Tangled Up in Blue

I found myself more pleased with the announcement that Bob Dylan has won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature than I might have expected. First, there's provincial pride–I like to celebrate all accomplishments originating in Minnesota, my own native state–and Dylan's birthplace in Minnesota's northeastern Iron Range territory strikes me as a formative influence on America's most famous poet songwriter. (If you haven't seen Martin Scorsese's documentary about Dylan, No Direction Home, it's definitely worth seeing. I'm hoping public television stations will rebroadcast in light of Dylan's latest honor.)
Despite my Minnesota roots, I was slow to come into the orbit of people who love Dylan's music. I guess I was a generation behind the people who discovered him growing up. By the time I was coming of age, heavy metal or garage bands like Husker Du, The Replacements and Babes in Toyland were capturing my imagination (under the influence of more musically sophisticated friends of mine).
But at some point I discovered Dylan's brilliance, often from listening to covers of his songs performed by other bands and singers. Dylan's lyrics do rise to a level of poetic intelligence and resonance that I think is rare in popular music. Other lyricists whose work I think can often stand on its own as poetry include, of course, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, David Bowie, and more recently Erika Badu. But Dylan's Nobel helps to shed light upon the poetic achievements of great song writers. And, if I'm not mistaken, though several poets who've lived in America have won the biggest award in literature, Dylan is the first truly American poet to claim victory. (T.S. Eliot was born and raised in the U.S., but spent most of his adult life in England.)
The times definitely are a' changing.