About dygo

Graduate Student at the University of Texas at Austin

March 17, 2011

BOB DYLAN AND GREEK CULTURE CONFERENCE
at
University of Missouri St. Louis
Center for International Studies

SPONSORED BY:
THE HELLENIC GOVERNMENT-KARAKAS FAMILY FOUNDATION
PROFESSORSHIP IN GREEK STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-ST. LOUIS

ORGANIZED BY Prof. Michael Cosmopoulos,
with the assistance of Terry Marshall, Richard Thomas and Tom Palaima

For those of you who are Bob Dylan fans and are in the major St. Louis area, please consider joining us for the following conference:

“Bob Dylan at 70: Immigrants, Wanderers, Exiles, and Hard Travelers in the poetry, music, and culture of Ancient Greece and Modern America”

Saturday, March 19, 10 am-5 pm, Century Room A, MSC.

Free and Open to the Public. Lunch provided.

For the full program please visit www.umsl.edu/~cosmopoulosm/Dylanprogram.pdf

There is a newsroom item on it at:
http://blogs.umsl.edu/news/2011/03/15/conference-explores-bob-dylan-immigrant-influence-on-art/

Bob Dylan at 70

10:00-10:15
Michael Cosmopoulos, UM-St. Louis
Welcoming Remarks

10:15-11:00
Barry Powell, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Freewheelin With Bob Dylan

11:00-11:45
Richard Thomas, Harvard University
Must be the Jack of Hearts in the Great North Woods

11:45-12:00
Discussion

LUNCH

12:00-13:30

AFTERNOON
13:30-14:15 PM
John Foley, University of Missouri (Columbia)
In Search of Penelope: Dylan as Wanderer

14:15-15:00 PM
Thomas G. Palaima, University of Texas-Austin
Songs of the ‘Hard Traveler’ from Odysseus to the Never-Ending Tourist

COFFEE BREAK
15:00-15:30

15:30-16:15 PM
Stephen Scobie, University of Victoria
‘And Forget My Name’ – A Reading And Commentary

16:15-17:30
Videos of Bob Dylan performing — Discussion

MY PAPER:
Songs of the ‘Hard Traveler’ from Odysseus to the Never-Ending Tourist

THOMAS G. PALAIMA
The traveler is a familiar figure in ancient Greek song and in the 20th-century American popular and folk song tradition. For emigrant and immigrant nations like Greece and the United States, songs about hard lives away from home and home communities are fundamental as ways of learning modes of behavior and expressing shared feelings about common experiences. These songs may express the thrill of adventure, the loneliness and sorrow of an unsettled and essentially friendless life,, the dangers of travel, longing for security, and the joy of finally reaching a permanent destination and setting down roots again. All of these, of course, are found in Homer’s “Odyssey,” the supreme distillation of ancient Greek, traveling-man songs. We will here examine Dylan’s own songs and his performance repertory in order to trace these same themes.

 


Added Palaima editorials:
“Closing doors to the future”
“Budget woes and our misguided priorities”
“No more excuses for UT’s excesses”
“Key to the present lies in the past”
“Let’s make this our 9-28”
“U.S. gun laws allow normal day at UT to take a scary turn”
“Game over: Helping teens deal with violence”
“Redirect UT’s resources”
“Obama’s rah-rah speech ignored sobering reality”
“Wake-up call on homelessness”

Added Palaima reviews:
A New History of the Peloponnesian War

African American Writers and Classical Tradition

February 6, 2011

Long-time friend of Austin, of Texas, of the United States and the world, Joel Cryer passed away on January 23, 2011 at age 64. Here are his obituaries and text versions of two commentary pieces (from 2001 and 2007) that get across partially who Joel was and why he is missed.

Following the 08/13/07 commentary is the response and discussion that Joel’s ever-present strong and quiet and even gentle concern for morality evoked.

 

July 21, 2010

Added Palaima Review of Freedom Is Not Enough: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Texas (also available as a pdf)

 

www.todoaustinonline.com

TODO Austin is a free-distribution, full-color, monthly newspaper that focuses on Austin’s multicultural community. The August issue is in distribution today.

The articles in this issue, which features a beautiful full color photo of Dylan on its cover, are:

 

  • Gavin Lance Garcia (editor and publisher), “Living in the Age of Bob Dylan” p. 8
  • Richard Thomas (Harvard University Classics), “Into Exile With Bob Dylan: Rome to the Black Sea” p. 8
  • Kurt Heinzelman (UT Austin English), “Dylan’s Turkish Delights” p. 9
  • Tom Palaima (UT Austin Classics), “A Classical Bard Brings It All Back Home” pp. 9-10

For your convenience I attach a pdfthat excerpts the pages of writing about Dylan and his music.

The entire issue and back issues can be easily found on the TODO web site.

 

Added Palaima editorials:
“Capitalizing on socialism’s bad name”
“Juneteenth is a reminder of a reality that is still overdue”
“No profiles in courage when it comes to university presidents”

Here you can access a collection of war songs at:

http://dase.laits.utexas.edu/media/palaima/mp3/Songs_of_war_all_mp3.mp3

Lyrics for many of these songs with some comments are attached in pdf and .doc versions.

This mp3 has twenty songs of war that I use in my Myths of War and Violence Plan II seminar:

  1. Steve Earle “Rich Man’s War” (Iraq, Afghanistan);
  2. Richie Havens, “Handsome Johnny” (historical sweep from Revolutionary War to civil rights movement);
  3. Richie Havens, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Civil War);
  4. Bob Dylan, “John Brown” (unspecified);
  5. Blind Willie Johnson, “When the War Was On” (WW I);
  6. Woody Guthrie, “Sinking of the Reuben James” (WW II);
  7. Perry Como, “Dig You Later (A Hubba-Hubba-Hubba) (WW II);
  8. Townes van Zandt, “Ballad of Ira Hayes” (WW II);
  9. Sunnyland Slim, “Back to Korea Bluees” (Korean War);
  10. Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler, “Clean Cut Kid” studio session (Vietnam War);
  11. Bob Dylan, “Masters of War” Gerdes Feb. 1963 (Cold War period, unspecified);
  12. Bob Dylan, “Masters of War” Berlin 2002 (unspecified);
  13. J.B. Lenoir, “Veitnam (sic) Blues) (Vietnam War);
  14. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Fortunate Son” (Vietnam War period);
  15. Todd Snider, “Fortunate Son”;
  16. Johnny Cash, “Drive On” (Vietnam War veterans);
  17. Willie Nelson, “Jimmy’s Road” (Vietnam War);
  18. Bruce Springsteen, “Devils and Dust” (Iraq and Afghanistan);
  19. Emily Kaitz, “It’s Not Enough to Give Our Love” (general);
  20. Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the USA” (Vietnam veterans).

And here are readings of war poems from Aeschylus to the present (texts in attached pdf):

http://dase.laits.utexas.edu/media/palaima/mp3/PALAIMA_Selection_of_war_poems_mp3.mp3

Readings of War Poems:
(1) passage from Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon” (5th c. BCE);
(2) Yehuda Amichai, “The Diameter of the Bomb” (Israel);
(3) Walt Whitman, “I Saw the Vision of Armies” (Civil War);
(4) Ernest Hemingway, “A Farewell to Arms” (WW I);
(5) Wilfred Owen, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” (WW I);
(6) e.e. cummings, “my sweet old etcetera” (WW I);
(7-8) Robert Graves, “I Hate the Moon” (WW I), “A Dead Boche” (WW I);
(9-12) Siegfried Sassoon, “The Kiss”‘ (WW I), “The Hero” (WW I), “Enemies” (WW I), “The Tombstone Maker” (WW I);
(13) Randall Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” (WW II);
(14) Denise Levertov, “What Were They Like?” (Vietnam War);
(15) Allen Ginsberg, “A Vow” (Vietnam War 1966);
(17) Yusef Komunyakaa,”Facing It” (Vietnam War veteran 1988)

May 16, 2010

Bob Dylan – Our Homer
Recording Date 2010-05-05

Description

This is a studio version of the lecture and the music for the Poetry on the Plaza presentation that I gave on March 1, 2006 at the Humanities Research Center (HRC = Harry Ransom Center, too). It had the title “Bob Dylan: Our Homer”.

I discussed and illustrated in recordings, as I repeat here with clear audio, the art of Bob Dylan as an oral poet and songster.

This covers his career from the very early 1960’s until 2006.

Dylan and his music are parts of a rich tradition going back to Homer and in the modern period reaching back to the 17th century in folk ballads.

Here I selectively play and discuss mainly live concert recordings and the recordings of singers (Martin Carthy, Charlie Patton, the Stanley Brothers, all the way to Warren Zevon) who inspired Dylan’s own songs or were singled out by Dylan himself in his concerts as special.

I hope you enjoy these masterworks and my commentary on them.

On December 1, 2010, I will give a second Poetry on the Plaza on Bob Dylan.

The topic will be “Harmonica Bob: The Ineffable Poetry of Bob Dylan.”

In it, I will discuss Dylan’s use of harmonica (an instrument that is very important in folk and blues traditions) in order to express meanings and feelings that cannot be said or to emphasize or create a tone for what has been said in sung words.

 


Dylan Song Poems 1963 through 2009
Recording Date 2010-05-14
Description

Bob Dylan has been ‘accused’ of abandoning concerns about the ills and problems of society when he made the shift around 1965 from the traditional folk music scene to writing and performing his own at times deeply personal music.

There is also a controversy over whether Dylan’s lyrics can stand alone on their own as poetry.

Here I read the lyrics of selected Dylan songs from 1963 right up to the present. I provide minimal commentary aimed a contextualizing more than advancing any arguments.

These song poems include: “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “SeƱor,” “Blind Willie McTell,” “Foot of Pride,” “What Was It You Wanted,” “Love Henry,” “Not Dark Yet,” “Mississippi,” “Ain’t Talkin’,” and “Forgetful Heart.”

All of them reflect Dylan’s continuing and keen interest in the human condition, the human spirit and the human heart.

********************************

My thanks to Michael Heidenreich and the UT Austin College of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services for producing these audio files in connection with my honors seminars on war and violence and on the history of song as social commentary.

January 28, 2010

Added a report on the visit by Ruth Palmer.

Added a report on the visit by Dimitri Nakassis.

Added Palaima editorials:
“Going by the book”
“Surround children with beauty and goodness”
“UT’s Byzantine Budget: On $5 million coaches and laid-off lecturers”

Added PDF of Palaima article:
“Continuity from the Mycenaean Period in an Historical Boeotian Cult of Poseidon (and Erinys),” in the Festschrift for Spyros Iakovidis.

Added Palaima Review of Out of Athens: The New Ancient Greeks

Watch Palaima and Lino Graglia debate college football
The transcript of their exchange can be found here.

Also Watch Palaima and Stephen Sonnenberg debate the cultural evolution of war.