[New-Poetry] Dylan & Ashbery
TheOldMole
tad at opus40.org
Thu May 4 15:11:02 EDT 2006
Re: [New-Poetry] Dylan & AshberyChris - I really like this. Good analysis.
Tad
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Stroffolino
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views ; NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Dylan & Ashbery
Hey, thanks for bringing this up. it's been the subject of a good deal of late night conversations over the years in these parts.
I think for many people during college (even today)
Dylan (especially that 1965 era) seems to put the "low art" vs "high art" thing into a perspective that few others do. First, of course, that narrative he developed about seeming to move from more 'finger pointing' songs to so called 'inner directed, self-probing' (forgive my use of journalistic shorthand), but also (and I think where the Ashbery connection came in) that phase signified by lines like "you discover you'll just be one more person crying" as opposed to earlier lines like
"I saw a new born baby with wild wolves all around it," as he seemed to move from a more. say,
Rousseau-like attitude toward self and society to ALMOST identifying with what his earlier songs
would have called the corruption of society---.
So, songs like "Highway 61" and "Tombstone Blues," seem to present God as source of pitiless social power and try to undo the binary between, say, "business" and "pleasure" (as Ashbery or David Byrne for that matter) did in ways that offer an alternative to such ideologies as "what does it profit a man if he gain the world but loses his soul" that, as a lower-class first generation college student was pretty mind-blowing.
Sure, there's way more to both Ashbery and Dylan than that, but I know such things played a role in my initial attraction to both. And yes, this wasn't just a surface similarity about 'surrealistic' techniques in both of them, but rather more a sense that they both somehow offered, uh, equipment for living---it's only people's games you got to dodge, etc....
Chris
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From: "TheOldMole" <tad at opus40.org>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Dylan on the page
Date: Wed, May 3, 2006, 2:45 PM
I'm doing a unit on Dylan for my American Lit II class - starting Friday, and I'll definitely be including the Jack of Hearts.
I'm also teaching this class called "The Short Story," and since the only thing I have to do in it is assign one short story after another, I decided to vary it for the last part of the semester, and do other things that are short and tell a story -- songs, poems, a one-act play and (last up) Lynd Ward's wonderful graphic novel from the 1920s, "God's Man."
These are the songs and poems I used: Songs:
Stackolee (five different versions, including my poem and the Clash's Wrong 'em Boyo)
Maybellene
The Boxer
Take a Walk on the Wild Side
Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
Billy the Kid
Poems:
Frost - Home Burial
Poe - The Raven
Kipling - Ballad of East and West
traditional - The Wife of Usher's Well
Keats - Eve of St. Agnes
Next up, the Dylan songs I'm using for American Lit:
Girl From The North Country
Masters Of War
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
Times They Are A-Changin',
Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carrol
Chimes Of Freedom
Motorpsycho Nightmare
Ballad In Plain D
It Ain't Me Babe
Subterranean Homesick Blues
Mr. Tambourine Man
Gates Of Eden
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Like A Rolling Stone
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Highway 61 Revisited
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Desolation Row
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Just Like A Woman
Positively 4th Street
Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest
I Pity The Poor Immigrant
Wicked Messenger
Lay Lady Lay
Day Of The Locusts
If Dogs Run Free
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
Forever Young
Tangled Up In Blue
Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts
Hurricane
Gotta Serve Somebody
Neighborhood Bully
Man Of Peace
Any suggestions for alterations?
----- Original Message -----
From: LauraHeidy at aol.com <mailto:LauraHeidy at aol.com>
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu <mailto:new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2006 2:58 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Dylan on the page
In a message dated 5/3/2006 1:50:18 PM Central Daylight Time, grahamd at ripon.edu <mailto:grahamd at ripon.edu> writes:
I tend to agree with Dave. I remember thinking, back in the 60s and 70s, that Dylan's surrealistic stuff would be awfully embarrassing to read 25 years hence, and now I'm finding out that I was wrong. It does hold up.
I dunno. I loved it then, I still love it now.
Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
(Bob Dylan - 1974)
The festival was over, the boys were all plannin' for a fall,
The cabaret was quiet except for the drillin' in the wall.
The curfew had been lifted and the gamblin' wheel shut down,
Anyone with any sense had already left town.
He was standin' in the doorway lookin' like the Jack of Hearts.
