Hey Mr Zimmerman

I came late to Bob Dylan. My parents were avowedly the 8220;other8221; 8217;60s read: the other sound of Western popular music...

I came late to Bob Dylan. My parents were avowedly the 8220;other8221; 8217;60s read: the other sound of Western popular music, no matter which decade. Pat Boone, Jim Reeves, Perry Como, Matt Monro, Engelbert, The Seekers, the Carpenters, Connie Francis, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, Jim Croce8230; They formed a pantheon in which even the ballads of Dylan and Joan Baez found no place. The Beatles were bitkel a Bengali adjective for the irritating and exasperating. Janis Joplin was unmentionable. The times, in certain ways, had never changed for them.

Born in the late 8217;70s, I grew up for a while under the impression that the 8217;60s, and everything synonymous with them, never happened. Till this day I have not managed to convince my parents that the real legacy of the 8217;60s is not free love and protest, but the music. I didn8217;t mind my father calling Bon Jovi 8220;Boneacute; jabi?8221; 8212; 8220;Do you want to come to the jungle?8221; 8212; but labelling Joan Baez a cufflink-buying stranger-f sentimental hussy called for the burial of the father.

Thus I arrived late. And when I came and saw, there was nothing and nobody left to conquer. But, in retrospect, I have thanked my lucky stars for the delay. My appreciation of Dylan would give me an adult8217;s perspective on some of the most significant poetry of the latter half of the 20th century, without the passionate and substance-influenced embrace of the high-school/college kid. Thus I could maintain my distance from the debate over Dylan and the Nobel. There is much good in both sides to it.

Honestly, the Nobel is a different ball game. And George Harrison was fooling no one but himself in believing that Dylan 8220;makes Shakespeare look like Billy Joel8221;. However, Dylan hasn8217;t been honoured for poetry or music in the 2008 Pulitzer list strictly speaking, but for his 8220;profound impact on popular music and American culture8221;.

Dylan would have gone nowhere had he not found his voice in the 8217;60s. But protest and civil rights wouldn8217;t have kept him around for the Pulitzer citation. He turned his back on the 8217;60s because he was an artist first. Bob, you are a poet, we know it, we8217;re glad you didn8217;t blow it.