- Jan 3, 2012
- 17,359
Surely poetry is included as part of literature.
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Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize
- Thread starter Gwylan
- Start date
Surely poetry is included as part of literature.
Brilliant news - LOve Bob Dylan
I remember driving to Brighton to watch that FA Cup match against Northwich Victoria (8-0) with my IPOD on shuffle. "When the ship comes in" came up featuring the line
"And the seagulls they'll be smiling"
I thought hope that's an omen
I remember driving to Brighton to watch that FA Cup match against Northwich Victoria (8-0) with my IPOD on shuffle. "When the ship comes in" came up featuring the line
"And the seagulls they'll be smiling"
I thought hope that's an omen
Seagull58
In the Algarve
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
Pevenseagull
meh
- Jul 20, 2003
- 20,699
IMHO, as a poem, 'Sad Eyed Lady Of The Low Lands' isn't far off T.S.Eliot.
- Thread starter
- #47
Machiavelli
Well-known member
While we're on Cohen, it can't be stressed enough just how warm and moving that message he sent to his former lover, Marianne Ihlen, on her death bed:
“It said well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.
“And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”
Buzzer
Languidly Clinical
- Oct 1, 2006
- 26,121
Personally speaking, I've read some but probably not most of them over the years but your whole post here is flawed. The Nobel Prize isn't supposed to be an everyman award that reflects the most popular, it's an award of excellence in literature over a lifetime. As Gwylan points out, the list of who hasn't won the award (and add Umberto Eco to that list) is as impressive as the list of winners showing just how arbitrary and subjective this all is. However, saying that, if you read a lot then I reckon that most of the previous winners are probably accessible. The fact that a lot of the previous winners are names that aren't well-known in the UK just reflects the international flavour of the awards.
Best decision they've ever made though? I don't think so -I think it's dubious although not as dubious as Obama's Peace Prize simply on being elected President. I guess the judges are saying that they are praising Dylan's writing skills and this is the first time they are doing so for someone who conveys them through music as opposed to poetry or more traditional prose and I agree that a lot of Dylan's writing is clever but if this is the route that the judges want to go down this year then I'm sorry but then the winner should have been Leonard Cohen. Not even Dylan can hold a candle to Cohen's mastery of language and his exquisite wordplay. It's arguable that Dylan has the better tunes but Cohen has the better lyrics.
I'm not sure how you can say he stands out like a titan amongst previous winners when you admit that you've not read many of them. I'm guessing that Dylan stands out mainly because he's a recognisable name to us English speakers, The winner in 2015 is a Russian author who has sold millions of books in her native language and whose main themes deal with living under totalitarian Communist rule and trying to understand how that has shaped her society. In Russian-speaking countries her influence is huge so which out of her and Dylan has changed the modern world more? It's a silly comparison - like comparing oranges and apples and anyway, how big a change in the world a writer makes really shouldn't be part of the decision-making process for the Nobel judges. It should just be excellence in literature.
Randsta
New member
Did anyone see that Milhouse predicted who'd win the Economic's prize back in 2010 ....and Simpson's also predicted Trump for president 
That's Leonard. After they split he thanked her for creating such despair within him that it compelled him to write. If anyone else had written that it would have seemed so crass.