Bob Dylan Approximately: Summer 2019 Course
“That’s all we did in those days. Writing in the back seat of cars and writing songs on street corners or on porch swings, seeking out the explosive areas of life.” —Bob Dylan, 1977 “I…
Tag: Bob Dylan
The River Boat Captain, He Knows My Fate
My mother was chagrined when I went from listening to the Beatles at age 13 to Bob Dylan at 14. “At least the Beatles can sing; how can your ears stand that?” Neither she nor…
Harvey Silverman’s on Edge
Perry I figured you’d understand the following— You know, I’m very sad That Dylan accepted that medal from Obama (I’ve been in a trance alternating Listening to “Masters of War” And then rereading Robert Fisk’s…
Photography as a Way of Life
for Oliver, Cami, and Julie Sebastião Salgado, From my Land to the Planet Contrasto, 2014 I first heard the name of Sebastião Salgado from Mev in the early 1990s. She esteemed him more than any…
You Know This Is True
Let the Dow Jones drop 1000 points Let the Cubs lose ten games in a row Let the recession forecasts prove gloomier than expected Let my boss complain that I’m not rigorous enough in my…
halfway around the world the bombs are falling
On the dedication page of her 2007 updated collection of Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima states: The REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS are dedicated to Bob Dylan; and to my grandfather, Domenico Mallozzi, friend of the great anarchist…
No Comfort (excerpt from The Book of Mev)
There was the wailing wall in my study: How many minutes did I mediate on those photographs of Mev, how many tears fell, how many screams of mine ascended to Cathy Nolan’s ears upstairs, how…
One Person Can Change Everything for Us/1
Somebody holds the mirror up Unlocks the door Something jerks it open and you’re shoved in And your head has to go into a different place Sometimes it takes a certain somebody To make you…
Ekāgratā*
No sipping Northeast Coffee latte supreme with whipped cream No texting someone I’ll see in ten minutes No zoning out to Diane Rehm No penciling out the evening workout on a crumpled scratch pad No…
A Lifetime of Letters
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan (Da Capo Press, 2008) I have a file titled “Noam Chomsky” that contains several letters from the linguist during the 1990s. I first began writing him…