Bob Dylan Wednesday

Today Is Poetry Day!

Say, did you know that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016? He did! The Swedish Academy awarded him the prestigious honor for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," making him the first songwriter to ever receive the award.

In typical Dylan fashion, he didn’t attend the award ceremony, only picking up his medal a few months later on a tour swing through Sweden. Standard stuff for him.

So today, we’ll feature five poems about Dylan, four that appeared in the chapbook I edited, Tiger Lovin’ Blues: A Bob Dylan Collection. One is from a Buffalo author and Dylan fan who sent it to me this week!

The poets, Chuck Joy, Cathy Gigante-Brown, Kaela Law, Loretta Brady and P.A. Kane, are all friends of Day By Day and writers true. Their words paint VERY different intimate responses to the life, words and influence of Bob Dylan.

The five poems in a row illustrate just how deeply feelings can run when it comes to Dylan’s life and work.

Take your time, don’t go through these fast. Savor them. Read these out loud if you can - from five wonderful poets, celebrating, scolding, chilling with and recalling the Bard! When you’re finished, and if you have questions or would like to be in contact with the poets’ socials, just ask in the comments!

So Deeply True

By Chuck Joy

Bob Dylan said that,

he also said that,

what didn’t he say?

really he writes

some what he writes

rings so deeply true

people name their child Dylan,

even we who name our child

Laura or Neil feel Bob Dylan’s music

to the bone

I have come awake

dreaming Idiot Wind, singing in my sleep

one girl calls Tangled Up In Blue

her favorite song

a poet I know makes it a point

reciting the lyrics to Dylan songs

as part of every show

and always Tom Thumb’s Blues

I hear our Bob won a Nobel Prize

they call it rock and roll

---

For Mr. Zimmerman,

On the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

By Catherine Gigante-Brown

Please silence

your cat-strangled-by-a-clothesline voice.

Please put to bed

your bedhead.

It’s time to lay to rest

your weary head

that can’t remember the lyrics

you once wrote

when your eyes were bluer than robin’s eggs.

For now they’re clouded with age,

rage

and dollar signs.

It’s your choice

just like it’s mine

not to buy your records

and to have Alexa

change the station

when you come on the radio.

I will not pay another cent

to hear you gargle live in concert.

I will not give you another moment

of my time

after I finish with this rhyme.

For even legends need to know

when it’s time to go.

---

If I Met Bob Dylan

By P.A. Kane

If I met Bob Dylan

I would bum a smoke from him

Even though I don’t smoke

But I’d want to play it cool

So as to not come off bad

If he didn’t have a smoke or quit

I’d make small talk about how

I can’t seem to give them up

But if he had one

I’d smoke with Bob Dylan

And, we’d talk of common things

Like the weather

Or baseball

Or the price of coffee

A real nothing conversation

I’d ask after his family

And tell him about my dog

And in a passing moment

During this nothing conversation

Our eyes might meet

And in that passing moment

In a cool understated way

I would try to convey

The love, gratitude and affection

I have for him

And hopefully he would receive it

Without feeling weird or awkward

That’s what I would do

Nothing more, nothing less

If I met Bob Dylan

---

Puck and Fern in New York

By Loretta L.C. Brady

Whiskey and Bourbon have had their say since

before the pandemic. But of course since then

things have been - even more pronounced.

Adding the bitters brought out the profile and

The terror in the sky had already led us

To see so many things fall down before our eyes.

I remember then, you gave me $500 to cover -

I can’t even recall what! I only remember the denim.

And the shame at my gratitude,

of which even you were embarrassed.

Crossing in front of the Duane Reade on 14th

and hoping our bond would bind,

You told me stories of SEC fines and Chinese food traditions.

A tour guide through a world I wouldn’t know I’d know.

That pride, holding space. A Ranger’s Fan and a Fern

Finding a way through the catholic priests defiling.

The last text you sent I didn’t reply...

---

I Went Off Birth Control Because of Bob Dylan

By Kaela Law

As a teenager

I thought I was a feminist.

In my 1990s high school I would look around and know that I was better than all these boys.

I was tough

And smart.

I was interested in things better than kissing.

I was called a Lesbian.

At home my mother raised me up on watching afternoon Soaps and Oprah, and I thought

To Hell With Getting Married!

And yet I was on birth control, because in the 90s we were all on birth control. Sex was everywhere on TV. But I wasn’t having sex, I wasn’t even kissing.

And yet, I was on birth control because the doctors and health teachers and parents said to.

And we all said to each other that it was to regulate our periods.

Taking Birth Control Pills was taking charge of our bodies. Feminism was taking birth control.

As a teenager I wasn’t happy.

I withdrew into music.

My uncle let me pick through all his old albums one day in Spring.

They were boxed down in his basement. It was dark and smelled like damp cement, and old plastic from the vinyl records. The smell was vintage.

I emerged from that cellar with Dylan’s Desire under my arm. I first listened to Bob Dylan in the spring sunshine.

And the world was good.

I got Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits CD for pennies from that Columbia House mail-in sheet.

On the CD cover was a silhouette of Dylan playing harmonica, with the stage lights

shining through his hair.

I listened to that album and was transported through time, back to the 60s. That album was a daydream of freedom.

I was born in the wrong time, I thought

I should have been a hippie in the 60s

That daydream was a poignant Dylan-flavored romance.

“The Times They Are A-Changin’” was my anthem.

I wanted to protest

I wanted to be part of a movement, a hopeful era.

A make-believe world so I didn’t have to feel the pressures of being a real teenager in the 90s

But our 90s were tame.

Except Everyone was having sex of course, not the free-love of the hippies, but crass

EXPLICIT LYRICS rap album type sex

Even President Clinton was having sex in the oval office with an intern and a cigar

I didn’t want to be in the 90s, learning about AIDS when I was twelve years old.

I wanted the sweet and simple – flower power and peace.

And then I got angry. No self-respectable 90s kid would grow up and not be angry at the world.

Fuck the hippies.

Fuck them, man, and their whole generation of freedom; shackling us ‘cause they sold out.

I wanted a visceral experience to impress upon the shape of the world. I wanted to fight for justice, but nothing in my life was unjust. People were just going about their days

making money, spending money

Sending their kids to college. That was my horizon.

“Expand your mind”

Does not mean a good college education

I wanted to be defiant.

It was the 90s. I listened to Rage Against The Machine as well as Dylan

Juxtapose ‘Testify’ with ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’

I read Rolling Stone Magazine to be cool and current.

I came across a Bob Dylan interview.

He talked about birth control.

He talked about what a big manipulation it was, getting all these girls to swallow all these pills.

My eyes grew wide, and then

I went off birth control.