Dylan's Visions of Sin (85 page)

508
Spenser,
Hymn to Heavenly Beauty
: “I feel my wits to fail, and tongue to fold”. Dylan: “The fast fading
words / That rolled from my tongue”, “As the tune finally folded”.

509
Berryman,
Dream Song
number 45. Dylan,
Bringing It All Back Home
, jacket-notes;
Lyrics 1962–1985
,
see
this page
.

510
I draw on an essay of mine on
American English and the inherently transitory
(
The Force of Poetry
, 1984).

511
OED
has the noun “pierce” as
rare
, from 1613, with Keats,
Isabella
, XXXIV: “Like a lance, / Waking an
Indian from his cloudy hall / With cruel pierce”.

512
The car is heard in Robert Lowell’s poem
Grandparents
, in
Life Studies
(1959): “the Pierce Arrow clears its throat
in a horse-stall”. Lowell, with whose art Dylan’s has affinities (including these contrarious puns or anti-puns), said in conversation: “Dylan is alloy; he is true folk and fake
folk, and has the Caruso voice. He has lines, but I doubt if he has written whole poems. He leans on the crutch of his guitar” (to Gabriel Pearson,
the Review
, summer 1971).

513
Sleeve-notes to Peter, Paul and Mary,
In the Wind
(1963);
Bob Dylan in His Own Write
, compiled by John Tuttle,
see this page
.

514
Interview, London (4 October 1997);
Isis
(October 1997).

515
Rolling Stone
(16 November 1978).