Robert Allen Zimmerman Turns 85
It happened last month on the 24th. In the blink of an eye the decades fly by, and forever in the mind's eye,
he is the James Deanian young man—albeit a rebel with a cause— tooling down the street on a cold day in a far too skimpy jacket.
As the girlfriend on his arm in that iconic album cover (shot in the Village on Jones Street), Suze Rotolo —who passed away at age 67 fifteen years ago—wrote in her wonderful memoir: It’s obvious that by then we were freezing; certainly Bob was, in that thin jacket. But image was all.
This was a breakthrough album for him. It is through that cover sixty-five years ago, that I first became aware he existed. I was sitting in a cousin's two-by-four New York walk-up apartment and saw it sitting there on a makeshift piece of furniture. That building has long since been demolished, though Dylan still goes on. With recent reports highlighting excellent revitalized vocal performances, and that an upcoming 21-city tour is scheduled.
His last album, Shadow Kingdom was released three years ago, which featured 13 songs he re-recorded; a reimaging of earlier work. Though most impressive to me, is that ten years ago he won a Noble Prize in Literature.
His first album in '62 had gotten mixed reviews. Robert Zimmerman had only just become Bob Dylan. In his memoir Chronicles Volume One (2004), that garnered much praise and spent 19 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, I noted that Dylan in writing of his time in the Village in the early 60's, mentioned in passing, that...
“…I was over at the Mills Tavern on Bleecker Street where the basket-house singers would bunch up, chitchat and make the scene.”
Which stopped me cold as that was where my father tended bar for over thirty years; about which I once referred to in a poem as...
a place where men sipped ale
while death came looking
...ergo (not to mention eureka), my father must have served Bob Dylan! Or...600 degrees of separation.
In time, Dylan moved from a more literal, to a stream of consciousness in his lyrics. A piece in Newsweek in 2004 opened with, “There is one question that has confounded music and literary critics for the entirety of Dylan's career: Should Bob Dylan be considered a songwriter or a poet?" Indeed, Dylan's a poet. Better than that other Dylan. Thomas. By a few yards of ale in my opinion. And I can't imagine this Dylan ever going gentle into that good night either.
Either way, songwriter or poet, how can one not “dig” those lines in stream of consciousness, such as these from Subterranean Homesick Blues:
Look out kid
Don't matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes
Don't try, 'No Doz'
Better stay away from those
That carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose
Watch the plain clothes
You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows.
Of the more intriguing things he has done in the last five years, came Rowdy and Ready Ways. It was his 39th studio album, which was released in the midst of the pandemic.
The New Yorker described it as feeling “unusually attuned to its moment.” Echoed in the Wall St. Journal (of all places), under a headline Bob Dylan, a Genuis Among Us.
An album through which he became the first artist to reach the Billboard Top 40 with a new one in each decade from the 1960s to the 2020s. The standout in it being the 10th and final track, Murder Most Foul. Also released as a single, it runs for 17 minutes, in which you hear him speaking in couplets over rippling piano and violin, addressing the assassination of JFK in the context of America's political and cultural history.
At this point I'm almost inclined to sing Happy Birthday aloud in his honor. But stop instead and think: can you imagine Bob Dylan singing the Happy Birthday song? Although he once did a Christmas album. Which is a "must-listen" if you can find it. It's enough to stop a sleigh of reindeer in mid-flight.
Dream Wheel
It keeps turning
in unexpected hues
churning out
white-hot sparks of memory
a first love with its ensuing
burgundy roses
turning to pastels
of what might have been
then far afield the emerald landscapes
never noticed in wakened hours
we might now find ourselves
in and lost...
were we not just on
a familiar street
but a moment ago
so taunting the abstractions
starting out on familiar ground
of everyday lives
the present tension
the pondered past
take that black bag of Dr. Blitzman
he would carry making house calls
then the blue flame beneath
the pot of water boiling
mom would put up on the stove
to sterilize the glistening needle
the penicillin shot
that pending penetration
retrospectively scary
in a Halloweeny sort of way
given that a treat would follow
a requiem now
for that box of Crayola’s
daring to go places
beyond imagination
in that marching order of 64—
stop this wheel I want to get off.
Boathouse Haiku
Boats still on the lake.
The piano is now gone.
Cole Porter's swan song.
It's Schmaltzy Lyrics Time
schmaltzy variants or schmalzy -tsē sometimes -er/-est
adjective
Definition
Overly sentimental, emotional, maudlin or bathetic.
Synonyms
kitschy, mushy, sappy; see also Thesaurus: mawkish
Etymology
Borrowed from Yiddish שמאַלץ (shmalts) or German Schmalz. Doublet of smalt, smalto and enamel.
Example of smaltzy
This in its agonizing entirety from the 1945 musical Carousel by Rogers and Hammerstein.
June Is Bustin' Out All Over
[Nettie]
March went out like a lion
Awakin' up the water in the bay
Then April cried and stepped aside,
And along come pretty little May!
May was full of promises
But she didn't keep 'em quickly enough for some
And a crowd of doubtin' Thomas's
Was predictin' that the summer'd never come
[Men]
But it's comin, by gum,
We can feel it come,
You can feel it in your heart
You can see it in the ground
[Girls]
You can see it in the trees
You can smell it in the breeze
[All]
Look around! Look around! Look around!
[Nettie]
June is bustin' out all over
All over the meadow and the hill!
