[Claudia Gary]

Interesting that this question keeps coming up. A few years ago at the West Chester University Poetry Conference— shortly BEFORE Dylan won the Nobel Prize— I chaired a panel on poetry and music. The focus of the panel was on what happens to a poem when it’s set to music. One of the things that happens, of course, is that it has the potential to reach a wider audience.

During the Q&A, someone asked whether Dylan’s lyrics could be considered poems. My off-the-cuff answer was yes, they are poems, but that if he hadn’t set them to music, probably few if any of us would have heard of Dylan.

I’ve always thought of setting poems to music as an alternate method of publication/distribution. Dylan not only mastered that, but—through his quirky way of singing his own songs—gave other artists an incentive to sing and publish covers. Because after all, who in the world could NOT sing them better, or at least more pleasingly, than he could—-or would? I can’t help suspecting that his annoying voice or intonation has always been a deliberate challenge in that direction. In any case, it has worked, hasn’t it?

Claudia
PS: I think it’s worth adding that one of the reasons his songs are such an effective means of distribution is that they are TONAL, and have memorable melodies. All the contemporary fads in the world can’t substitute for that.