Three Don'ts and One Do About Dylan Writing

#1 Don't... Make your last lines obvious, telegraphed and manipulative. You can't redeem a sucky poem by repeating the final line. People read "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and think, "Hey, anybody can do that! I'll just say that last part again, only this time it MEANS something."

Dylan

Cynthia Alise Mock

hum and weariness
the soul twister
gleaming
on the art 
of acoustics


a dissonance 
of your voice with sense
and abilities soul


brimming
drowns the pluck of your string
and the page it turns
as generations view or hear or scream your verse


soul twister gleaming
like a bulb
lay down your tune
lay down your tune





#2 Don't... Idolize the man: humanize the idol. When your subject has been glorified, reviled, accused, bruised and disabused as much as Zimmy has, there's no point in shining up that particular apple. Sure, he's the man who made "Time Out of Mind" and "Blood on the Tracks," but he also made "Self-Portrait" and that song at the end of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

In the Old Days

Glenn Cooper

In the old days in the Village
they said you wrote songs
on napkins, in the margins
of newspapers, on the backs
of beer coasters. Wherever
there was available space.
But mostly, I think, you just
wrote them in our blood, in
the hallowed ventricles
of our hearts, and it's there
they have always remained.




#3 Don't... Stalk him, for heaven's sake. The last thing we need is another serial killer shrine or jack-ass unauthorized biographer rooting through his garbage bins. Here's a link to a website where a very normal, balanced person has written him hundreds of letters. Hundreds.




#4 Do... Take that myth and work that thing like ain't been worked before. That's right, shake the legendary money-maker. The controversies, the girlfriends, the wives, the custodies, the motorcycle crash, going electric, going back acoustic again, going gospel, going back in time a hundred years: it's all baggage at this point. May as well take it somewhere tropical where they serve drinks with colorful umbrellas in them. 

Woody Guthrie Visited by Bob Dylan: Brooklyn State Hospital, New York, 1961

David Wojahn

He has lain here for a terrible, motionless

Decade, and talks through a system of winks

And facial twitches. The nurse props a cigarette

Between his lips, wipes his forehead. She thinks

He wants to send the kid away, but decides

To let him in - he's waited hours.

Guitar case, jean jacket. A corduroy cap slides

Down his forehead. Doesn't talk. He can't be more

Than twenty. He straps on the harmonica holder,

Tunes up, and begins his "Song to Woody,"

Trying to sound three times his age, sandpaper

Dustbowl growl, the song interminable, inept. Should he

Sing another? The eyes roll their half-hearted yes.

The nurse grits her teeth, stubs out the cigarette.

HIDDEN BONUS TRACK!


#5 Do... Watch Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" and just soak it all in. Let it wash over you, the images and sounds. Wait two weeks. Then write something.