Buds're bustin' outa bushes
And the rompin' river pushes
Ev'ry little wheel that wheels beside the mill!
June is bustin' out all over
The feelin' is gettin' so intense,
That the young Virginia creepers
Hev been huggin' the bejeepers
Outa all the mornin' glories on the fence!
Because it's June...
[All]
June, June, June
Just because it's June, June, June!
[Nettie]
Fresh and alive and gay and young
June is a love song, sweetly song
[All]
June is bustin' out all over!
The saplin's are bustin' out with sap!
Love hes found my brother, Junior,
And my sister's even loonier!
And my Ma is gettin' kittenish with Pap!
June in bustin' out all over
[Nettie]
To ladies and men are payin' court.
Lotsa ships are kept at anchor
Jest because the captains hanker
Fer the comfort they ken only get in port!
[All]
Because it's June... June, June, June
Just because it's June, June, June!
[Nettie]
June makes the bay look bright and blue,
Sails gleaming white on sunlit booms.
[All]
June is bustin' out all over
The ocean is full of Jacks and Jills,
With her little tail a-swishin
Ev'ry lady fish is wishin'
That a male would come
And grab 'er by the gills!
[Nettie]
June is bustin' out all over!
The sheep aren't sheepish anymore!
All the rams that chase the ewe sheep are determined there'll be new sheep
And the ewe-sheep aren't even keepin' score!
[All]
On acounta it's June! June, June, June
Just because it's June, June, June!
Phew. Jesus. Enough. It's what the Lorenz Hart character was getting at in the movie Blue Moon.
My Saint Bernard
No, not the dog. But a real live saint named Bernard. Dead now almost 900 years.
I paid a visit to his statue once again at St. Patrick’s Cathedral last month on the tenth anniversary since my first recognition of him. I’d always pass him by in this stop-off place when I’m out and about; this magnificent cathedral that has served as a site for quiet reflection. Despite the unending traipsing through, by tourists selfying themselves to death— “Hey, I’m prayin' heah!”
I’ll light a candle before my St. Bernard (at three bucks a pop and a little on the small size if you ask me), and take in for a moment, this visage of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Who looks a little bit like Neil Patrick Harris and is a bit on the short side, but you take your saints where you can find them. And how have I come to take such ownership of him?
His feast day, according to the identifying plaque before him, is August 20th. Which I’d never noticed before. Until one day... "That’s my birthday"! Further reading his brief bio, I saw that he too was a writer. He of course of lofty matters; I of frivolity and obscure moments in memory.
How could I resist. I adopted him.
While Bernard is not one of my favorite names, and a St. Bernard is after all, also a breed of dog, it could have been worse. St. Schnauzer? St. Basset? St. Jack Russell?
Reading further, my saint was...
A reforming abbot and theologian…from a brilliant family…four brothers and twenty–seven friends (an impressive number as this was long before Facebook)…developed an order of monks called Cistercians…a fine writer challenging Peter Abelard, clerical luxury, persecution of the Jews, shady elections and the careless work of the Papal Curia…he was doctor mellifluous… ‘the honey-sweet teacher.’
It is interesting that many of the issues he addressed are still timely in 2026. Though I wish he would have stayed off of Abelard’s case, whose affair with Heloise is one of history’s most passionate and romantic true love stories. But in Bernard’s being referred to as a "honey-sweet teacher"— which is as poetic a paean I’ve ever heard or seen expressed— I’m smitten. Who among us has ever had a honey-sweet teacher? Well there might have bee a nun or two who taught that penmanship was next to Godliness. And so I practiced the Palmer Method. But I digress.
Invariably in all lives, saintly or otherwise, when you go a bit beyond sound bites, tweets, press releases, or church notes, what you find is complexity, conflict, contradictions.
Unmentioned at St. Pat’s, was that though Bernard was a monk, he defied a lot of what their lot implies; a world of prayer, chanting and serenity. And perhaps baking bread somewhere so far off the beaten path, that even with GoogleMaps, you’d couldn’t find them:
This saintly man was gradually drawn into world affairs as church leaders came to seek his advice. Even the pope’s legates sought his council. A prolific writer, Bernard
led much discussion and dialog on reforms and restructuring of the church as it passed through its first millennium. http://www.sbcwickford.org/history/bernard.html
Not bad for this stereotype-defying monk. But then there’s this that is disturbing:
The Pope commissioned Bernard to preach the Second Crusade. The last years of
Bernard's life were saddened by the failure of the crusaders, the entire responsibility
for which was thrown upon him.
Sort of like Colin Powell being summoned to make the case for why we needed to invade Iraq. But on the flip side again, there’s also something about my saint in a whole other realm, that I am surprised and pleased to discover. No lesser than a Dante Alighieri was a big fan. So much so that Bernard plays a large role in
The Divine Comedy serving as Dante’s last guide through Paradise, and the one who makes him see the light:
Bernard conveyed to me what I should do
By sign and smile; already on my own
I had looked upwards, as he wished me to.
Canto XXXIII: translation by Dorothy L. sayers and Barbara Reynolds
Rather impressive, regardless of one’s spiritual inclinations or lack thereof; one’s poetic sensibilities or
lack thereof.
So I’ll keep my St. Bernard. And that is my shaggy dog story for the day.
MuseLetter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
poem by Ron Vazzano; photo by the Artemis II astronauts
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