The Best American Poetry

"The Dylan Watch" (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

In a recent comment, David Lehman asked about Dylan's relationship with Archibald MacLeish. In Chronicles, his autobiography, Dylan reported that he had just returned from his father's funeral when he found a letter from MacLeish asking him to write some songs for a new play. The play was Scratch, an adaptation of Benet's story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Since Dylan's father died on June 5, 1968, it was sometime after that when Dylan and his wife drove from Woodstock to Massachusetts to see "Archie," as Dylan called the poet, someone he thought at the heights of American poetry.

The meeting itself did not go all that well. MacLeish did most of the talking. He was respectful and careful to mention that he thought Dylan a serious poet. But Dylan must have been shocked to discover that MacLeish still thought of him as a protest singer. Dylan immediately grasped that there would be no artistic relationship, although he did end up writing three songs for the play: "Father of Night," "Time Passes Slowly," and "New Morning." They didn't work for the show, which, Dylan wryly noted, closed after two days.

   
photo by Ken Regan, 1975

At least the meeting went better than the one Dylan had with Carl Sandburg in February 1964. The poet wouldn't let Dylan past the porch of his ranch in Hendersonville, N.C. In the twenty minutes Sandburg gave him, the poet said he had not even heard of Dylan. And Dylan tried to meet other poets as well, especially the Beats. Dylan was particularly taken with Allen Ginsberg, whom he had first met on December 26, 1963. Dylan liked Ginsberg, who lived outside the rules of society, was naive in his idealism, and didn't try to use Dylan. He let Dylan be himself. He was kind.

It is easy to suggest that Dylan wanted to meet famous poets because they had the authority to grant him, by association, an authentic poetic identity. But I think there was a deeper reason for his interest. Dylan was in search of models and mentors. He had to be overwhelmed by his own talent and by the reaction to it. He needed to speak with people who had the same sort of access to language he did. There weren't many people with as congenial a relationship to English who had also achieved widespread recognition. Only they could help him understand how an artist survives and deals with fame. Sandburg wouldn't listen. MacLeish couldn't understand. Only Ginsberg among the poets was a genuine teacher, someone who had an intense intelligence combined with a willingness to listen and take seriously what others said. He gave Dylan an education. He helped Dylan acquire a secure sense of what a poetic self was and the way to maintain the integrity of that self in a very strange world.

The Dylan Watch (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

    In "Red River Shore," Dylan sings of a wise woman he wanted to wed who offered him the best advice she had: "Go home and lead a quiet life." Whether real or symbolic, the woman's advice must have been considered close to sacred.

   But what is "a quiet life"? The term is often used spiritually to mean a life apart from the wicked world, a life that sees politics as unable to overcome the tragic flaws of human nature, and so a life without faith in politics but rather in artistic creation or the redemption offered by God or both.

    "A quiet life" had undeniable virtues for Dylan. It is a life that provides escape from the expectations of crowds, managers, critics, and fans. It is a life in which failed marriages, failed loves, failed friendships, and failed songs swirl into meaningless and are replaced by a divine presence, relationship, and life that has supreme meaning and is supremely safe.

    However, the arc of Dylan's career doesn't lead from intense social involvement and a quest for fame to social isolation. There is a constant tension, as if the need to express an opinion and the need for fame were at one end of the spectrum with the need for anonymity at the other with Dylan rushing passionately between the two, as if trying to prove Frost wrong, that he can go down two roads simultaneously.

    And Dylan has been lucky when he rushed back toward fame. He has retained his audience and critical support, his health, and his determination. Not everyone famous, though, wanted to leave fame and then return to it. Greta Garbo is perhaps the most famous of the well-known in search of a quiet life, although she didn't say what is often ascribed to her. Instead of "I want to be alone," she said, "I want to be let alone," which is less about becoming a hermit and more about the exhaustions of fame. But my favorite example is Gardner McKay, a television actor in the 1960s show Adventures in Paradise. After three years, McKay voluntarily left 20th Century Fox. Marilyn Monroe wanted the handsome actor to star with her in a film, a role that would have offered enormous fame. McKay declined. He ended up as an agronomist's assistant in the Amazon rain forest and died in 20001.

