Author: hankkalet

I’d been meaning to say something about Bob Dylan’s “Modern Times,” which hit the stores last week and which I’ve been listening to over and over again.

The third disc in what Sony has billed as a trilogy, it definitely sounds like an extension of “Love and Theft,” though a little softer and not quite as manically surreal and funny.

“Modern Times” is far more meditative, with Dylan considering the end. It is an album of adult songs, considered, almost sweet, but with a definite edge (listen to the lilting “Spirit on the Water”) — different than the biting vitriol that he has often used, subtle and refined.

Dylan riffs on paradise, Alicia Keys and the deep darkness, sweeping across American musical history like the wandering minstrel ghost he always has been. “Thunder on the Mountain” (where the Alicia Keys reference shows up) is a fitting, rocking opener, and “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” is spitfire blues.

Dylan makes use of the familiar — Merle Haggard makes an appearance on the weakest cut, a workmanlike but somewhat less-than-inspired rewrite of “Workingman’s Blues,” and Slim Harpo and Muddy Waters and … well, call it a pastiche.

“Those who think Dylan merely plagiarizes miss the point,” writes Thom Jurek on All Music.

Dylan is a folk musician; he uses American folk forms such as blues, rock, gospel, and R&B as well as lyrics, licks, and/or whatever else he can to get a song across. This tradition of borrowing and retelling goes back to the beginning of song and story. Even the title of Modern Times is a wink-eye reference to a film by Charlie Chaplin. It doesn’t make Dylan less; it makes him more, because he contains all of these songs within himself. By his use of them, he adds to their secret histories and labyrinthine legends. Besides, he’s been around long enough to do anything he damn well pleases and has been doing so since the beginning.

As with “Love and Theft,” Dylan’s worn voice seems to come from another time, ties all this together. Dylan has always been a synthesizer — back in the mid-1960s, his concoctions resulted in a shape-changing swirl that changed the direction of both rock and folk. In the ’70s, his best work fused an angry, biting wit with a sometimes softer musical streak (this may not be completely accurate; the mid-’70s music from “Blood on the Tracks” and “Desire” lacked the explosive quality of “Highway 61 Revisited,” but still burned with energy).

The new music, with its odd and ancient sounding references, both musical and lyrical, presents us with something equally unusual in popular music — a record about growing older, about regrets and the settling of scores.

Dylan is considering the end, but in doing so he is giving us something wholly new.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

My latest column from The Progressive Populist is available on line.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I really can’t add much to this column by Dan Froomkin in The Washington Post today.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

John Barr, in an essay in the current edition of Poetry, pretty much sums up my own feelings about the insular nature of the “poetry industry” in the United States and the pathetic navel gazing of too many lyric poets.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since I wrote this poem for my grandfather, who is dead now almost 30 years. But I thought it would serve well as my thoughts on Labor Day:

WINDOW WASHER
for my grandfather

   New York 1924, a man looks with fresh eyes at the city; boundless opportunity awaits. “In America, a man can be President,” he says. But he sees the throngs of the faceless, the stampede of eyes in the street and feels lost. Alien streets and strange faces — “In America, a man can be president,” he says.

   He is perched precariously from the dead face of a New York high-rise. He squeegees the glass and with a dirty rag wipes it down. He stares into the window, sees his reflection — “A good job, yes?”

   Grandma is home, TV on, tuned to Dragnet and Adam 12, the dour scent of cabbage boiling, a glass of tea, a cigarette — “I remember I remember,” she’d say, and tell me stories my mother said were never true.

   His belt, the one he used to hang above the city, sits before me. I can see where it was splashed by ammonia and grime and where it soaked in his sweat. I remember his arms, lean and muscular, the creases at the corner of his mouth, his heavy lids.

   “In America, a man can be president,” Grandpa tells me, the faint smell of Ballantine Ale on his breath. “he can be anything he wants.” I am sitting on his lap. “You go to school and learn. Learning is good.” I nod, I am only five. “You be president.” He smiles and watches the wrestlers on the tube.

   Sour candy Grandma hands me, gives me paper, a pencil, and watches as I draw — cars and cats and men with guns. She sips her tea and smiles as if she’s someplace else.

   His clean shaven face stares at me from the sepia tones of his wedding photo; Grandma too has half a smile. My family, one-half my gene-pool, they stare solemn, black suits and ashen eyes. . . . Years later, I find my grandmother searching lost streets looking for him. “Grandma, come home please.” She eyes me, “Harry? Harry?” “No grandma, he’s been dead a long time. Please come home.” And I guide her home and set her to bed sobbing, “Harry Harry Harry. . . . .”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick