So which one is the better writer/poet/lyricist and why?

So which one is the better writer/poet/lyricist and why?

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Dylan all the way.

YOUR QUESTION IS DUMB; THEY ARE BOTH BRILLIANT IN THEIR OWN WAY.

WHO DO YOU THINK IS THE BETTER WRITER? JOYCE OR NABOKOV? BURROUGHS OR BOLAÑO?

RETARD.

I like Dylan better but it's totally subjective. Both has unique aesthetics and both created great works.

Leonard Cohen's early novel "Beautiful Losers" is an underrated treasure of modern literature.

Leonard Cohen wrote the best song, but Dylan has an insane amount of amazing songs. Where Cohen has 5-10 god-tier songs, Dylan has double or triple that

Yeah but what number of those god tier songs did Dylan plagiarize?

None

Tell me about Dylan plagiarizing people. I’ve only heard that about his late work

Both have had missteps, both are amazing, if put Neil Young alongside them and make it a trinity, Cortez, The Killer is a dope song

The thing about Dylan is he usually doesn't outright steal entires songs (other than his newer albums/chronicles) but he gets single lines from old obscure songs/movies/books etc. and writes them off and his own so you have to take each song and go by each and line and see where it was taken which is basically impossible to do.

>I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me
Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead
I never died, says he
I never died, says he

>I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive as you or me
Tearing through these quarters
In the utmost misery
____
1978, Dylan acknowledged the source when he told journalist Marc Rowland: "'Blowin' in the Wind' has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called 'No More Auction Block' – that's a spiritual and 'Blowin' in the Wind'
_
>The songwriter, who rarely talks about his songwriting, admitted last week that the song came from folklorist Hamish Henderson’s The 51st (Highland) Division’s Farewell to Sicily.

Dylan said: "You use what’s been handed down. The Times They Are A-Changin’ is from an old Scottish folk song.
__________
"I was with Paul one day, and Dylan wanders by and says, 'Hey, man, that's a great song. I'm going to use that song.' And he wrote a far better song, a much more interesting song - 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right'."[30]

Dylan's and Clayton's publishing companies sued each other over the alleged plagiarism.
_

>"O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?"
"I ha been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down."
"An wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son?
And wha met ye there, my handsome young man?"
"O I met wi my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon,
"For I'm wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down."

>Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.


An early one

>Broken hearted and so sad
Big blue eyes all covered with tears
Was a picture of sorrow to see
Kneeling close to the side
Of his pal and only pride
A little lad, these words he told me…”

and

>Broken hearted and so sad, golden curls all wet with tears,
’twas a picture of sorrow to see.
Kneeling close to the side of his pal and only pride,
A little lad these words he told me…

Dylan was a fucking hustler which is literally the only way to really succeed. I mean even his first ever written song (Song to Woody) is partly a copy. Everybody steals..., just part of the game, whether its lit or music or whatever

Find me one line anywhere of Leonard Cohen plagiarizing.

The actual words are usually better with Cohen but Dylan is typically better at merging them with music.

>hallelujah
they all stole, either lines or ideas: Cohen was just super biblical and mixed that with post modernity:
>Follow me, the wise man said,
>But he walked behind.
from "Teachers" ...

Using the Biblical text is not the same as stealing a folk song and calling it your own lol.

using biblical (con)text or using an old traditional and claiming its mine, just doesnt seem so different to me. I mean there are differences, but both musicians couldnt have written their song, if it hadnt been for the source material. so arguing against copying for the sake of writing new music is just a waste of time. This has always been music and thats the reason why nowadays, with all the shitty copyright laws, modern music kind of sucks. Because you are basically not allowed to do anything.

Stealing is an inherent process when it comes to art.

I mean I will let you have that Cohen is much more suble about it, but that's the reason why his lyrics dont hit home as hard as Dylans. I like both

Did you ever misunderstand folk music. For the first ten years especially, Dylan was working within the folk song tradition, where this kind of lifting of lines, stories, melodies, etc. is totally normal and expected and part of the creative process. He gets accused of plagiarism because he became so famous beyond the folkie circuit. But most folkies listening to those songs would have recognised the turns of phrase that reoccur in so many songs, even with very different geographical or historical contexts.

With God On Their Side shares a melody and a theme with The Patriot Game, but has been updated from an early-20th-century Irish context to a 60s American one. Does that make it a ripoff? No, it's exactly what the folk tradition dictates - each singer should adapt songs to their own contexts to make them 'speak' to them and their audience as well as possible. Dylan says it himself in the bit you quote: "You use what's been handed down."

tl;dr folk isn't pop music, it doesn't have the same expectations or rules. Dylan's "plagiarisms" are working within the tradition and his original audience would have understood this.