    Dylan's retreats to the quiet life were often hardly quiet. Highway 61 Revisited was a very public struggle to find hidden selves separate from the identity fame had given him. He has not given up touring or making records or painting or writing. He seems to need both the recognition and the quiet.

    Of course, he has written extensively about the quietest of lives. The anticipation of death has been on his mind constantly from the very beginning of his writing career. Maybe Heaven was the "home" the woman from the Red River Shore invited him to inhabit.

The Dylan Watch (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

    This is a post about Bob Dylan and Judaism.

    Were Dylan more of an ordinary person, an ordinary analysis might suffice. Such an analysis would include the normally revealing facts that Robert Zimmerman was born to Jewish parents, raised as a Jew, given a lavish Bar Mitzvah, and attended Camp Herzl in Webster, Wisconsin for four consecutive summers, from 1954-1958. As the camp's name suggests, it was Zionist, no surprise given that both Zimmerman parents were active in Jewish organizations. When Bobby Zimmerman first went to the University of Minnesota he stayed at the house of a Jewish fraternity, Sigma Alpha Mu. His first marriage was to a Jewish woman. He visited Israel's Western Wall and reportedly sought to live on a kibbutz. He remains connected to the Lubavitch movement.

    Dylan, that is, sounds like a middle-class Jewish success story, that of a man who, because of his enormous talent and hard work, was on extraordinarily intimate terms with both America's musical traditions and the English language. But there was also an inner religious torment unnoticed by the surface analysis. All minority group members must navigate the general human struggles of maturing, but minorities must add sometimes multiple struggles about such issues as self-acceptance and desiring the sometimes contradictory goals of acceptance by a wider group and maintaining the born self. Bobby Zimmerman's self-administered ethnotherapy was to develop an American self, "Bob Dylan."

    It would be cheap and easy to claim that Dylan's religious search came solely because his efforts to deal with anti-Semitism and minority status led at one point to his dealing with what he saw as the contradictions of being both Jewish and American by denying his Jewish self and fiercely embracing some sort of fundamentalist Christianty. Dylan's religious search was genuine. He deserves to have his quest taken seriously. But, ultimately, his attachment to Christianity was as problematic for him as his attachment to Judaism.

    It is not possible to say precisely what his religion is, or what mixture it is, or what its shape is. All we can say is that Dylan orients his life toward a sacred reality. He seems to feel a personal, direct relationship to God, perhaps even to have "conversations" with God. He seems to feel guided by God, blessed by God, and morally indebted to God.

    The ancient Israelites introduced the world to the idea of a single, personal, moral God. In that basic sense, Dylan is certainly Jewish. Additionally, the word "Israel" means someone who wrestles with God, not someone who obeys God or even believes in God. Has anyone more publicly wrestled with God than Bob Dylan? The wrestling has sometimes produced untraditional and even questionable results, but no one can doubt that it has also produced an enduring and uniquely magnificent body of art.

The Dylan Watch (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

William Zantzinger died on January 3rd, almost 46 years after he was held responsible for the February 9, 1963 death of an African-American barmaid named Hattie Carroll. Bob Dylan transformed Zantzinger into a national villain and a symbol of why a civil rights revolution was needed. Dylan's memorable song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" was recorded on October 23, 1963 and released on January 13, 1964 on his album The Times They Are a-Changin'.

