Bob Dylan lived the life of a poet, a vagabond, a folksinger, a rock star and many other lives over the years. He is known to be a voracious reader and a very serious reader of poetry. One key influence upon him is that of modern poetry. I have chosen two songs that I feel show a strong inspiration from modern poetry. They are from his 1963 and 1965 albums, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Highway 61 Revisited. This was when Bob Dylan was really cranking out great songs that seemed to just fall to him out of thin air. The songs “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “Desolation Row” are powerful records that capture the feeling of a time, much like Eliot and Pound sought to do. The former song is basically modern poetry sung accompanied by an acoustic guitar; the dense imagery reminds me of Pound’s images. Bob Dylan cites Allen Ginsberg as a huge influence for that song, and I know from reading Ginsberg’s long biography that he was massively jealous of how infatuated the public was with Dylan, and how they hung on his every word. The other song is noted for its length and random references, which is comparable to Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” In “Desolation Row” Bobby actually mentions both Pound and Eliot near the 8 minute mark of the song. From his lyrics one can easily infer that Bob Dylan is first a poet, who realized the best way to thrust poetry to the forefront was to accompany the words with music. Bob Dylan was in the wrong place, he was meant to be with Pound and Eliot; Dylan is a modernist poet’s soul held inside a folksinger’s body.
Without further ado, you know him, you love him, here he is, Bob Dylan :
