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Life on the Deckle Edge

Watching the River Flow with Bob Dylan

So Tuesday was Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday!

Garrison Keillor included some great Bob Dylan info on The Writer’s Almanac on Tuesday, including the fact that he’s been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature every year since 1996. Tuesday’s program also quotes from the liner notes for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan about the distinction between poetry and songs: “Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem.”

Be SURE to check out Jama Rattigan’s great review of the new picture book biography written by Gary Golio and illustrated by Marc Burckhardt, When Bob Met Woody – The Story of the Young Bob Dylan (Little, Brown, 2011).

Thoughts and prayers for those reeling from storms, and so many have suffered devastating floods in past weeks. With an image of a calmer river, here are some lines from Dylan’s “Watching the River Flow,” Copyright © 1971:

People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was really shook
But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow


For the entire song, click here.

and for the Poetry Friday Roundup , enjoy Heidi's great blog, My Juicy Little Universe.
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