Bob Dylan | ZETEO

Wilfred Owen's mother, pictured center with her family

Dylan Ramona Other Poets Soul

April 10, 2018 by William Eaton

By William Eaton This appreciation of one of Bob Dylan’s love songs, “Ramona,” leverages its lyrics to make three basic observations about poetry and to call attention, to include in the endnotes, to several poems by other writers. While not all of these comments are positive, in general this short essay is watered with a love of poetry. 1 your magnetic movements still capture the minutes I’m in Many, many poems can be valued for the fact that—in the […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Bob Dylan, empathy, love, mortality, poetry, popular music

Bob Dylan. Photograph: Jan Persson/Redferns - cropped for Zeteo cover, full image inside

As Dylan Went Out One Morning

December 11, 2017 by William Eaton

By Oriana Schällibaum and Marcel Grissmer As I went out one morning may strike the casual listener as one of the more insipid songs Bob Dylan ever wrote. Recorded for the 1967 John Wesley Harding album it has never been very important to Dylan; he recorded the song in only five takes and, to date, has performed it in concert only once (in 1974).[1] Yet, “As I went out one morning”—apart from being a joy to listen to—is worth a […]

Categories: ZiLL • Tags: Bob Dylan, celebrity, literary theory, popular music, The Bible

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Zeteo’s Spontaneous Fall Issue, 2016

December 1, 2016 by William Eaton

While We Were Weeping A lot of people are put in solitary confinement “and they find the end of the world. For me, I found a new world. I found a world of self. That’s where I learned how to think. It’s where I learned how to read. It’s where I learned how to cry. I needed that so much.” — Max Cerda, “Death Is Contagious.” As quoted by Steven A. Burr, Reading, Violence, Solidarity, Zeteo, 5 December 2016. In […]

Categories: Fall 2016 Issue • Tags: Bob Dylan, Existentialism, Heidegger, human rights, McCarthyism, poetry, reading, Susan Sontag, women

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Dylan: “Gotta Serve Somebody”

November 28, 2016 by William Eaton

You may be an ambassador to England or France You may like to gamble, you might like to dance You may be the heavyweight champion of the world You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody — Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody,” 1979 […]

Categories: ZiLL • Tags: Bob Dylan, Christianity, Jesus, popular music, The Bible

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eiffel tower flashing at night, blue with white lights

Dylan, Nobel, Paris, Chimes Flashing

October 19, 2016 by William Eaton

Le monde s’étire s’allonge et se retire comme un accordéon qu’une main sadique tourmente The earth stretches elongated and snaps back like an accordion tortured by a sadic hand Dans les déchirures du ciel, les locomotives en furie In the rips in the sky insane locomotives S’enfuient Take flight Et dans les trous, In the gaps Les roues vertigineuses les bouches les voix Whirling wheels mouths voices Et les chiens du malheur qui aboient à nos trousses And the dogs […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Blaise Cendrars, Bob Dylan, Clintons, French, John Donne, Paris, poetics, poetry, popular music, songs, translation

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Airplanes, environment, capital, giving up!

February 23, 2016 by William Eaton

A.k.a., Littlering There is a strain of environmental thinking that proposes (with more than a little sense) that we need to learn how to do more with less. Or perhaps we need (yet again?) to discover how less is more. Fewer human beings always seems like a good place to start. There is of course the problem that biggering (as Dr. Seuss called it) has come to seem essential to our economic “growth” and “health,” and to the health […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: airplanes, Bob Dylan, capitalism, climate change, economic crisis, England, environmentalism, global warming, technology

“A phrase in connection first with she”

August 24, 2014 by William Eaton

I have long wanted to write in praise of the Bob Dylan song “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word,” a song that Dylan has apparently never recorded, but that Joan Baez has been performing since 1965. In a documentary about Dylan, Baez is shown saying that she was with Dylan when he first heard her recording of the song on the radio. She says that he said, “Hey, that’s a great song!”, apparently having forgotten that he had written it. […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Bob Dylan, dialogue, isolation, love, Martin Scorsese, narrative, philosophy of language, poetry, popular music, relationships, songs

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The silence at the end of the tunnel

June 1, 2014 by William Eaton

In La société de la consommation (1970; The Consumer Society) the sociologist Jean Baudrillard wrote of how the urbanization and industrialization of human life had created new rarities: “space and time, clean air, greenery, water, silence . . . Some goods, previously free and readily available, are becoming luxury goods that only a privileged few can enjoy, while manufactured goods or services are widely available.” This fits with my sense that luxuries can now be defined negatively: not owning […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Bob Dylan, consumerism, death, music, noise, Pascal, silence