There have only been two American (in the geographical sense of the term) poets to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Bob Dylan (2016) and Louise Glück (2020). I would like to add with all the contestation and petulance this will invoke: the term poet is significantly cheapened as a term of professional literary quality, when used in the same sentence (or in any way to define, describe, or designate) as Bob Dylan.
The debate continues to rage regarding Dylan’s Nobel acknowledgement. Supporters of course retain their position that Dylan is an accomplished lyricist-cum-musician, invoking through his musical compositions and lyricism a certain melancholy of the mid-twentieth century; a desolation sense within the being; the image and spokesperson of the vagabond folklore lyricist from the Midwest, who hitchhiking through life provides social commentary and contemplates human destiny. Bob Dylan was a revolutionary voice in music in his prime. He became the voice of the generation, who preceded Woodstock, but in turn revolutionized and redefined how popular music and rock’n’roll were to be evaluated as serious musical genres, not just trivial entertainment for mass production. Yet to continue to misappropriate the literary to the obliviously poetically deaf, and further harken the claim that Dylan is more poet than musician, proponents reference the fact that his name change (née Zimmerman) to Dylan, comes from the poet Dylan Thomas. Though the change is less literary or homage to the Welsh poet, but more a marketing scheme, whereby the musician employees the unique spelling of the name and therefore adoptable poetic pedigree for image purposes and maintaining a sense of independence and unique identifying sense of character. Dylan talks with a sense of homage and desire to encapsulate and enshrine the image, the sense, the character, and the spirit of America. His songs are meant to be the soundtrack of the mid-20th Century American Life, the fall of manufacturing, the blue-collar world, the desperation and desolation of the youth, with all their aimlessness and wandering with eyes set to the sky and dreams drifting amongst the stars. His bluesy songs attempted to provide narrative, with a jazzy twang, and a folk hero aesthetic that was all American. Bob Dylan’s work tilled the earth and became the cornerstone for the production of other such musicians and singers, who channeled the uniquely road trip youthful despondency that Americans have such nostalgic encouragement towards. Bob Dylan’s placement on the pillar of folk hero, is done partially by his own creation and ability to brand himself as such, complete with his acoustic guitar and harmonica. His youthful visage portrayed a serious melancholic romanticism to it, a sense of brooding contemplation, there was no glimpse of any carefree enjoyment which is expected to be inherited in youth. And so, Bob Dylan was to become the teenage messiah of the mid-20th Century, the more forlorn folk hero who chronicled the hardships of the post-Boom era, and like some minstrel or bard played out his travels and his stories with guitar and harmonica. Or perhaps it was someone else’s stories and travels.
There is no doubt Bob Dylan was a pioneer of folk music. The man who first introduced pretentiousness to popular music. Yet, it is grossly over assessed in qualities. Bob Dylan is a perfect example of an individual who has been mistakenly taken out of their lane both by their choosing and by critical/academic encouragement and has then been impersonating and parading themselves on false pretenses. You’d almost think they are genuine if it weren’t for their arrogant self-delusion. Bob Dylan being paraded as a poet is one such instance. I’m sure the singer and musician has many talents and qualities, but his literary powers are severely lacking in scope. In deciding to award Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy insisted that Bob Dylan could and should be read, but as David Free from The Sydney Morning Herald points out: this may not be advisable. For all his talents in belting out a tune, strumming a guitar, or squealing on a harmonica, Bob Dylan is not an accomplished lyricist but rather a scrawler and half-assed scribbler, whose piss poor writing can be veiled by musical instruments and contorted in song. David Free in his article, points out numerous songs and lines which have no lyrical or poetic quality. Stanzas and lines twist and invert themselves in order to create some sense of rhyming quality. Though a pioneer of folk music expanding its claim into the public realm of listening pleasure, Dylan’s lyrical compositions were underwhelming, contorted, half-baked, and frequently slapped together. If a poet is to be credited with any sense of poetic achievement, then he is a poetic hack, a poet of insulation, a purveyor of spackle, the whisperer of echoing hollow nothingness. Bob Dylan ultimately lacked and lacks the ability of serious poetic achievement and linguistic respect to compose and craft any such form to be considered equivalent to poetry. Dylan lacks the craftsmanship and wordsmithing capabilities to be called a poet. However, in the realm of public imagination, he is propped up on the delusional understanding that he is a poet with all the false pretenses this musters. Yet, the continual demand and need to elevate Dylan from his natural position as a musician to a poet, carries the airs of egregious appeasement to suffice an over inflated ego that has been crafted by Bob Dylan and then taken on more legendary gluttony, with the advent of academic assessments overvaluing Dylan as a poet.
