@cyberkid2000

Never got into Dylan, love Leonard tho

same for me until just recently

i'm learning to love their differences

leonard>>>>>>>>>>>>>>dylan

“As far as I know,” said Bob Dylan about Leonard Cohen, "no one else comes close to this in modern music. His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres...” "These are more than songs. These are prayers."

But Dylan’s true masterpiece, in my view, is “Desolation Row”, the more than 11-minute song that closes Highway 61 Revisited (1965). I submit that this lyric is the most important poem in English since Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (which influenced it) and that it is far greater than anything produced since then by the official poets canonized by the American or British critical establishment. The epic ambition, daring scenarios, and emotionally compelling detail of “Desolation Row” make John Ashbery’s multiple prize-winning Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) look like the verbose, affected academic exercise that it is. I have written elsewhere (in regard to the selection process for my book on poetry, Break, Blow, Burn) of my rejection of the pretentious pseudo-philosophizing of overpraised contemporary poets like Harvard’s Jorie Graham, none of whom come anywhere near the high artistic rank of Bob Dylan.

I’m afraid I poached Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited out of curiosity and found myself well rewarded. Dylan’s cawing, derisive voice is probably well suited to his material – I say probably because much of it was unintelligible to me – and his guitar adapts itself to rock (Highway 61′) and ballad (‘Queen Jane’) admirably. There is a marathon ‘Desolation Row’ which has an enchanting tune and mysterious, possibly half-baked words.

Amazing thread