If you don't think he deserved the Nobel, name a better 20th century poem than his best stuff

BTW, I have a hunch that the Nobel Prize for Literature is hogwash nowadays. I took a look at the winners and it seems to have been dominated by cutesy pomo tripe for the last several decades. But I could be wrong.

Back to Bob Dylan, though. He wrote some good stuff before he became a religious nut for some reason (or pretended to be one for several decades, who knows). Yes, he has a big advantage over conventional poets in that he put his words to music. But if that's not a dealbreaker for the concept of comparing him to non-songwriter poets, then let's ponder this matter a bit...

What's a 20th century poem that's better than Dylan's best?

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How about I just name some poets and you can look through their work:

T.S. Eliot
Wallace Stevens
Seamus Heaney
Robert Frost
W.B. Yeats
Ranier Maria Rilke
William Carlos Williams
D.H. Lawrence
Elizabeth Bishop
Hart Crane
Paul Valéry
Thomas Hardy
Robert Lowell

all trash

I've looked at most of those poets' work, but I never found anything that I thought was clearly better than Dylan's stuff.

Not an argument.
Then you don't have an understanding of poetry.

Its not that his work is bad, as I have been a great fan my whole life, its just that it is neither verse nor prose. It is lyric. Music. Not literature.

Not OP.

I agree partially. It is still literature, I think, but it needs to be understood primarily as lyrics to a song. There will be words and techniques etc that are designed to fit into a tune, not as standalone words for a traditional literary poem.

I respect and love musicians. They have their own awards, and it they are for both songwriting and musical composition.

Of course, this discussion is exactly what the Nobel committee wanted to happen, and also a way to sniff at McCarthy and Roth and Pynchon.

poem? why would i want a poet to win it? poetry is lazy incoherent garbage. the award should have gone to cormac mccarthy for the road and blood meridian.

>the award should have gone to cormac mccarthy for the road and blood meridian.

>Not an argument
>proceeds to not have an argument

If anything it should have gone to Thiongo, but I guess comedic works are nobel appropriate.

Although stuff like Modiano is great, because he is now being read widely in translation

Dylan is an overrated songwriter, much less poet. All of his major contemporaries in folk were better: Baez, the Guthries, Cohen, even John Lennon outdid him for the one year he dabbled in the genre. You should consider that fitting verse to melody is actually a disadvantage given how much it limits the structure. When my homeby William Carlos Williams writes all disjointed and staccato, for example, he achieves an effect Dylan never could have. If you choose to reread him, consider the way it controls how you interpret the emphasis and tone of the poems.

There's some major contrarian shit going on in this thread.

youtube.com/watch?v=Na2o_6WbpeQ

>Dylan played the song to Phil Ochs as the two were riding in a limousine. When Ochs expressed a lukewarm feeling about the piece, Dylan kicked him out of the limousine, yelling "You're not a folk singer. You're a journalist."

>poetry is lazy incoherent garbage.
Said he not beginning the sentences with capital letters.

I hereby crown thee God Emperor of Plebs and Illiterates.

Now kys yourself.

...

>bob dylan
>not dylan thomas

bait thread

...

...

Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga?

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death

Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place

What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.

...

Don't forget Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound.

Jesus man, read Rilke again

A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward
Of a chest hospital: square cubicles in a row
Plain concrete, wash basins - an art lover's woe,
Not counting how the fellow in the next bed snored.
But nothing whatever is by love debarred,
The common and banal her heat can know.
The corridor led to a stairway and below
Was the inexhaustible adventure of a gravelled yard.

This is what love does to things: the Rialto Bridge,
The main gate that was bent by a heavy lorry,
The seat at the back of a shed that was a suntrap.
Naming these things is the love-act and its pledge;
For we must record love's mystery without claptrap,
Snatch out of time the passionate transitory.

>"Let the murderer go free you racists."
What a poet.

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

hope i've changed your mind op

Not OP, but I think you proved your point.

(((Robert Zimmerman)))

Songwriting is much easier than writing poetry.
t. decent songwriter but mostly bad poet

What song was this?

Scott Walker is a better lyricist than Cohen or Dylan.