self-discovery

False Prophet – Bob Dylan – Analysis

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False Prophet

Another day without end – another ship going out
Another day of anger – bitterness and doubt
I know how it happened – I saw it begin
I opened my heart to the world and the world came in

Hello Mary Lou – Hello Miss Pearl
My fleet footed guides from the underworld
No stars in the sky shine brighter than you
You girls mean business and I do too

I’m the enemy of treason – the enemy of strife
I’m the enemy of the unlived meaningless life
I ain’t no false prophet – I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely can go

I’m first among equals – second to none
I’m last of the best – you can bury the rest
Bury ‘’em naked with their silver and gold
Put ’em six feet under and pray for their souls

What are you lookin’ at – there’s nothing to see
Just a cool breeze encircling me
Let’s walk in the garden – so far and so wide
We can sit in the shade by the fountain side

I’ve searched the world over for the Holy Grail
I sing songs of love – I sing songs of betrayal
Don’t care what I drink – don’t care what I eat
I climbed a mountain of swords on my bare feet

You don’t know me darlin’ – you never would guess
I’m nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
I ain’t no false prophet – I just said what I said
I’m here to bring vengeance on somebody’s head

Put out your hand – there’s nothin’ to hold
Open your mouth – I’ll stuff it with gold
Oh you poor Devil – look up if you will
The City of God is there on the hill

Hello stranger – Hello and goodbye
You rule the land but so do I
You lusty old mule – you got poisoned brain
I’m gonna marry you to ball and chain

You know darlin’ the kind of life that I live
When your smile meets my smile – something’s got to give
I ain’t no false prophet – I’m nobody’s bride
Can’t remember when I was born and I forgot when I died

Bob Dylan (1941 –

This is a recent poem/song written by Bob Dylan from his album ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’. It was released this year … see this link. 

Each of the ten four-line stanzas comprise rhyming couplets.

Looking at each stanza, my immediate response …

S1 – If we open ourselves to the world without reservation pain can be the travelling companion. And this of course can course emotional turmoil. How big a backpack is another matter.

S2 – ‘Hello Mary Lou’ was the name of a song first recorded by Ricky Nelson. And Miss Pearl is another song … girls that influence the heart … girls that mean business and this is reciprocated.

S3 – Great to seek good. Great to know yourself and know where you’re going in life. Great not to be false to yourself. Great expectations!

S4 – To be inclusive and equal but not seeking gold … gold and silver are false things to hold.

S5 – There’s nothing special, special about Dylan … come to myside in the garden … then you will see, you will see and will feel … all that is special – special and real together

S6 – I’ve (Dylan) done a lot of searching … love and betray … I’ve struggled up mountains so hard not to fail … climbed a mountain of swords on my bare feet … it doesn’t matter any more about food and drink … I’m beyond that old searching game

S7 – Don’t go on appearances I’m not what you see … you don’t know me … I’ll get my own back on life … but who is to blame … vengeance on somebody’s head

S8 – I can’t give you anything … don’t look to me …you will be led astray … the swallow of gold … gold will choke you, it’s not a food … look up to the hill to God behold

S9 – Hello and good by … false prophet – true prophet, both rule the land … but to prison I send the false holding of hand

S10 … You know me and I know you … in confrontation something must give … I’m no false prophet … when was love born and when did it die!

Here is the official audio on You Tube 

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 and all his lyrics have been thought provoking. He is remembered by most for his early days of coming to fame with songs such as ‘It Ain’t me Babe’ … here is a YouTube link … and his involvement in the Counterculture of the sixties.

Mirror – Sylvia Plath – Analysis

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Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful,
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath

S1 – The mirror becomes a person with person attributes. Swallowing is equivalent to reflecting back whatever is in front of the mirror. The mirror is in a room facing a pink wall so it takes on this skin. From time to time faces and darkness separate the mirror from the pink wall which has become its ‘heart’. Whatever it reflects it tells the truth with no emotional response so in a way it is likened to a God being totally honest.

