Uncle Bob's Voice
Posted by: quincy on 16 October 2001
Oh wait-That was Bugs,wasn't it! 
How many levels of mana would Bob have to stand on to sound good?...answers on a postcard to Steven Toy.
cheers
Nigel
quote:
I can quite easily name 10 songwriters who are far more accomplished. I think this very fact precludes him from greatness.
You are correct, Bob is crap, what on earth was I thinking of to believe that I know what makes a good lyric?
Please post these 10 better writers and an example of their work so I can learn the error of my ways and begin to aspire to your excellent taste.
cheers
Nigel
since I genuinely believe that Uncle Bob is not only one of the greatest verbal artists in English of the last 50 years or so, but a great singer to boot we obviously aren't likely to agree here. Safe to say I don't feel any of your top ten are in the same league.
So what? We have different opinions. I would however like to know what you mean by "illiteration". If it's a typo for alliteration, then there isn't any in the lines you quoted.
I don't feel poetry - or song lyrics have to 'make sense' in the same way that, say, a post to this forum does. People are often (but not always) more tolerant when painters or film makers experiment with the irrational or imppressionistic possibilities of their media.
I think if you stopped imposing your ownexpectations on Dylan's lyrics and opened your mind to the possibility since so many people like them, they might well be doing something worthwhile that you hadn't seen yet, you might begin to see what that something is. Or you might not
Having said that, I find plenty of Dylan's songs, including many of the very best ones, devastatingly coherent. Though I have to admit that I find lines like
"jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule"
eerily beautiful and funny at the same time. I doubt that you'll agree with me!
As for devastating coherence how about - off the top of my head -
quote:
Now God is in his heaven
And we all want what's his
but power and greed and corruptible seed
seem to be all that there is.
I'm staring out the window
of the old St James hotel
and I know no-one can sing the blues
like Blind Willie McTell.
Cheers
David
quote:
Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate, driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
through acerbic social commentary
quote:
Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much Is really sacred.While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
to things I identify with:
quote:
And if my thought-dreams could be seen,
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
And then there are things that are just there to make a lame couplet.
quote:
But people don't live or die, people just float.
She went with the man, In the long black coat
And no he can't sing, but I love him anyway.
I haven't heard Uncle Bob Geldorf's voice recently enough to comment.
Dozy
i know no answers an no truth
for absolutely no soul alive
i will listen t no one
who tells me morals
there are no morals
an i dream a lot
It’s possible to take issue with the pop-philosophy of these lines and the crude ideas on existentialism. However, it could not be said that this is verbose or literary in language. Furthermore it is neither poetic nor prosaic. In fact, this could be a transcript of everyday speech, due to the fragmentation of the words as is often found therein.
‘People tend to assign meaning to his songs because they don't know what he is on about.’ No. That is an oxymoron. In general, meaning is not assigned to song and poetry because of its incomprehensibility. Superficially incomprehensible poetry often arouses more interest (and more study) than more easily understandable poetry. Therefore, it is scrutinised more carefully than more simplistic poetry until it is found where, between significant and minor, its literary value might lie. People tend to assign meaning to his songs because they have found that others claim to know what he is on about and even though they might not, they want to be associated with the ‘understanding few’ and so comply with the opinion that the songs possess meaning. People (literary bigots; whoever wrote the quotation above, for example) tend to try to refute the existence of a deeper meaning in his songs precisely because, although ‘they don’t know what he’s on about,’ they want to be perverse and disassociate themselves from the crowd of complicity, because they see it as sycophantic (perhaps rightly). But, at heart, there is a unifying commonality between the complicit and the perverse crowd: ignorance.
In fact, when Bob does use poetical language-techniques—alliteration, regularisation of metre, assonance, rhyme (which has rather different concerns stretching beyond mere poetic force) etc.—which you might expect to find in ‘wordy and verbose’ poetry, the songs seem simple, ridiculous even, and unconcerned with poetic diction. For example, Lay, Lady, Lay (see Ricks).
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colors you have in your mind
I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile
His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean
And you're the best thing that he's ever seen
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he's standing in front of you
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
Looking at the rhyme scheme you can see, even in this seemingly non-poetic song, Dylan’s poetic talent. As for alliteration and assonance: ‘lady’ is like a beautiful expanded version of ‘lay,’ which it is sandwiched between, thus establishing a unity between the direct command to this woman but also a courteousness, which takes the edge of the command. There are two lines that don’t rhyme: ‘Why wait any longer for the world to begin?’ is paired with ‘Why wait any longer for the one you love?’ They clearly go together. ‘Begin’ is not totally un-rhyming because its picks up, as can be done in a song more vividly than in a poem, the sound of ‘clean’ and ‘seen’ in the previous stanza. But it stands as not really a beginning, which is ever completed or concluded, and the only line in the poem, which, if you take that view, has no rhyme, is ‘Why wait any longer for the one you love, | When he's standing in front of you?’ Everything else rhymes, and the feeling is that that line can be answered only by an action and not by a word and that it is waiting forever to be rhymed in conduct by an action and not by a particular word.