And to follow up, touching on what and said: this is one of big differences between Dylan and Cohen. Dylan was a folksinger. Cohen was a poet who adopted folk (and later other musical styles) as a medium for his poetry. That's why Dylan "plagiarises" and Cohen doesn't. They're working in different traditions.

That's not plagiarization, that's tradition, allusion, homage, that's lines that are important you running round your head as you look for words to sing.

the only one of those that's actually plagiarism is the one about don't think twice it's alright

I know all of this I was gonna put that his early work is "folk" so he was allowed to steal because of this though we can't really call Bob Dylan a poet or a lyricist. He is more of an interpreter.

Do you have any answer to the plagiarism of his later albums and book chronicles which are hard ripoff's?

There is a difference between quoting and stealing.

The problem with that is that I'm not sure it's so straightforward to draw a distinction between which of his songs/albums are 'folk' and which aren't. It's not as simple as the switch to electric: "Maggie's Farm" is totally a folk/blues style song, for example. And I'd dispute that we can't call him a poet or lyricist: some of his lyrics are very ambitious (It's Alright Ma), and his poetry - the stuff that never made it to music - is excellent in places. The liner notes to The Times They Are A-Changing are a wonderful stand-alone piece of literature.
I'll admit I don't really know his later albums very well - apart from Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong which are straight-up trad folk tunes. And I read Chronicles and really enjoyed it but I'm not aware of plagiarism accusations surrounding it. But I imagine he was applying the principles of the folk tradition to popular music, which is essentially the 'folk' music of today, meaning he ran up against a very different tradition and interpretation of intellectual property and the like. And so inevitably pissed people off.
In other words, if he was 'plagiarising' stuff in the later albums I expect it wasn't because he was out of ideas and wanted to steal stuff, but because that was the natural, obvious way of approaching songwriting for him. But I'm only speculating there - I don't know the details.

You should look at the some of the articles on Chronicles. It's definitely the worst thing he has done. Hundreds of cases in there of obvious stealing.

The stuff is in his later albums are more obvious than the ones in the middle of career. Stuff like this "“My old man, he’s like some feudal lord.”" stolen from "“My old man would sit there like a feudal lord.”.

If all you have to do is call something folk to be allowed to use other peoples words and call them your own could I take lyrics from Dylan, change them slightly, and then be taken seriously as a songwriter?

is this stealing or quoting from
>“My old man, he’s like some feudal lord.”" stolen from "“My old man would sit there like a feudal lord.”

Stealing because he tried to pass it off as original and didn't use it to make to a point about something.

How far would you have to go with
>My old man would sit there like a feudal lord.
in order for it not to be considered stealing. I dont really agree that just by using the same words - in this case "old man" and "feudal lord" - qualifies as stealing. Can be interpreted in so many ways and is dependent on context. Would any combination of those words be considered stealing by you?

Didn't Pynchon say he was a fan of Cohen's book in that possibly made up story where he was smoking clouds of cannabis?

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BEHOLD FOR NOBEL PRIZE LITERATURE MATERIAL BY THE ONE AND ONLY HONORARY ROBERT """"IM A ROLLING STONE"""" DYLAN!~~~:

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a gypsy queen

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle all dressed in green

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle ’til the moon is blue

Wiggle ’til the moon sees you

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle in your boots and shoes

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, you got nothing to lose

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a swarm of bees

Wiggle on your hands and knees

Wiggle to the front, wiggle to the rear

Wiggle ’til you wiggle right out of here

Wiggle ’til it opens, wiggle ’til it shuts

Wiggle ’til it bites, wiggle ’til it cuts

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead

Wiggle—you can raise the dead

Wiggle ’til you’re high, wiggle ’til you’re higher

Wiggle ’til you vomit fire

Wiggle ’til it whispers, wiggle ’til it hums

Wiggle ’til it answers, wiggle ’til it comes

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like satin and silk

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a pail of milk

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, rattle and shake

Wiggle like a big FAT snake

yup hit the nail on the head

Pretty sure thats from a song where repetition is not only common but makes it sound better

He stole about 20 lines from the same obscure book.

WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE

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Dylan, no contest.

Cohen, with his actual poetry, just proved us that he was indeed, as Joni Mitchell once joked, a Boudoir Poet.