Greer on Dylan

Saturday, July 05, 2008

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I doubt I’m alone in my outrage at that hectoring-frump-turned-reality-TV star Germaine Greer’s bizarre assertion in The Guardian arts section that Bob Dylan is an over-praised and untalented lyricist. "It's not verse, not even doggerel," she declares. To bolster her (paper thin) case, Greer picks a couple of lines from "Visions of Johanna", a song which I would agree does not contain his finest work.

But take this extract from one of his most beautiful and haunting songs, Blind Willie McTell...

See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
(I can) hear the undertaker's bell
(Yeah), nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

Or these verses from the unbearably moving Who Killed Davey Moore?

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me," says the boxing writer,
Pounding print on his old typewriter,
Sayin', "Boxing ain't to blame,
There's just as much danger in a football game."
Sayin', "Fist fighting is here to stay,
It's just the old American way.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?

"Not me," says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist,
Who came here from Cuba's door
Where boxing ain't allowed no more.
"I hit him, yes, it's true,
But that's what I am paid to do.
Don't say 'murder,' don't say 'kill.'
It was destiny, it was God's will.

... and tell me again that Dylan’s best work can't be described as poetry, Germaine.

Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, July 05, 2008

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