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Poets' Corner
Number three : 12th November 2012
On The Trail Of Two Dylans
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The melody was of Russian origin but a New York folksinger wrote the English lyrics for the song
Those Were The Days ,
whose opening line was "Once upon a time there was a
tavern". This refers to the Greenwich Village bar The White Horse Tavern ,
where Dylan Thomas
drank his last whiskies before collapsing back at The Chelsea Hotel. His
Reading Tour came to an end when he died a few days later at the age of 39. His widow revealed
later that his projection of the 'doomed alcoholic poet' image was a public
gesture. In private , what he really liked were warm slippers , pickled onions and cricket. A land
in which the first principle of authorship is self-mythologising , seems
an appropriate terminus for this author's trajectory. It had begun in Wales , the birthplace of
many another intemperate celebrity and word-weaving bard. Sharing a Celtic
heritage with Ireland , its sons are precariously balanced between the pulpit (whether Chapel or
Catholic) and the pub. His namesake Thomas The Rhymer appears in
mediaeval folk song as
having consorted with the queen of fairies and for the later rhyming Thomas ,
words are not so much describers as the means of casting a spell in which clarity is left behind
in favour of suggesting that something momentous (we're not sure exactly
what) is happening ....
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age ; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand ; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's line.
The lips of time leech to the fountainhead ;
Love drips and gathers , but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven around the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Thomas died in 1953. In Minnesota during that decade the young Robert Zimmerman had tuned into
radio stations playing country and blues music , as well as developing a
teenage fascination with Little Richard and Elvis. By 1960 he was at the State University in
Minneapolis , where he joined the folk music crowd and started introducing
himself as Bob Dylan. "You call yourself what you want to call yourself", he said later.
"his is the land of the free." Early versions of the Dylan mythology suggested
his change of name had been inspired by the Welshman but Bob himself remained characteristically
elusive on the subject. In a radio interview early in his career , this
mid-western son of conventional jewish parents invented for his audience a restless life on the
road , among hobos , gamblers , old blues men , drifters and desperadoes.
It was a self-mythologising world of rodeos , saloons , gold mines , dancing girls ,
fortune-telling , fairgrounds and carnivals. Those who are eager for correspondences
between the two poets might care to note their equally short stature , the promptings of strong
ambition and the lure of Bohemian culture. However , there is an indisputable
link between the poet of the bar-stool and the poet of the juke-box , and that is provided by the
White Horse Tavern. A decade on from Thomas's nights there , it was a
place where the Clancy Brothers came to hang out and
sing. Among the audience was the
20-year old Bob Dylan , taking careful note of their old Irish ballads and rebel songs. Several of
his own 'original' songs would be based on the melody lines of both old
English and Irish folk songs ...
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Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic
Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's
Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of
Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam,
14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake,
25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet,
19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy,
20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas,
20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's
Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William
Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts ,
20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William
Dunbar, 20th September 2013
Poets' Corner #14 – Bathtub
Thoughts, 20th October 2013
Poets' Corner #15 – Bagpipe Music,
20th November 2013
Poets' Corner #16 – Sylvia &
Emily, 20th December 2013
Poets' Corner #17 – The Fall Of
Icarus, 16th January 2014
Poets' Corner #18 – Those Gone
Before, 20th February 2014
Poets' Corner #19 – Rudyard
Kipling, 20th March 2014
Poets' Corner #20 – Martin Bell,
20th April 2014
Poets' Corner #21 – Another Modest
Proposal, 20th May 2014
Poets' Corner #22 – Thomas Gray
and The Eighteenth Century, 20th June 2014
Poets' Corner #23 – Edgar Allan
Poe, 18th July 2014
Poets' Corner #24 – Tread Softly,
19th August 2014
Poets' Corner #25 – Mad To Be
Saved, 24th December 2015
Poets' Corner #26 – Wants,
20th January 2016
Poets' Corner #27 – Samuel
Johnson, 15th February 2016
Poets' Corner #28 – T.S.Eliot,
10th March 2016
Poets' Corner #29 – Alfred Lord
Tennyson, 18th April 2016
Poets' Corner #30 – Leonard Cohen,
12th November 2016
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