He moved across the mirrored room, "Set it up for everyone," he said,
Then everyone commenced to do what they were doin' before he turned their heads.
Then he walked up to a stranger and he asked him with a grin,
"Could you kindly tell me, friend, what time the show begins?"
Then he moved into the corner, face down like the Jack of Hearts.
Backstage the girls were playin' five-card stud by the stairs,
Lily had two queens, she was hopin' for a third to match her pair.
Outside the streets were fillin' up, the window was open wide,
A gentle breeze was blowin', you could feel it from inside.
Lily called another bet and drew up the Jack of Hearts.
Big Jim was no one's fool, he owned the town's only diamond mine,
He made his usual entrance lookin' so dandy and so fine.
With his bodyguards and silver cane and every hair in place,
He took whatever he wanted to and he laid it all to waste.
But his bodyguards and silver cane were no match for the Jack of Hearts.
Rosemary combed her hair and took a carriage into town,
She slipped in through the side door lookin' like a queen without a crown.
She fluttered her false eyelashes and whispered in his ear,
"Sorry, darlin', that I'm late," but he didn't seem to hear.
He was starin' into space over at the Jack of Hearts.
"I know I've seen that face before," Big Jim was thinkin' to himself,
"Maybe down in Mexico or a picture up on somebody's shelf."
But then the crowd began to stamp their feet and the house lights did dim
And in the darkness of the room there was only Jim and him,
Starin' at the butterfly who just drew the Jack of Hearts.
Lily was a princess, she was fair-skinned and precious as a child,
She did whatever she had to do, she had that certain flash every time she smiled.
She'd come away from a broken home, had lots of strange affairs
With men in every walk of life which took her everywhere.
But she'd never met anyone quite like the Jack of Hearts.
The hangin' judge came in unnoticed and was being wined and dined,
The drillin' in the wall kept up but no one seemed to pay it any mind.
It was known all around that Lily had Jim's ring
And nothing would ever come between Lily and the king.
No, nothin' ever would except maybe the Jack of Hearts.
Rosemary started drinkin' hard and seein' her reflection in the knife,
She was tired of the attention, tired of playin' the role of Big Jim's wife.
She had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide,
Was lookin' to do just one good deed before she died.
She was gazin' to the future, riding on the Jack of Hearts.
Lily washed her face, took her dress off and buried it away.
"Has your luck run out?" she laughed at him, "Well, I guess you must
have known it would someday.
Be careful not to touch the wall, there's a brand-new coat of paint,
I'm glad to see you're still alive, you're lookin' like a saint."
Down the hallway footsteps were comin' for the Jack of Hearts.
The backstage manager was pacing all around by his chair.
"There's something funny going on," he said, "I can just feel it in the air."
He went to get the hangin' judge, but the hangin' judge was drunk,
As the leading actor hurried by in the costume of a monk.
There was no actor anywhere better than the Jack of Hearts.
Lily's arms were locked around the man that she dearly loved to touch,
She forgot all about the man she couldn't stand who hounded her so much.
"I've missed you so," she said to him, and he felt she was sincere,
But just beyond the door he felt jealousy and fear.
Just another night in the life of the Jack of Hearts.
No one knew the circumstance but they say that it happened pretty quick,
The door to the dressing room burst open and a cold revolver clicked.
And Big Jim was standin' there, ya couldn't say surprised,
Rosemary right beside him, steady in her eyes.
She was with Big Jim but she was leanin' to the Jack of Hearts.
Two doors down the boys finally made it through the wall
And cleaned out the bank safe, it's said that they got off with quite a haul.
In the darkness by the riverbed they waited on the ground
For one more member who had business back in town.
But they couldn't go no further without the Jack of Hearts.
The next day was hangin' day, the sky was overcast and black,
Big Jim lay covered up, killed by a penknife in the back.
And Rosemary on the gallows, she didn't even blink,
The hangin' judge was sober, he hadn't had a drink.
The only person on the scene missin' was the Jack of Hearts.
The cabaret was empty now, a sign said, "Closed for repair,"
Lily had already taken all of the dye out of her hair.
She was thinkin' 'bout her father, who she very rarely saw,
Thinkin' 'bout Rosemary and thinkin' about the law.
But, most of all she was thinkin' 'bout the Jack of Hearts.
Lo
Terminal Chaosity <http://lauraheidy.blogspot.com/>
http://lauraheidy.blogspot.com/
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