Poets for a Generation: Bob Dylan, and John Lennon and ...

(I am not singling out these two personalities over all the brilliant men and women who created public poetry for the middle decades of the last century, but only reporting how I relate to them; I intend to talk about others, too.)  

Bob Dylan doesn't need my endorsement to be considered a genius. I must confess right here that I'm only familiar with a very few songs by him. His main claim to fame was his uncanny ability to express political truths in contemporary American language. Woody Guthrie, of course, had done this before him, but Bob Dylan was able to make political discontent understandable to the ordinary American youth, regardless of social background, whereas Guthrie was focused on workers.
 The Times, They are a-Changing is a gleeful prophesy, a joyous anthem with the anger needed to give it a little edge. I believe this song's time has come, once again, because unless the people take charge of the changes that are needed in America, Congress will, as usual, respond to these crises as a bunch of cynics, each looking after his own back. (Capitalists will consider a herd of cynics to be equivalent to a group of idealists, but then they're the ones who got us into this mess in the first place.)

 Blowing in the Wind, a song better known than The Times They are a Changing, is a more direct challenge to everyman, expressing the impatience of those who are denied the dignity due a citizen. *****How many roads must a man walk down, *****Before you can call him a man? The years have shown us that after a point, this question falls on deaf ears. We are faced with the stunning prospect of a black gentleman in the White House, or a woman, only because all the available male white alternatives were less satisfactory. If this has to be the way the nation is awakened to the potential that lies hidden among African Americans, and women, so be it. Let it be on the record about how hollow is our boast of being the melting-pot of the future. Evidently to many Americans, blacks have not walked down sufficiently many roads to earn the right to call themselves citizens. And Hispanics and Women must continue to walk these roads, waiting for their day.

 Dylan did more than eloquently express public indignation. Don't think twice, It's all right is a wonderfully witty, sardonic song that pokes fun at many stereotypical attitudes, and looking among one's friends, and at the media, one can see, with amusement, couples and individuals that the words describe perfectly! I can't take this song seriously, but in a certain mood, it makes me smile. [Here is Peter Paul & Mary singing it; my favorite version.]

 Like a Rolling Stone is a similar song, expressing the inarticulate frustration of a guy who has just lost his girl, and is hurling insults at her. (The clip features The Band, and is not entirely successful.) Perhaps this was not what was intended, but that's what comes across, and beautifully.

 A Hard rain's gonna fall is another wonderful song, whose meaning is not entirely clear. (I'm sure someone out there knows exactly what it means.)

 Finally, a song that I first heard on the movie The Last Waltz, which was a recording of the final concert of The Band which was a backup group for Bob Dylan. I shall be released has the wonderful heavy beat that lends itself to a variety of treatments, and the performance on The Last Waltz is a particularly brilliant one. Each verse is sung by a different artist. Notice Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison (?) and others. This did not at first seem to me to be a political song, but I find the first line particularly poignant: "They say everything can be replaced." And that line pervades my thinking all through the song, until the last line of the chorus sinks in: "Any day now, I shall be released." The two lines probably give a distorted impression of the song, but the rest of the poem has the sort of ambiguity that is a hallmark of good poetry anywhere, even though the images are fairly blunt. (On subsequent listens, I am hearing a possible reference to Nixon.)

 John Lennon made his tortured way through the seventies, rediscovering the wisdom of the political underdog at a time when ordinary folks did not know where to look for it. The anger that was part of his personality for most of his youth became focused as he matured, and it found a suitable target in the Vietnam War. In his native Britain, Lennon was born at a time at which the working class was beginning to feel the indignity of their condition. They aspired to the education which was available in principle, but which they were denied for a variety of reasons, reasons similar to those that are obstacles to education all over the West: financial, environmental, cultural.

Lennon began writing a sort of mix of prose and verse very early, and some of this nonsense writing worked its way into a few memorable Beatles songs such as I am the Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life, and so forth (though that last may have owed more to McCartney than to Lennon, or been a true collaboration of the two of them).

 Meeting Yoko Ono was a major event in Lennon's life, and probably also that of Ono herself. Very gradually, Lennon emerged as a man who was comfortable being inoffensive and non-abrasive. A certain abrasiveness had characterized his public persona for nearly thirty years. He also emerged as a feminist, repenting his history of domestic violence. He gave an historic TV interview with someone who I still do not know, and his eloquence on that occasion, and his willingness to talk were amazing.  
 A working class hero is something to be. This song is a distillation of the bitterness of pure, frustrated innocence. Much of the agonized lyrics that came straight from Lennon's heart seems to me to be an expression of bewilderment, an expression of a child's feeling of being treated utterly unfairly. It seems that after meeting Ono, Lennon found the courage to drop the facade of cynicism he had worn heretofore, and expressed the bruised spirit whose thoughts resonated with many, whereas the cynicism of many of his songs of the Beatles period managed to reflect the mild alienation of Beatles fans, though they did little to illuminate its causes.

 [Added later: a friend of mine reminded me of the remarkable song Imagine, which foreshadows much of the wisdom I acquired since it was written. It must have taken great courage for the Beatle, who had to embarrassingly, repeatedly, and most of all, unnecessarily, defend himself about a perfectly reasonable remark that the group was more popular than Jesus Christ, to write:
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

****You may say I'm a dreamer
****But I'm not the only one  
****I hope someday you'll join us
****And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

Since both Lennon and Ono were very focused on the Vietnam War, many of Lennon's later songs are most directly about war and peace. Merry Christmas (war is over) is a gentle but insistent dig for an end to the War. Give Peace a Chance cannot be considered poetry in the traditional sense because it is so utterly unsubtle. Freeda People is a freewheeling diatribe against the establishment, again not great poetry, but musically effective.

One of the most lovely, least played songs by Lennon is Aisumasen, a love song. The words are tender and direct. (In the clip he sounds rather defensive about the breakup of the Beatles, and the degree to which he was blamed for it seems amusing in retrospect.

These days we're accustomed to thinking of the groups that do survive, happy hexagenarians touring the country playing at nostalgia venues, as more the hilarious exception than the ordinary course of events. A group is supposed to play for a maximum of ten years, and gracefully go their separate ways.)

Arch

Next: Paul Simon and John Denver