S2 – A lake is personified but this is different from the mirror. A woman (SP) is trying to explore the depths to find out who she really is and when she looks elsewhere there is no faithful reflection. Candles have romantic connotations and the moon insanity. When she cries the lake likes her wet tears. She may touch the water with her hands which is liked equally by the lake. She comes to the lake often and the lake faithfully shows her aging day after day. In her search for identity she has drowned her youth at the same time she is unaccepting of the aging process fearing the future and becoming a fish, a terrible fish the product of a life.

The water in the lake can be regarded as time. Eventually she will be drowned in the lake as time takes its toll. Time will drown us all – well that’s one way of putting it. Whether we become an ugly fish or a beautiful sea-horse is another matter. SP often considered death in her work and in this poem she considers self-discovery, aging and death with a some what depressive outlook on the future.

Sylvia Plath on Wikipedia.

 

Journey to the Interior – Margaret Atwood – Analysis

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Journey to the Interior

There are similarities
I notice: that the hills
which the eyes make flat as a wall, welded
together, open as I move
to let me through; become
endless as prairies; that the trees
grow spindly, have their roots
often in swamps; that this is a poor country;
that a cliff is not known
as rough except by hand, and is
therefore inaccessible. Mostly
that travel is not the easy going

from point to point, a dotted
line on a map, location
plotted on a square surface
but that I move surrounded by a tangle
of branches, a net of air and alternate
light and dark, at all times;
that there are no destinations
apart from this.

There are differences
of course: the lack of reliable charts;
more important, the distraction of small details:
your shoe among the brambles under the chair
where it shouldn’t be; lucent
white mushrooms and a paring knife
on the kitchen table; a sentence
crossing my path, sodden as a fallen log
I’m sure I passed yesterday

(have l been
walking in circles again?)

but mostly the danger:
many have been here, but only
some have returned safely.

A compass is useless; also
trying to take directions
from the movements of the sun,
which are erratic;
and words here are as pointless
as calling in a vacant wilderness.

Whatever I do I must
keep my head. I know
it is easier for me to lose my way
forever here, than in other landscapes

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is better known as a Canadian author of books rather than a poet. She is a prolific writer and very creative so it is interesting to look at this poem. 

S1 … This is obviously an internal journey within contrasted with travelling in the external environment. The first line states that there are ‘similarities’. The eyes define the scene as a wall to be broken … perhaps a ‘flat wall’ as the scene only comes ‘known’ when entered at a personal level. But what is found in S1 is that the environment is endless as ‘prairies’ and that it is ‘poor country’ and not easy going.

Well, to get to know yourself – who you really are – is perhaps a difficult and endless task. But this is the start of the journey so, hopefully, the country will improve with travel. It is interesting that the cliffs cannot be seen for what they are except at a very base level.

S2 … Destination is unknown except to be vague as a dotted line between points on a map. The endless light and dark could relate to both day and night as well as emotional highs and lows. I guess when we start any internal search we have little idea of what might be revealed … and again it is a difficult journey to untangle.

S3 … It is the small details in life that have internal effect. Small details can absorb much of our thinking if they have sufficient deep association. ‘A shoe among the brambles under a chair/ where it shouldn’t be’ – this implies an unfortunate meeting with another person – the ‘shoe’ indicating crossing another’s journey. White mushrooms are immature mushrooms and a paring knife is used to peel fruit to make it edible. What significance these hold for the poet is not known. You could of course liken the personal journey to that of fruit being made acceptable.

A ‘sentence crossing’ my path has double meaning – life as a sentence, and the written sentence of the poet that is now ‘sodden as a fallen log’ whereas yesterday it was more acceptable – ‘I’m sure I passed yesterday’.

S4 and S5 – this search for self is circulating into deep depression to the extent of self-danger. The poet knows within of this danger – ironic self knowledge given the circumstances.

S6 – There is no solution not from any words, not from the poet’s writing or from the Sun (whether or not indicating religious connotation). There is a cry for help.

S7 – The solution is internal – to stay focused and rational – ‘keep my head’  … a double meaning in a very real sense.

Here is a Wikipedia link  to Margaret Atwood.