However vicious, repulsive, racist, and cruel Zantzinger may have been, the facts of Hattie Carroll's death don't completely cohere with the way the song presents them. Zantzinger was at a fancy event dressed up and carrying a toy cane. According to news reports, a drunken Zantzinger hit several employees with the cane and repeatedly used racially derogatory words. At one point he went to the bar and asked Hattie Carroll for a drink. She was evidently too slow for him, and he began calling her racially insulting names and hitting her on the shoulder with the cane. Carroll, whose heart was enlarged and who had hypertension, went to the kitchen. She left and later collapsed and died of a stroke. The medical examiner thought Zantzinger's nasty language had bothered her as the caning. A three-judge panel concluded that the caning itself could not have caused her death and so reduced the charges to manslaughter. Zantzinger was sentenced to six months in jail. In the song, Zantzinger's sentence has much to do with Zantginger's high political connections. In fact, his father had served a single term as a state legislator and been on the Maryland Planning Commission.

Writing for the January 26, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, David Simon (creator of The Wire) notes that he interviewed Zantzinger 25 years after the death. The most interesting part of the interview is that Zantzinger claims he was going to sue Dylan. He told Simon, "Scared that boy good." Zantzinger claimed his lawyer had contacted both Dylan and Columbia Records but refrained from the suit because Zantzinger had had enough of courtrooms.

But there is a lingering question. It was just about the time of the album's release and its immediate aftermath--the very time that Zantzinger's lawyers would most likely have threatened Columbia and Dylan with a lawsuit--that Dylan began to move away from explicitly political songs.

His reasons for doing so--the desire to explore the personal and a refusal to be owned by any movement--continue to make the most sense, and there is no reason to conclude Dylan ever lacked courage or felt legally or artistically threatened by a possible lawsuit. Indeed, Dylan was always a particularly courageous artist. But it would be interesting to see Columbia's legal file on the matter. And I wonder if the realization that the political songs could not be written without sometimes getting a nasty reaction and potential confrontation also contributed in some way to Dylan's move away from those explicitly political songs.

The Dylan Watch (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

Bob Dylan had the "honor" of having his music be the subject of the first bootleg album in rock history. "Bootlegs" are albums or CDs that include music their artists or companies did not want to release yet or at all. The term "bootleg" probably derives from selling illegal whiskey which was sometimes hidden in the leg of a boot. "Bootlegs" are not pirated music, that is cheap copies of material that is commercially available.

In July 1969, two long-haired men in Los Angeles created The Great White Wonder. The men were known by various names, especially Ken and Dub, although in a Rolling Stone story, they called themselves Patrick and Vladimir. (When asked by the reporter to spell the name, "Vladimir' changed his name to Merlin.) The two created the TMQ ("Trademark of Quality") label and found 26 examples of unreleased Dylan material from various sources. The album itself had a blank, white gatefold cover. The album labels were white and blank. The copy I saw in 1969 did not have the title on the cover, but everyone knew the name.

The first and third sides of the albums included 12 songs and four cuts of Dylan talking. This material was taken from a tape made on December 22, 1961 in the Minneapolis residence of a former girlfriend, Bonnie Beecher. (Beecher is in competition for the title of "Girl From the North Country.") Dylan's friend, the musician Tony Glover, recorded it. Despite where it was taped, it is often called the Minneapolis Hotel Tape. The second side included various studio outtakes. The end of side two and side four included nine songs that Dylan and the group later known as The Band recorded in a house dubbed Big Pink. Finally, "Living the Blues" was lifted from a Johnny Cash television show.

Radio stations began to play selections from the bootleg. Ken and Dub borrowed cars and drove the albums to various record stores. For understandable reasons, they left no contact information. They sold the albums to the stores for $4.50 each. (For big customers--those who bought more than 50 copies--the would-be entrepreneurs lowered their unit price to $4.25.) The shops varied in how much they charged customers. The Psychedelic Supermarket, a Hollywood establishment with a name detailing its inclinations, charged customers $12.50.

There were not, as I recall, extended discussions about the morality of making the material available or purchasing it. There was a presumption that Dylan's genius trumped his right to control his own material. I don't know if the bootlegs hurt his music or concert sales. I do know that sitting down in the late evening with the lights low it was a thrill to put those albums on a turntable and hear the familiar voice singing new and unfamiliar and utterly remarkable material. 