(If you read Christopher Ricks’ analysis of Dylan, people of such narrow perception, critical short-sightedness and inability to judge work objectively and without prejudice will be immediately persuaded that Dylan’s oeuvre is of the highest poetic value (which I do not believe to be true of the whole range: his songs, like, for example, Shakespeare’s sonnets have their particular poetic faults), primarily because they (the aforementioned perverse group who ignorantly refute the value of Dylan’s work) are so critically limited and so will be unable to explain why anyone’s work might surpass or even equal Dylan’s, in terms of literary merit. BTW Ricks is generally regarded as the greatest literary critic of modern times, having done criticisms of such ‘wordy and verbose’ language as Milton’s, who happens to be considered as a poet, possessing one of the greatest commands of poetic language (see Ricks’ Milton’s Grand Style.)
The question of the merit and beauty of Dylan’s voice is a matter of aesthetics and so, by nature, eludes definite conclusion. However, assenting that his voice is bad and even unpleasant (which I do not believe: Visions of Johanna, Desolation Row (very Waste-Land-esque), A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, She’s You Lover Now, Time Passes Slowly, One More Cup of Coffee, Angelina, Sweetheart Like You, Blind Willie McTell, My Blue-eyed Jane to name but a few exhibit brilliant vocal control, dynamism and range), it is no matter as many of the greatest works of art could be regarded as deficient in conventional beauty: Eliot’s The Waste Land (incoherent fragments of language, ostensibly incomprehensible, and bewilderingly hostile to a first-time reader), similarly Joyce’s Ulysses, Ginsberg’s Howl; Picasso’s Guernica (a horrible scene of war and death; confounding; could-be visual from The Waste Land), Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, Stravinsky’s dissonant and incongruous operas, The Velvet Underground’s music, some of Joseph Conrad’s prose and there are many more examples, which abound in the vast history of art.
However, I believe Dylan’s voice does have merits when compared with a more conventional reckoning of a ‘good voice.’ Take his voice on Time Out of Mind. He is aware of and exploits absolutely the bounds of his vocal range. In fact, the nuances of his cigarette-shot voice increase its interest and appeal (hence its aesthetic beauty) and certainly do not detract from it as regards palatability.
By-the-way, I hold a slight degree of contempt for and scepticism of the kind of close-reading and gratuitous interpretation of Dylan’s songs by would-be-literary-critic Dylanologists, since by over-analysing Dylan’s songs one of their most important fundamentals (as song/poetry) is abstracted, that is their immediate beauty; an ephemeral quality which anything but the most adept literary criticism tends to devastate.
Phil - Dave's son.
Your first paragraph about Dylan's language is spot on. But I don't see that the rhyme scheme someone uses can be taken as evidence of their talent.
Also it would help if you actually wrote the song out so that the rhyme scheme makes sense.
Like this.
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colors you have in your mind
I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile
His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean
And you're the best thing that he's ever seen
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he's standing in front of you
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
Ok so it's AABBA, just like a limerick ( the metre's different of course). The B section (Dylan does great B sections) is ABCB. All very conventional. Listening to the song there is absolutely no sense in my mind in which this is unresolved. An unryhmed line in one of the verses WOULD mess with our expectations and you would be free to read into it what you wanted but as the whole song changes gear at "why wait any longer..." we don't have the same expectations to be messed with. Dylan's B sections usually ryhme differently from the verses.
When you're at school, teachers are always proposing specific functions for bits of artifice in ways which assign them a thematic function. In my view this is rarely how poetic artifice works. For every piece of alliteration which makes the line sound like something the poems about there are a hundred or more that don't. It's all part of a range of patterning devices which when taken as a whole differentiate poetic discourse from prose and have an aesthetic - not thematic effect. Even the 'meaning' of a poem is, I think, best viewed simply as another strand in this web of artifice - a more important ( and coherent) strand in some poems than others as I think you appreciate.
Another example - you're quite right to draw attention to the assonance in "Lay lady lay" but the thematic value you assign to this is extremely dubious, I think. Sounds like something Ricks might say - did he? I don't ever remember agreeing with anything that he wrote that I've read. The following sentence
quote:
[Ricks] is generally regarded as the greatest literary critic of modern times
simply isn't true. Who on earth said it? His mum?
