Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s difficult for me to be objective about Bob Dylan. So much stuff gets in the road. I remember Bob when he and I were both kids, so there’s a lot of old man nostalgia going on — and my hindsight isn’t even close to 20/20. I’m not suggesting he shouldn’t have won — poetry shouldn’t be confined to the rhyming couplet and the quill pen. Singer/songwriters are still writers, after all, and of all the Rod McKuens, Leonard Cohens and Joni Mitchells my generation produced, no one deserves a Nobel Prize more than Bob Dylan. But I can’t help thinking that if he’d been toiling away with pen and paper instead of guitar and harmonica — well — regardless of how good Bob Dylan really is, I’m not sure The Swedish Academy would have come calling.
But here is the music with the lyrics — you decide. And then I’ll let Joan Baez speak for me because, like her, if the Nobel Prize people are offering me nostalgia — I’ve already paid.
WD Fyfe 
Congrats to Bob Dylan. I agree that Dylan is probably the most deserving singer/songwriter for the award, but I would prefer to see it given to an author of literature. Perhaps, it is emblematic of the declining trend in reading and books?
Yeah, as the lady said “I’ve looked at life from both sides now” and I’m not sure if Dylan was just a time and a place or a poet for the ages. Either way I remember him well but several young people I talked to had to Google him.
Well, we can be thankful for Google then, right? 😉
Thanks for including Joan Baez, her voice was so beautiful. I think she could have turned Mary had a little lamb into something profound.
Google — is there anything it doesn’t know?
Did you hear about the young cop in New Jersey that tried to arrest him for loitering? He kept trying to say he was Bob Dylan and the cop finally called the station and asked if they’d ever heard of someone named Bob Dylan. That was 2009, but I’m sure he’s still trying to live it down.
Same mixed feelings. https://shakemyheadhollow.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/bob-dylans-nobel-prize/