Me too.

^

In what world is this split down the middle?

Oh well good.

Its alright ma may have the better lyrics...but i really dont wanna differentiate...they're both up there amidst the best ever written.... Desolation is the better song though .... so MUSICALLY I voted for it ... not lyrically ...

edit : though as an obsessive rhymist (if there's a word) he did get the sequence wrong in a place on Ma .... and does it in a place or two on desolation too .....

In what world can you actually just vote on something without complaining?

I loled.

That's a purposeful artistic effect.

not very knowledgable in such matters perhaps , but it makes no sense to do so, i believe he was writing and it just suited it better and almost rhymed , and hence kept it there .... if any amateur had done it , he'd probably be told off about it , but since it was Dylan, he gets the pass...id believe its an artistic thing to do if there was no slight rhyme to the words..... and the fact that he does it only once in Ma and twice in desolation makes it hard to believe hes doing it on purpose....however, im not the most competent user of the english language nor am i the most knowledgable, so if you can give me something to read up on regarding the matter, id actually appreciate it .... heck, it'd make writing my poems a whole lot easier and my obsession with perfect rhyming might decrease a notch as well ....

If it creates an interesting tonal effect and sounds good, which it does to my and many other Dylan fans' ears, then it certainly does make sense.


When talking about the value of art it's better not to speculate about the mental process that went into its production, since we can never really know that for sure. But even if you're right, what's wrong with being able to think of interesting applications of poetic techniques off the top of your head?


Probably not. Using half rhymes had been an established poetic technique since around the time of Yeats, and can be found in gestational forms as early as the 15th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_rhyme. And even in the cases where Dylan's breaking away from the structure are not technically "half rhymes", they are still poetic techniques that have legitimate precursors, such as in Whitman, Pound, Williams, and Ginsberg.


My view is that the reason Dylan is held in such high regard in the first place is at least partially because he brought these poetic effects to rock songwriting.


Since doing it was already well established in poetry I don't think it's hard to believe at all. It is however hard to believe that a lyricist as talented as Dylan would have settled for a half rhyme if he really wanted a full rhyme.


It's actually good for budding poets to force themselves to rhyme perfectly early in their development because it instills formal discipline. But if you want to learn how to loosen up a bit, all you have to do is read many of the great poets who didn't rhyme perfectly. Check out Whitman, Dickinson, and the names I mention above.

although what Dylan did was not really half rhyme from the description given on the wiki article as you have mentoned...its like a reverse half rhyme , the syllable itself having a rhyme but the ending consonant not matching .... dame and rain , and vest and ness ... dont get why hed choose to have this only in the 3rd and 4th verses and in none of the others .... and i also dont see how just 2 of those instances where the words also almost sound the same create the tonal difference that you speak of ....




this is the most legit thing. absolutely nothing at all , but the usage to me seems very random ..... just 2 instances in a wall of text ..... its the same for Ma , only he does it once if im not mistaken ....

thanks a lot for the info though Dreww , really appreciate it ... I have read a bit of Yeats in fact , and i actually consider him a certain inspiration to my writing along with Dylan, Young and Mclean ..... I definitely need to delve in more into such matters .....


i have loosened up a bit from my past writing style , adding my self made structures and rhyming patterns , but thats a different story ....

My poetry textbook treats oblique, half, and slant rhymes all as synonyms referring to one broad category of rhyming, but Wikipedia (I'll admit I didn't actually read the page I linked you to) seems to contradict itself--on this page it distinguishes between oblique/slant rhymes and half rhymes, but on this page it says that half rhymes are the same as slant rhymes. Maddening. Whatever the case, the point is that what Dylan did (here it's specifically oblique rhyme/slant rhyme according to the "general rhymes" wiki page) was a perfectly acceptable type of rhyming.

In addition to studying those old masters, you may want to check out something like The Best American Poetry of 2010 to get a sense of how "free" it's now okay for poetry to be. Starting in the 1950s especially with the beat poets (who hugely influenced Dylan), it was considered old fashioned to use only perfect rhymes, or even to break the structure in a predictable way. Dylan's seemingly random ways of breaking the structure was quite tame by poetry standards. It only seems incredibly radical by the rock songwriting standards of the time.

it of course is Okay to do it ... its just writing and literature, and if one cant be free and expressive in such a matter, i dont where else....but there are traditionalists, and i guess i prefer my poetry of old, rhyming, with a certain distinuguishable pattern to people not well acquainted with the technicalities of poetry and an overall flow .....
either ways , the book would be impossible to get from where i am , but i do plan on reading some poetry of the masters .....

again , much thanks