I agree Lay Lady Lay is a really nice song. Nice tune; good, well structured lyric. Quite lovely in fact.
You're quite right when you say that matters of aesthetics elude definite conclusion. So why are you in such a rush to jump to thematic conclusions from every bit of artifice you notice?
I have to admit the schools - and some academics who really ought to know better - do encourage this, but it accounts for so little of what is good and effective in poetry and is usually so blatantly nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the critic that it's not worth the bother.
David
[This message was edited by David Scott on THURSDAY 18 October 2001 at 23:14.]
I presented Lay, Lady, Lay in its proper structure, as it was written by Dylan, and did not want to manipulate it, as that would debase any of the deductions (many of which were incidentally Ricks’). I think, because it might seem highly un-poetic and trite, it was probably a poor choice of song to demonstrate Dylan’s talent for exploiting poetic device to add meaning to a poem. I was just trying to think of a less ‘conventionally poetic’ example (which might suggest Dylan is more of a poetaster) and then demonstrate how literary criticism could actually show it to be accomplished poetry. I agree some of the criticism suggesting meaning through form (metre and rhyme, as well as assonance, alliteration, enjambment etc.) is reading too much into a poem and is simply a manifestation of a critic’s desire to assert someone as a poet. Critics do tend to have a greater poetic intelligence (in terms of ability to recognise and/or exploit poetic device) but not necessarily the aesthetic ability to create beautiful poetry.
I do not consider that thematic function and poetic technique (as regards language), are two separate strands in a web of artifice. Rather, the very best poets manage to synthesise the two so that they are intractable when a thematic deduction is being made. I also think you lay too much importance on the thematic aspects and the ‘meaning’ of a poem. I think, even disregarding any ‘meaning’ that might be in a poem, its utilisation of poetic device can establish it as an accomplished poem, and the finest poets manage to integrate both device and meaning, whereas sometimes the poetic device is used merely to enhance aesthetic beauty; to make a poem sound ‘nice’.
RE: Woodface’s comments.
Please don’t resort to making deductions about my character from the hyper-literary tone I might be adopting. I am writing this simply to reinforce the argument; for basic rhetorical effect, because such a style often overwhelms into submission. Don’t take offence at my writing of ‘[sic]’. It is conventional, when quoting, to highlight errors, which are not your own because there are people in the world (as which you stereotype me) who are so anal as to isolate grammatical and spelling errors and disregard the integrity of an argument because of them. BTW I don’t speak like this normally. I’m a 17-year-old Mancunian, I expect, close to the peak of my social life. And not wanting to offend any of the non-obsessive writers on this forum, one who posts to internet groups about hi-fis does suggest a rather pathetic stereotype! (Sorry that was a lowly attack, probably as base as your devastating assassination on my character because of my writing of ‘[sic]’!)
quote:
I presented Lay, Lady, Lay in its proper structure, as it was written by Dylan, and did not want to manipulate it
I don't know where you found this text, but I think it would be a mistake, even if it was in a book of Dylan's lyrics, to assume that Dylan had much to do with it. If you listen to the song it's pretty obvious where the verses begin and end, and it's not the way you typed them out.
Certainly the way a poet handles a rhyme scheme - or any other formal device - is evidence of his skill as a poet. But simply using a particular device isn't. Doesn't matter - you probably never meant to say it was.
I really can't imagine why you think I exagerrate the significance of 'meaning' in a poem. Perhaps you could re-read my post and tell me. Some of my favourite poems are pretty incoherent by conventional standards. Some aren't. I thought I left this possibility open. You were the one who appeared to be looking for meanings that weren't there.
quote:
I do not consider that thematic function and poetic technique (as regards language), are two separate strands in a web of artifice. Rather, the very best poets manage to synthesise the two so that they are intractable when a thematic deduction is being made.
I think you may have misunderstood me. Perhaps you could explain the distinction you're trying to make.
quote:
Critics do tend to have a greater poetic intelligence
Hmm... Greater than monkeys, possibly.
Allow me to recommend 'Poetic Artifice' by Veronica Forrest-Thomson (1978 Manchester University Press) She certainly had greater poetic intelligence than most.
A straw poll on Ricks - I'll take that bet.
David
Faults in Shakespeare’s sonnets -- you cannot hope to suggest that the 154 or so sonnets (those which are assuredly by Shakespeare) are all absolutely perfect, i.e. without any faults. Were it so, the poorer ones would be indistinguishable from the best (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…’ for example).
