In Dylan's words, echoes of a poet past
Perhaps you've never heard of Henry Timrod, sometimes known as the poet laureate of the Confederacy.
But maybe you've heard his words, if you're one of the 320,000 people so far who have bought Bob Dylan's latest album, "Modern Times," which made its debut two weeks ago at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.
It seems that many of the lyrics on that album, Dylan's first No. 1 album in the United States in 30 years (down to No. 3 last week), bear some strong echoes of the poems of Timrod, a Charleston, South Carolina, native who wrote poems about the U.S. Civil War and died in 1867 at the age of 39.
"More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours," the 65-year-old Dylan sings in "When the Deal Goes Down," one of the songs on "Modern Times." Compare that with these lines from Timrod's "Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night":
A round of precious hours
Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked
And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers.
"No doubt about it, there has been some borrowing going on," said Walter Brian Cisco, who wrote a 2004 biography of Timrod, when shown Dylan's lyrics. Cisco said he could find at least six other phrases from Timrod's poetry that appeared in Dylan's songs. But Cisco didn't seem particularly bothered by that.
"I'm glad Timrod is getting some recognition," he said.
Henry Timrod was born in 1828 and was a private tutor on plantations before the Civil War. He tried to enlist in the Confederate army but was unable to serve in the field because he suffered from tuberculosis. He worked as an editor for a daily paper in Columbia, South Carolina, and began writing poems about the war and how it affected the residents of the South. He also wrote love poems and ruminations on nature.
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But maybe you've heard his words, if you're one of the 320,000 people so far who have bought Bob Dylan's latest album, "Modern Times," which made its debut two weeks ago at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart.
It seems that many of the lyrics on that album, Dylan's first No. 1 album in the United States in 30 years (down to No. 3 last week), bear some strong echoes of the poems of Timrod, a Charleston, South Carolina, native who wrote poems about the U.S. Civil War and died in 1867 at the age of 39.
"More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours," the 65-year-old Dylan sings in "When the Deal Goes Down," one of the songs on "Modern Times." Compare that with these lines from Timrod's "Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night":
A round of precious hours
Oh! here, where in that summer noon I basked
And strove, with logic frailer than the flowers.
"No doubt about it, there has been some borrowing going on," said Walter Brian Cisco, who wrote a 2004 biography of Timrod, when shown Dylan's lyrics. Cisco said he could find at least six other phrases from Timrod's poetry that appeared in Dylan's songs. But Cisco didn't seem particularly bothered by that.
"I'm glad Timrod is getting some recognition," he said.
Henry Timrod was born in 1828 and was a private tutor on plantations before the Civil War. He tried to enlist in the Confederate army but was unable to serve in the field because he suffered from tuberculosis. He worked as an editor for a daily paper in Columbia, South Carolina, and began writing poems about the war and how it affected the residents of the South. He also wrote love poems and ruminations on nature.