Song lyrics of well written songs often do stand up as poetry , that is why. examples john of dreams[ the whole of the song] Bogies bonny belle[ her name was isabel the lily of the valley and the primrose of the dell] we expect songs of any genre to be well written [ that does not mean they have to be good poetry] , however.. wiggle wiggle ballad in plaind d, are neither poetry or well written. some of dylans songs have good tradtional melodies some have good original melodies, some do not, some are well written some are not, but what has it do with folk song ,other than he occasionally borrowed trad melodies Many tradtional songs or folk songs are well written, and have stood the test of time that is why they are still being sung, and have interesting tunes, but it is irrelevant to this discussion, we are discussing dylans songs not their genre which is arguable, and not relevant. because something is popular or a hit it does not mean, it deserves to be popular or is good, it can be a result of funding, money spent on promotion, it can perhaps have a good tune and crap lyrics, that does not make it a well written song. Finally we were discussing Dylan songs whether they are the badly written ones or the well written ones, it is debatable whether they are folk songs, so please desist from leading us on an intellectual wild goose chase Jerry, you in your post are calling them that, but it is not relevant . whether they are folk songs or not is a red herring. we are talking about the songs of Dylan, please do not bring in genres, it muddies the waters I know hundreds of good tradtional songs that have a good melody a profound message, a good narrative and some of those contain first rate poetry, so bloddy what, i also know some iffy ones, it has nothing to do with the songs of Dylan any more than it has to do with the songs of or rodgers and hammerstein,ray davies or lennon macCartney or nanker phelge or flanders and Swann or gilbert and sullivan
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