“’I presented Lay, Lady, Lay in its proper structure, as it was written by Dylan, and did not want to manipulate it’ I don't know where you found this text, but I think it would be a mistake, even if it was in a book of Dylan's lyrics, to assume that Dylan had much to do with it.” –- copied and pasted it from Dylan’s website without checking the line-breaks, after writing the analysis. Because it’s a song it deserves different consideration from what you see on the printed page (Philip Larkin says some interesting things about such matters).
“Certainly the way a poet handles a rhyme scheme - or any other formal device - is evidence of his skill as a poet. But simply using a particular device isn't.” – Using a device to elucidate meaning, create meaning or other such things is evidence of poetic skill, because it requires a good critical mind to do so (see T.S. Eliot’s – ‘The Second-Order Mind’). That is what I mean.
“I really can't imagine why you think I exaggerate the significance of 'meaning' in a poem.” -- I just get the impression that you acclaim ‘meaning’, way above use of language. It seems that to some extent you are disregarding the exploitation of language and use of poetic device; considering it merely as something which ameliorates aesthetic beauty, and serves little other purpose. But I am suggesting that the best poets use device to give ‘meaning,’ not just to just to embellish.
“I think you may have misunderstood me. Perhaps you could explain the distinction you're trying to make.” -- I am referring to your “It's all part of a range of patterning devices which when taken as a whole differentiate poetic discourse from prose and have an aesthetic - not thematic effect.”
Again, if you are saying that poetic device is merely something to make a poem more beautiful, improve it aesthetically and that is what distinguishes it from prose, I disagree. These ‘patterning devices’ are very often (though not always) employed to elucidate or improve thematic understanding (i.e. suggest a ‘meaning’ to the reader, even if it is just expressing the concerns of one line, or even one word, as in the following example) but not just make it sound better. For example, the rhyme stresses the significance of the skull in these lines:
“Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.”
The rhyme, ‘skull’ and ‘Capitol’, is chosen not just because the rhyme-scheme demands a rhyme at this point and the two rhyme nicely (the rhyme is actually imperfect). Capitol is a derivation of ‘head’ (from the Latin. Think: ‘decapitate’ etc.) and is chosen to suggest the return of the ‘idiot wind’ to the ‘skull’ from the previous line, the poetic significance is obvious and quite easy to pick up. You may dispute this but this is not my deduction. Dylan said this in a correspondence with Allen Ginsberg. He chose the rhyme deliberately for the sake of elucidating ‘meaning’ not just for embellishment or for the sake of the rhyme-scheme. I am not suggesting this one line testifies to Dylan’s songs as poetry; it’s just a clever ploy.
Critics - monkeys! Bit of an unfair over-generalisation. I'm just saying that critics (because that is their job) are more sensitive to recognising the purpose of a particular usage of poetic device. Whereas, poets, who are more concerned with aesthetics, not technical adeptness (as I think you might be suggesting) and so do not necessarily see so clearly such functions.
I think I'm beginning to get some kind of handle on the misunderstanding here. It seems to centre around what we mean by the terms "meaning" and "aesthetic".
This things are notoriously difficult to talk about, but I'll have a go.
I think I'm using 'thematic' in a more limited sense than you appreciate and "aesthetic" in a far larger one. If you think of aesthetic as another way of saying beautiful we're a long way apart.
I use 'aesthetic' to mean something like the total impact of a poem which would obviously include what the words actually say. I suspect you might be tempted to call this it's meaning. Might be wrong.
I'm basically saying that what the words mean is a small part of the artifice and aesthetic impact of a poem, which receives a disproportionate amount of attention. Because it's perceived as being practically all important other strands of artifice are generally ignored unless the critic can find some way of relating them to the poem's 'content'. This results in some extraordinary contortions. I think the two comments you borrowed from Ricks are fair examples of this.
I'm not saying that other levels of artifice are never used to underpin or otherwise interact with the thematic level; just that it's wrong to regard this as their primary function which is aesthetic. I'm sorry I don't have better way of explaining this. You might try the VFT book I mentioned.
I certainly don't regard meaning as the be all and end all of a poem and I find it strange that you think I do. Are you winding me up or just not paying attention?
quote:
critics (because that is their job) are more sensitive to recognising the purpose of a particular usage of poetic device. Whereas, poets, are more concerned with aesthetics, not technical adeptness
My experience is that good poets know more about this than critics and the critics who are exceptions to this are also good poets - as is VFT. Bad poets on the other hand often make less sense than the critics.
BTW of course some of Shakespeare's sonnets are better than others, but when you said "Shakespeare’s sonnets have their particular poetic faults" you seemed to mean something rather different - rather as if you had identified something that was generally "wrong" with them all. Or most of them.
David