Just heard on the radio someone from the Nobel Prize committee say that Dylan must be the 'greatest living poet' . . . can't think of anything to say . . . ;-(

...Or even some of the rappers out there

Martin, since you asked ... yes, I believe he is a better lyricist than Bruce Springsteen or Joni Mitchell, by far. His body of work is amazing, though I admit I've never thought of it as literature.

Some of my favorite covers (because it's hard to like Dylan's voice):
Peter, Paul and Mary singing Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Eddie Vedder singing Masters of War
Richie Havens singing Just Like a Woman

I have mixed feelings about this. Not entirely for, not entirely against. And yes, there does seem to be a bit of trying to be edgy and modern.

I have been looking at comments about this on the net and there are some amusing ones citing "Category error".

I concur with kathy. I think this is much deserved. I find nothing "edgy or modern" about Dylan's lyrics. I have been moved to tears by some of his songs. He was the troubadour of the Viet Nam War era in America, along with Joan Baez. I love especially his song about his dreams of meeting his old friends again. The man is brilliant and truly a poet, in my view.

Leonard Cohen is another great, whom I would like to see get more recognition. I believe he is in his 80's now....

I have been moved to tears by some of his songs.

I think this is my problem. These are SONGS - they are not poetry. It is music, not literature. I have seen people attempt to argue that the lyrics are poetry by themselves, but no-one reads the lyrics without thinking about the song.

And if you try to read them as poetry, you find in many cases, they don't even scan that well. Frieda quoted the first few lines of All Along The Watchtower above - well, that is a good example. I love the song, particularly the Hendrix cover. But read out loud, like a poem? It sounds banal - it has no - well, poetry.

And On a Night Like This was also quoted above. Now, I don't know that song, so when I read it, I don't have the song playing along in my head. But written down like that - it's obvious it's a song, not a poem (as I said, it doesn't even scan well) - and as it stands, it's, in my opinion, mundane. (I've now listened to the Dylan version on Planet Waves - good old Spotify. Yeah, OK - perhaps it's not one of his finest achievements?)

People have been quoting Dylan lyrics all over the place on the internet. I've read a lot of them - if I know the song, I tend to think "Yes - it was quite something". If I don't know the song, I read the lyrics by themselves and they just seem sloppy and jarring.

Poets write poems to be read, without music. They spend a lot of time selecting the right words to get over what they want to say, while keeping the poetry of what they have written. Songwriters don't need to do this - the singer has room to deal with any poor scansion in a song, the quality of the rhymes matters less - you're listening to the whole thing, music and words. Dylan is not a poet - he is a songwriter.

I'm happy to concede that he is possibly a genius, and certainly one of the most influential songwriters in the western world. But he wrote music - he did not write literature.

Martin, I see your point, but...

When I was young , some seventy years ago our English teacher told us that a song could also be spoken as a poem but not all songs these days would qualify, I think!

However, isn't the prize one for literature, not necessarily poetry and if something is written, is that not literature?

Martin, I agree with you. It's not poetry and it's not literature. It is song lyrics.

Song lyrics can be poetry. Think about poems that were not set to music until much later, such as:

Dust
by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

When the white flame in us is gone,
And we that lost the world's delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
To crumble in our separate night;

When your swift hair is quiet in death,
And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labour of my breath---
When we are dust, when we are dust!---

Danny Kirwan of one of the early British incarnations of Fleetwood Mac wrote music for the above two stanzas of Brooke's poem (recorded in 1972 and released on the 'Bare Trees' album).

Did Brooke's words become less poetic when they became song lyrics?

I agree that not all song lyrics make great or even good poetry, however.

If you have a traditional, formal view of the definition of poetry -- that it either has to rhyme or has to scan (preferably in a precise and elegant way) -- while much of modern poetry is free verse and looser (more like many song lyrics), it does make a case that the Nobel Prize committee might be trying to be more modern in its considerations of what constitutes literature. Getting 100% agreement on how literature should be defined is probably impossible.

I, for one, am perfectly willing to have song lyrics included in literature. :-)

We all have our views, don't we? I will say one more thing about this. Whenever I learn that someone has won a Nobel Prize, I always think, "They are so lucky. They will get to visit the Vigeland Sculpture Park when they go to Oslo to pick up their prize." I hope Bob Dylan doesn't miss it.

I disagree with Martin. My take on Dylan's work is very personal. Frieda wrote "song lyrics can be poetry." I concur with this.

A poet is often one who captures the zeitgeist of a culture, of an age. Dylan is my generation and spoke for me and for so many others against injustices in American society. Out of this counterculture movement (of which Dylan was the eloquent spokesperson) flourished the woman's movement, the Civil Rights movement, and protests against a wasteful and senseless war in VietNam.

I worked in the Civil Rights Movement in the south, had male friends who were fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft, lived within one hour of the Kent State shootings, and recall vividly the Kennedy-Kruschev confrontation in Cuba. I am an unashamed child of the Sixties. America is still dealing with the aftermath of the VietNam war re veterans and PTSD.

How much of Dylan's lyrics have you listened closely to? "Master of War"? "Oxford Town."? "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"? Do you know what events these lyrics refer to?

Dylan spoke out in his youth brilliantly and courageously for peace, in an age of great turmoil in my country.

Mary, I don't think Martin is trying to 'do-down' Dylan. For him, and also for me, it is just a question of literature v lyric writing. As you infer he spoke out for and was hugely admired by young people of your generation. Probably if he had been a great literary figure he would have received less kudos from his peers. I see little point in him being built up into something he was not.

I understand there are some who think he should turn down this award because of Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite ie the method of making nitro-glycerin stable.

And "in an age of great turmoil" in the USA, may be it is time for another song writer to stand up and be counted . . .? Answers in a month's time please.

The Nobel Prize committee compared Dylan's songs to the poetry of Homer and Sappho whose poetry was also sung.

Pretty much, as far as I'm concerned, Dylan can do not wrong. And I do love Dylan's voice and renditions--generally don't like the covers so much. And STILL I wonder: the Nobel Prize for Literature?

But isn't the whole idea the Nobel PEACE prize? If so, it certainly fits Dylan.

Actually, there are multiple Nobel prizes - Peace, Literature, Economics, Medicine, etc. This year's Peace Prize is being awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos "for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220 000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people."

But there is no Nobel Prize for Mathematics. There are several theories for this, but when I was at school, my Maths teacher told us that it was because Nobel's wife ran off with a mathematician...

I can see I touched a bit of a nerve with one or two people here. I hereby unreservedly withdraw any suggestion that Springsteen, Mitchell or any other songwriter are anything more than disciples, kneeling at the feet of Bob Dylan.

I still don't think it's literature, though.

song are not poetry, there is not a major art and a minor one, but there are majior artists and minor onse. If I wrote a poem it would be better than a song? I guess not Dylan fal in the first category. In 1993 Dario Fo was rewarded con Nobel but he was a thratrical screenplai. In 1948 Churchill won the Nobel because he wrote a few historical books

Martin - Based on Dylan's non-response to the Nobel Committee (which amuses me no end), I suspect he probably agrees with your opinion.

sorry for all the grammar and spelling mistakes I did in my post, I'm working hard to reduce them.