Ah, another day.... Thinking about Bob Dylan this morning, trying to figure out whether he's a poet or not. There was a time-- in a younger incarnation-- I'd have answered that affirmatively without reservation, but I'm not so sure anymore. Sure, Leonard Cohen is a poet, but Dylan's a tougher call; at the very least, though, he's better than most writers of 'verse' today. He has (from "My Back Pages") one of favourite pair of lines-- "I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now" -- and there are some songs that are as good as any poems written since 1950 ("Like A Rolling Stone," "It's All Over Now Baby Blue," to name just two). Regardless, he's a genius, even if he tends toward colloquial sentimentality more often than he needs.

"I'm walking down that long, lonseome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated my unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right."
-- "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" from The Freewhelin' Bob Dylan

Must dig up my Dylan collection, such as it is. Something in me always prefers the cynical Dylan to the romantic Dylan; the romantic Cohen or the romantic Van Morrison are far more palletable. Ah, more later-- I'm gonna change my way of thinking...