Book Recommendations (by Lawrence Epstein, The Dylan Watch)

More than ever, books make the best gifts during this season that celebrates sharing. I won’t provide a Top Ten list, only a couple of books. Of course, the books published by the BAP community make wonderful choices. Additionally, here are two books you can both read and give with pleasure:

 The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly. Connelly is to my mind in serious competition for the best mystery writer around (with Robert Crais, among others), and this book is a double pleasure because it includes the “Lincoln Lawyer” Mickey Haller and Connelly’s great creation, the LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. The book provides extraordinary insights into the legal mind at work. If it’s somewhat overplotted, it still is brilliantly executed. For those of us who love the Bosch novels, this book allows us to see him from the outside.

 2. Cultural Amnesia by Clive James. The paperback version of this, my favorite book of 2007, was recently released. It is, to say the least, unusual. James offers 110 brief biographical essays, including profiles of many familiar people and some much less so. In particular, the author’s yearning for an intellectual society comparable to that found in the cafes of pre-War Vienna explains his discussions of many martyrs to a variety of totalitarian regimes. James’ intellect, his savage wit, his aphoristic prose, his biases, and his embrace of the life of the mind made this book unforgettable to me. Of course, there were people I wish he had included; the paucity of women in the book is all too obvious. And there are others whose inclusion befuddled me. But agree or disagree with him, James makes for exciting reading.

The Dylan Watch (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

This is a post interpreting "Red River Shore."

Dylan has written many love songs. They include desire songs filled with urges, anguish songs marked by the sadness of the loss of a romantic partner, revenge songs that turn the anguish into fury, and love songs expressing mature feelings that mix desire, mutuality of attraction, and responsibility. The allegorical love song is another of Dylan's types. On the literal level, these songs are about Dylan's love for a woman. On the allegorical level, they are about Dylan's relationship with some aspect of God, represented by the woman. Such a metaphor goes back at least as far as the Biblical "Song of Songs" in which the male and female characters represent God and the Jewish people.

"Visions of Johanna" (1966) was the first of Dylan's allegorical love songs. In that song Dylan is with the earthly Louise while yearning for the spiritual Johanna. The exact nature of Johanna's Godliness is not clear in the song. She could be God as represented by a female, or a metaphor as in the "Song of Songs" tradition, or one aspect of God, or a private way that Dylan experiences God. There are also Christian interpretations of this relationship that I'm not qualified to offer. "Shelter From the Storm" (1974) is another extraordinary example of such an allegorical love song.

And now, joining this illustrious group, comes "Red River Shore," another song about the power of love. Dylan sings that the only woman he ever wanted was "the girl from the Red River shore." He couldn't convince her to be his wife, to stay with him permanently. The "girl" is not simply a romantic partner. Her spiritual nature is hinted at because others can't see her; when the singer asks about her, people "didn't know who I was talking about."

The memory of this hidden goddess sustains him. The rest of life feels strange. Her memory gives him songs but also sadness because he know he is now distant from her. One possible interpretation of this distance is that Dylan no longer feels as close to the aspect of God she represents as he once did.

Indeed, Dylan feels like he's dead. He invokes the hope that somebody can bring him back to life the way Jesus could resuscitate people. Dylan is very precise in his words. He alludes to Jesus using the words "guy" and "man," deliberately avoiding a Godly reference, an avoidance that indicates his separation from his born-again experience. Dylan is left believing only the "girl from the Red River shore" understood him and now she--his love on an earthly and spiritual plane--is gone. We are left only with the sad, haunting sounds of his longing for the life-giving love that is gone and will never return.

The Dylan Watch (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

This is the background story of "Red River Shore," the best song on Dylan's new album Tell Tale Signs. I will analyze the song in the next post.

