyrics are "tight" and considered; I think they're a scattergun scattering that isn't so clever, though he certainly has some nice turns of phrase. Scorpio sphinx and all; not especially meaningful, but it sounds good...
I'd take him over James Joyce any day.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Ambivalence:
I don't think his lyrics are "tight" and considered; I think they're a scattergun scattering that isn't so clever, though he certainly has some nice turns of phrase. Scorpio sphinx and all; not especially meaningful, but it sounds good...
I'd take him over James Joyce any day.
Ah, but then would you say that Joyce was not a poet? Or that his idiosyncratic style eliminated him from literature? That is what I think some here are doing, substituting personal taste for standard.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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