In awarding Bob Dylan, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy attempted to appear approachable, or present an image that as an institution it is ‘with the times,’ and just as daring in its decisions. In essence it revolted against the claims and accusation that it is somehow, some old stuffy white person institution, covered in a cellophane of dust and left to rot on the shelf of irrelevance. The Dylan affair soon turned into a fiasco. It remains a divisive award and will most likely be reviewed in historical hindsight as controversial and meritless; a besmirched blight that should have been avoided; but much like the Dario Fo affair, it was a joke taken too far and apparently too seriously. Therefore, it can be theorized that four years later, when awarding Louise Glück the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy was attempting to provide retribution and reconcile its earlier error. Louise Glück’s award was in essence a redemptive award.
The Swedish Academy’s rationale for awarding Bob Dylan referenced the great American song tradition, as if completely ignoring the American Poetry tradition, which blossomed and grew with exclusive independence after the original colonies severed ties from Great Britain. From there a new identity had emerged, one wholly American came to be formed. It was both radical, new, observant and completely fascinated with its own new idea of freedom, which led to a breed of writer that encompassed the American spirit in turn, with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, James Whitcomb and Riley, and Edgar Allen Poe, encapsulating the sense of American thought, one which was independent and secular from the original colonizer’s identity. From there, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson secured the sense of American poetic tradition. Whitman with his long and democratic lines that pushed forward with free verse; while Dickinson was singular in vision and scope, concise, and concentrated hymnal like verse. These two poets became the modernist sun and moon, and from their orbits the path of stars was formed for all other poets to waltz down in a spirit and tradition that was American in scope and heritage, free from the shadow of English (as in British) formalism and literary influence. The idioms crafted by Whitman and Dickinson cannot be overlooked or ignored. Whitman’s free verse and carefree metric facilitated a new sense of emotive expressions; while Dickinson’s gnomic rhymes were terse, obscure and provided ironic expression to existence. From there came the quintessential American poet, Robert Frost. Frost remains a commanding figure in American letters, he is the stamp and seal of approval. The yard stick and metric employed to measure the feats of great American poetry. Frost was strictly lyrical, formal, and terser in style, but provided a ‘vurry Amur’k’n,’ (to quote Erza Pound) perspective when crafting poetry. Nature and the American landscape being favoured subjects of his work. To forcefully wedge, Bob Dylan into this pantheon of poets cheapens their achievement and sullies their reputations by association—like a turkey attempting to soar among the eagles—which is perhaps why the Swedish Academy referenced song tradition over poetry tradition; as one can doubt Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman would be completely enthused with Dylan’s company; though the Beat Generation, especially Ginsberg would find his induction amusing. If anything, Bob Dylan much like Robert Frost encapsulates, promotes, and exhales the very ‘Amur’k’n,’ sense of self. His music is coloured blue and grooves with a jazzy twang, with country melancholy and the folk singer’s ballad. This, regardless of position or perspectives, does not make Dylan a poet. He’s a singer; and his Nobel acknowledgement was a slap in the face to actual great American poets both past and present, including Mary Oliver, W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, Charles Simic, and Sharon Olds.
When Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the atmosphere was muted, though critics were quick to praise Louise Glück as perhaps one of the finest lyrical poets at work in American Literature. Personally, I initially found the award a nuisance and annoyance. Yet another American it seemed; yet another English language writer; and I had initially thought: yet another fuck up. I would not be described myself as an early supporter of Louise Glück or her award, though I could at least stomach in essence that she was at least a poet, an actual writer. After a year and half, I would say I finally began to warm up to Glück, she was more interesting poet then I had first discerned or even gave any credit too. She’s singularly her own. Unequivocally and unapologetically independent from any poetic tradition, school, or thought. There were and have been misappropriated attempts at classifying Louise Glück as a Confessional Poet in the vein of Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton, but they ultimately were rendered insufficient comparisons, as Glück remained more universal and earthlier palpable, not consumed in self-absorption performing fiery strip teases on the stage of histrionics while perspiring second-hand emotion.