John Lomax, the great folklorist, sought out authentic music including genuine cowboy songs, as opposed to the cowboy songs that Hollywood films and records made popular. Lomax found a great source in Slim Critchlow and his group the Utah Buckaroos out of Salt Lake City. When Lomax and his son Alan collected songs for their book American Ballads and Folk Songs (1934), they included several Critchlow songs including "Red River Shore."

The song tells the story of a man who asks his love to marry to marry him on the Red River shore. She agrees, but her father won't allow her to marry a cowboy. The singer leaves, but his love implores him to return. He has to face her father, who ambushes him with 24 gunmen. The cowboy hero wounds 6 and kills 7 on his way to marry the woman.

On January 7, 1966 the Kingston Trio released Children of the Morning, their final album before separating. In their version of "Red River Shore," the father and his gang are too much for the hero. He will never marry his love. The song is credited to Jack Splittard and Randy Cierley. "Jack Splittard" was a joke name. The group copyrighted some traditional songs under the name and then split the "jack," or money. 

Bob Dylan released Time Out of Mind on September 30, 1997. The album is shot through with skepticism. The young, idealistic Dylan is nowhere to be found. The songs are filled with despair, even dread. "Red River Shore" is an outtake from the album. Even though Dylan didn't use the song, there is a line in the Critchlow version that goes, "She wrote me a letter, and she wrote it so kind." This exact line appears in the song "Not Dark Yet," one of the best-known songs on Time Out of Mind. The Kingston Trio version of the song has the line without the word "and."

Two versions of "Red River Shore" emerged on Tell Tale Signs, one of them on the expensive 3-disc ooption. Both have their charms, though I think the one on the first disc is more moving.

The song is extraordinary, and so it merits closer analysis.

The Dylan Watch (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

Bob Dylan's newly-released "Tell Tale Signs" is the eighth in a series of "bootleg" albums and is made up of discarded studio takes from "Oh Mercy," "Time Out of Mind," and "Modern Times," unreleased songs, movie sound track contributions, and some live performances. The material is available as a three-disc overpriced set or as a two-disc option for less obsessive listeners.

Despite the diversity of song sources, the tone of the album gives it a sense of unity. The bleakness of the songs is unrelenting. The palpable sense of apocalypse in the lyrics that comes at a time of profound national economic confusion transforms "Tell Tale Signs" into another argument for Dylan's prophetic talents.

If there is any relief offered, it comes from Dylan's immersion in American folk and blues music. In this album, he covers Robert Johnson's "32-20 Blues," Jimmie Rodgers' "Miss the Mississippi," and, in a duet with Ralph Stanley, "The Lonesome River."

Some will dismiss parts of the album because the material that ultimately appeared on other albums was lyrically sharper, but having the chance to hear Dylan's development is a real opportunity to see an artist evolving. And there are some puzzles. I can't imagine why "Red River Shore" was left off the "Time Out of Mind" album. The song is the best one on this album, allthough the three version of "Mississippi" are very good. One version of that song appeared on "Love and Theft," but the three versions here have previously been unreleased. I like the simple one that opens the album.

The Bob Dylan who recorded this material is not the Bob Dylan of the mid-1960s. The sublime lyrics are mostly gone, replaced by lyrics that less rarely need interpretation. They are direct cries from the heart. Dylan seems to fear that all his talent has departed, that his world doesn't make sense, that love is gone and can never return, and that surely the spiritual world he thinks will soon be his home has got to be far better than the lonesome landscape in which he wanders here. Out of all this, the fierce, plaintive songs constitute a call to courage for himself and all others who experience life as an ongoing mystery with plenty of tragic clues and a few happy ones, but a mystery ultimately beyond human solution. 

Dylan Taps Bobby Burns

Asked to name the lyric that had the greatest impact on his development as an artist, Bob Dylan chose the Scottish poet Robert Burns's "red, red rose." For more, click here. Thanks, Steve Dube, for keeping us up to speed.

 

Song

O, my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun!
O I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

-- Robert Burns