I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Friday, August 2, 2019

Another Side of Bob Dylan


August 2, 2008, 1977  (I was 32)

Another Side of Bob Dylan Columbia Records KCS 8993; released Aug. 1964
         This was probably the album that confirmed Dylan’s greatness in my mind.  It was the one that taught me the instrument of Dylan’s voice was part
of the message.  I’ve always heard of the legendary phrasing of Frank Sinatra. 
I never could get it.  I get this.  Dylan’s dramati-comic intonations blow me away.  You pay upright attention to the delivery of these songs.  Their significance lies beyond rejection.  Their truthful beauty is beyond prettiness.  The ears must learn to read past the aural massage.  These images are hung out on the line with the wash, “Tolling for the outcast burning constantly at stake.” if there is nothing new under the sun, then the poet behind the times is the same one running ahead.
         The ambiguous “you” addressed by the narrator in To Ramona creates a personal association with the lyric.  It is here the connotations implicit in Dylan’s voice become important, plaintive and direct connections.  He is able to fire flaming arrows of relationship into moments of my life.  Lines I have listened to thirty or forty times suddenly ignite to illuminate a recent experience or encounter.   
         Dylan also tells stories.  I can’t understand why more people on the Iron Range don’t appreciate his fine art of comic bullshit.  There is a certain idealism, maybe a self-sacrificial purity.  Make no mistake about the contributions this man has made to America’s new poetry.  Can you imagine a recording of Walt Whitman reading from Leaves of Grass with some Civil War soldiers strumming guitar and banjo behind him?  Do not mistake the common product of pop records and disposable art with this man’s work.  The songs on this particular record have sounded through thirteen busy years.  I think they will speak through quite a few more.     
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