In awarding Louise Glück the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy in turn acknowledged a rich and independent literary tradition. Afterall, Glück’s apprenticeship came from her discovery and appreciation of Emily Dickinson, as referenced in her Nobel Lecture. Yet, unlike her predecessors, Glück’s poetry collections carry a sense of ‘unity,’ or whole completeness within them. Each collection of poetry contains within its small space its own solar system. Unlike other poets who string together poems as they write them and then collect them into a publishable volume; Louise Glück’s poetry in contrast maintains a sense of completeness or singular relationship, as each poem orbit’s perennial themes, but shifts through perspective, voices, motifs, and character, to comment on perennial and universal themes. In each collection, Glück performs a austere autopsy on her themes, dissecting marriages and family relationships with surgical mastery and unbiased eye. It is on these initial grounds that Louise Glück was initially indentured to the Confessional School of poetry. Yet, as Glück's career continued the initial comparison was inevitably lost, as Glück’s work took on more mythic and metaphorical imagery and narrative.
This narrative format can be beautifully witnessed in her Pulitzer Prize winning collection: “The Wild Iris,” whereby the entire world is framed within the confines of a garden, which in turn becomes the stage and setting where the external in the botanic (the flowers), the personal in the mortal (the gardener), and the divine in the omnipresent (God), converge within the garden and comment on the impermanence of existence, the shock and gratitude of life, the passage of time, the evolution of being, the responsibilities and relationship between creator and creation, and the circular nature of life and death as it follows the soundtrack of the seasons. One could propose the argument that is in “Ararat,” and “The Wild Iris,” is when Glück had finally found her foothold as a poet and her fermented and matured voice had reached the quality that has now become expected of her; though this germination and development is clearly seen in: “The Triumph of Achilles,” with its genesis taking place in the collection: “Descending Figure.” Curtailing back to “The Wild Iris,” though, it is here one can see Louise Glück entering the realm of the legendary Emily Dickinson, who in turn was famous for her gardening. The Dickinson family garden was renowned and was frequent place setting in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. A home to bees and birds, which became the landscape in which the soul transformed and soars into the celestial. The garden and its chorus in: “The Wild Iris,” engage in a personal dialogue through a fractured and segmented voices, each one commenting on the realms of life and the business of living, which is both arduous and miraculous. Glück as the austere poet becomes increasingly earthbound palpable and content with first-person discourse (as I am sure most poets are), yet rather then occupy the proscenia and engage in a longwinded self-absorbed treatise of thyself, Glück throws her voice to the flowers, to the divine, to the mythic, ensuring in this mosaic of voices—that despite echoing her own thoughts—provide the illusion of agency (or at least veiling the identity of the speaker), which provides a sense of privacy and urgent intimacy. It is in these spaces that the Swedish Academy was correct in their citation of Louise Glück:
“for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”
Yet it is in “The Wild Iris,” that one finds acknowledgement of the poetic school concerning Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, there’s an Old Testament presbyterian tone, an attention to lyrical detail and compression, while being completely free and democratic in verse, and employing in equal measure a wry sarcasm as an ironic tonic to ward of such silly notions of romanticism (or dare be compared to the idyllic idleness of such inert idiocy with all its pastoral pretentious poise and pompous perspectives), all the while refuting the poetic conventions, schools, constricts, and syllabic demands and stanza corsets.
In this, Louise Glück is a true poet, who should be recognized in the American Pantheon of Poetry, which she has unabashedly paid respect and homage to her in own verse. Glück’s perspectives remain personal, private, and intimate in nature, but tack on a wide berth and breath that it becomes universally appealing and empathetically approachable. Her collections of poetry are solar systems through and through, maintain a measured and level and unified approach to the topic at hand. As a poet, Louise Glück is more akin to Saturn than any other celestial body. A wielder of the scythe and understanding of time, solitude, and silence; a reckoner of change, revelator of destruction, and reaper of renewal. One would be hard pressed to call Louise Glück a stagnant or one trick poet. Perhaps not as regal as others, she remains a personal understanding that is reticent and straightforward, a firm fixture in the poetic universe, not some passerby and imposter like Bob Dylan, whose homages, and tributes to any and all poets, are half-assessed, half-hearted, and completely conducted for marketing strategy of having such depth and intellectual proclivities. In this it is clear, when awarding Louise Glück the Nobel Prize for Literature four years after the Bob Dylan fiasco, the Swedish Academy was engaged in a redemptive and reconciliatory endeavor, but they had certainly found the most perfect poet in which to ask for forgiveness, whereby in the frosted winter barren fortified garden of December, Glück (perhaps unknowingly) absolved the Swedish Academy of their own previous misstep.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
For Further Reading –
David Free – The Sydney Morning Herald – Bob Dylan, a great poet? A great delusion more like it
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