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Martin Mc Carthy's avatar

My name is Martin Mc Carthy, and I am so thrilled that Poetic Outlaws have put together this amazing tribute to the great Bob Dylan, on his 83rd birthday. I'm a poet and a contributing editor to the American poetry website, the HyperTexts , and last year I wrote and published my own epic tribute to him, titled The Perfect Voice (32 pages) - a copy of which is now on permanent display in the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK. I am such a fan of Bob Dylan that I wish to add to your tribute by posting an extract from my poem here for all to read, if that's okay? And I really hope it is because it's meant in the spirit of celebrating a true genius while he's still with us.

The Perfect Voice

for Bob Dylan

I

What can I say about Bob Dylan?

That some strange, authentic light

passed into him from blind bluesmen

on corners, singing their stories

of trains and chains and hope;

blind bluesmen, miles from any college

or guitar academy, with the wind

at their backs, or their backs

against some wall in East Texas,

playing sublime bottleneck guitar

with the necks of broken bottles.

That he was light-hearted and free

and only twenty,

when he first took to the road,

with ten dollars, a harmonica,

and his guitar;

that he saw Woody Guthrie

signposting the way to go …

and went, with little inclination

to look back on old Duluth,

dying in the moonlight.

That he enrolled early in that authentic,

beaming and screaming college

of real life, and never left it,

because all he needed – all the diverse,

sounds and colours of that authenticity –

met him there and filled his spirit;

that his America was always a place

in which unwanted migrants moved

across railway tracks and truck yards,

seeking somewhere to remain.

That he was young when he left home –

young and ready to change the world forever,

if only he could elude

the Rising Sun’s beckoning sirens;

that he could look north to where the wind

was blasting against the borderline,

yet pluck from his heart

the gentlest of chords …

or walk, arm in arm, with his girl

down the boulevard of broken dreams.

(from The Perfect Voice by Martin Mc Carthy)

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Ken Paul Rosenthal's avatar

Bob Dylan inspires me more than any artist, in any medium. Had I begun listening to his songs in high school, I have no doubt the course of my own creative work and my life would have deepened, broadened, and elevated considerably at that impressionable age. After decades of imbibing his music as if tethered to an IV, I can step away for months, or what sometimes feels like a year without listening only to return and be nourished anew.

For me, the multi-hued complexity of his writing edges out other cherished musicians such as Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, and Joni Mitchell. What mostly sets him apart is his singing. Not his disrespectfully maligned voice (the grain of which I adore) but his beguiling delivery. Listen carefully to which syllable he emphasizes or extends, how rarely he breaks a line in the same place--where he breathes. He swings like a jazz singer and there's no better example of this than his song, 'My Own Version of You' from the album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. I cherish his Christian period more than any other from his oeuvre because his new found passion is profoundly embodied in the vocals, as if the words are less carriers of meaning and more vehicles for spirit. The proof is in the grooves. Check out 'I Believe in You' and 'When He Returns' from his album, Slow Train Coming. And the opening song from his Hard to Handle tour video on You Tube, 'In The Garden', performed with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

I once dreamt that Bob was standing in a telephone booth in his bare feet and all his toenails were painted different colors. I was in my 20s and can see that image just as vividly today at sixty-two. That's how deeply he's embedded in my being.

Here are my most essential Dylan recordings, listed in no particular order, where the performance is as compelling as the words:

- Every Grain of Sand (from Shot of Love)

- My Own Version of You (from Rough and Rowdy Ways)

- It's Not Dark Yet (from Time Out of Mind)

- Mr. Tambourine Man (from Bringing It All Back Home)

- When He Returns (from Slow Train Coming)

- I Believe In You (from Slow Train Coming)

- Visions of Johanna (from Blonde on Blonde, favorite version on Live 1966 The Royal Albert Hall Concert, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4)

- It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (from Bringing It All Back Home, favorite version on Live 1966 The Royal Albert Hall Concert, The Bootleg Series Vol. 4)

- It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding (from Bringing It All Back Home, favorite version on Hard to Handle tour video on You Tube)

- Blind Willie McTell (no album release, favorite version on The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3)

- Tangled Up in Blue (from Blood on the Tracks)

- Simple Twist of Fate (from Blood on the Tracks)

- Shelter from the Storm (from Blood on the Tracks)

- Man in the Long Dark Coat (from Oh Mercy)

- Jokerman (from Infidels)

- License to Kill (from Infidels)

- Dignity (from Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume 3, favorite version on the live album, Bob Dylan MTV Unplugged)

- Sugar Baby (from Love and Theft)

- Ain't Talkin' (from Modern Times)

- One More Cup of Coffee (from Desire)

Happy Be-day, Bob Darlin'.

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