[continued from previous message]   
      
   > Scaffold and the Liverpool scene, respectively.   
   >   
   > The book The Message: Crossing the Tracks between Poetry and Pop, which   
   > celebrated the theme of the 1999 National Poetry Day, spearheaded by the   
   > Poetry Society of Great Britain, explored the relation between pop   
   > lyrics and poetry, and the contributors, with varying degrees of   
   > equivocation, conclude that there is none. Lyrics are distinctive in   
   > their way, often gaining their particular force in the performance, the   
   > combination of intonation and notation, betraying a dependency on the   
   > music that is integral to their appeal. The banality of the lone lyric   
   > is atoned in the musical accompaniment, and the romantic death of the   
   > author may be positively redemptive. It is the event of the romanticized   
   > deaths of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Marc Bolan at   
   > the height of their fame, for example, rather than the memory of any   
   > particular lyric, other than for their sheer banality, that made them   
   > enduring icons, whereas with Keats, the beauty of the poetry made his   
   > untimely death a tragedy. Stephen Troussé, for instance, suggests that   
   > the “splendid banality” of Marc Bolan’s lines “I drive a Rolls-Royce   
   /   
   > Cos it’s good for my voice” is a more profound gift to the hist   
   > ory of pop than the contributions of all of the sad-eyed   
   > singer-songwriters of the 1970s.[9] He calls it “the aesthetic of the   
   > artful artlessness.”   
   >   
   > 4   
   > Indeed, there may be a great deal of mileage in Simon Reynold’s view   
   > that popular music gains its power not from the depth and meaning of its   
   > lyrics, but from its sheer noise.[10] The critics who analyze it import   
   > criteria from the higher culture in which they have been educated and   
   > impose rationality, aesthetic value, and depth of meaning on a form of   
   > expression devoid of all such things. Instead, it is the extralinguistic   
   > elements that refuse to succumb to content analysis that constitute the   
   > pop song—a driving bass line, earthy guitar, haunting Hammond organ,   
   > wistful wailing slide guitar, and rasping delivery of the lyrics. There   
   > has been what Troussé calls a critical shift from text to texture.[11]   
   > It would be a mistake to divorce Dylan and Cohen from such a   
   > characterization. Instead of making a category distinction in which the   
   > so-called poets of rock and roll are different in kind from other   
   > performers, they may be seen on a continuum representing the end at   
   > which text and texture are mutually supportive and inseparable. As   
   > Stephen Scobie points out, in themselves some of Dylan’s lyrics may   
   > appear awkward or even banal printed on the page, but the music and the   
   > phrasi   
   > ng give character and effect: “The music provides a rhythm, a beat, an   
   > emotional ambience.”[12] The arrangements of songs change, of course,   
   > and the mood conveyed, the images projected, and the context invoked   
   > take on different nuances, but Dylan is notorious for setting his lyrics   
   > to completely different accompaniments, transforming the effect, if not   
   > the content, of the words.   
   >   
   > Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have both been hailed as great poets of   
   > their generation. Donald Henahan, commenting on Cohen, asserts that “on   
   > the alienation scale, he rates somewhere between [Arthur] Schopenhauer   
   > and Bob Dylan, two other prominent poets of pessimism.”[13] Playboy   
   > described Cohen as both the minstrel and the poet laureate of his   
   > generation.[14] Harry Rasky, the filmmaker, who produced the film The   
   > Song of Leonard Cohen, bestowed on him the dubious honor of being “the   
   > first great, vaginal poet.”[15] Both Dylan and Cohen precipitated heated   
   > discussions among academics and practicing poets about whether their   
   > lyric poetry was truly poetry at all, let alone good poetry. Neil   
   > Corcoran argues that Dylan’s lyrics rarely stand alone as poetry. Lyric   
   > poetry is meant to be composed and thought of rhythmically. The   
   > centrality of music in Dylan’s songs means that they cannot be viewed   
   > unreservedly as poetry. Corcoran equivocates on Dylan’s claim to be a   
   > poet and rather evasively suggests that although Dylan is not a   
   > conventional poet, he has the same artistry of mind as would a great   
   > poet in the clarity of expressions, the forcefulness of the imagery, the   
   > gracefuln   
   > ess of the language, and the relevance of the words in different   
   > contexts.[16]   
   >   
   > 5   
   > George Woodcock, for example, maintained in 1970 that Cohen had become   
   > something of an instant Keats, combining the romanticism with the fame   
   > that Keats did not enjoy until a half century after his death. Woodcock   
   > held that Cohen’s poetry had virtues that would keep it alive as “good   
   > minor poetry.” Combining pop singing with poetry, however, was barely   
   > compatible, and the former had had a deleterious affect on Cohen’s   
   > poetic development. Woodcock cites an interview with Cohen in Saturday   
   > Night in which he says that he no longer thinks about the words, because   
   > in themselves they are completely empty and any emotion can be poured   
   > into them. Woodcock argues that Cohen’s popular songs have ceased to be   
   > poetry because they are merely forms of words that receive life and   
   > meaning in the performance of the singer.[17]   
   >   
   > Acknowledged poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Ezra Pound, and Federico   
   > García Lorca had sought to restore poetry’s place among the lived   
   > experiences of the everyday life of a community. The Beat poets emulated   
   > them in this aspiration. Kenneth Rexroth declared that intellectuals,   
   > that is, college professors, had hijacked poetry, taking it out of the   
   > hands of the people. Poetry in the oral traditions of Homer and Beowulf   
   > were show business, and the Beat poets aspired to reestablish the   
   > connection. Lawrence Ferlinghetti complained that the voice of poetry   
   > was being drowned by the competition of the mass media, traceable to   
   > Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press.[18] None succeeded in achieving the   
   > aim of reconnecting poetry with the masses, but the irony is that,   
   > Rimbaud, Pound, Lorca, and Ferlinghetti, through their influence on Bob   
   > Dylan and Leonard Cohen, came to the attention of a much wider reading   
   > public than was traditionally associated with poetic appreciation.   
   > Although Ferlinghetti acknowledged Dylan’s achievement, he was   
   > nevertheless resentful of Dylan’s success. Once, after attending a Dylan   
   > concert in Berkeley, California, with Ginsberg and Ken Kesey,   
   > Ferlinghetti was   
   > embittered, ranting about a stringy kid with an electric guitar drawing   
   > a bigger audience than a major poet such as himself.[19] In an interview   
   > with Robert Shelton, Ferlinghetti acknowledged that Dylan has a poet’s   
   > imagination, but added, “I still think he needs that guitar.”[20] In the   
   > March 1966 issue of Ramparts, Ralph J. Gleason praised Dylan for doing   
   > the impossible: for taking poetry out of the classroom and bringing it   
   > to the jukebox, from reaching a small circle of friends to having a   
   > worldwide audience. The importance of intruding art into popular culture   
   > was affirmed by Cohen in acknowledging that what Dylan had done was to   
   > put “the word back into the jukebox, which is really where you have to   
   > have it, or at least where I like to have it.”[21]   
   >   
   > What is undoubtedly the case, whether one confirms or denies Dylan’s and   
      
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   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)