Expecting Rain

In poet Cliff Fell's article regarding the Ovid lines from "The Poems of Exile" that he found in Modern Times he cited a few examples and wrote, "There may be more, for all I know...Not that I'll be counting."

I got a copy of the book yesterday and with just a quick skim I was able to find a significant number of other lines that Bob seems to have been fond of beyond the ones that Fell cited. Here's what I've found:

"Ain't Talkin'" -
"Every nook and cranny has its tears"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 1, Section 3, Line 24 -
"every nook and corner had its tears"
----------------------------------------------
"Ain't Talkin'" -
"all my loyal and my much-loved companions"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 1, Section 3, Line 65 -
"loyal and much loved companions, bonded in brotherhood"
----------------------------------------------
"Ain't Talkin'" -
"I'll make the most of one last extra hour"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 1, Section 3, Line 68 -
"let me make the most of one last extra hour"
----------------------------------------------
"Workingman's Blues #2" -
"My cruel weapons have been put on the shelf"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 2, Section 1, Line 179 -
"Show mercy, I beg you, shelve your cruel weapons"

(notice how Bob has reworked this line to make it rhyme with "You are dearer to me than myself
As you yourself can see," which he also borrowed from Ovid)
----------------------------------------------
"The Levee's Gonna Break" -
"Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 4, Section 7, Line 51 -
"there's barely enough skin to cover my bones"
----------------------------------------------
"Ain't Talkin'" -
"I practice a faith that's been long abandoned"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 5, Section 7, Lines 63-64 -
"I practice terms long abandoned"
----------------------------------------------
"Ain't Talkin'" -
"They will tear your mind away from contemplation"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 5, Section 7, Line 66 -
"tear my mind from the contemplation of my woes"
----------------------------------------------
Here are the lines that Cliff Fell mentioned in his article:

"Working Man's Blues #2" -
"No one can ever claim/That I took up arms against you"

Ovid - Tristia, Book 2, Lines 51-53 -
"no one can claim that I ever took up arms against you"
----------------------------------------------
"Workingman's Blues #2" -
"To lead me off in a cheerful dance"

Tristia, Book 5, Section 12, Line 8 -
"or Niobe, bereaved, lead off some cheerful dance"
----------------------------------------------
"Workingman's Blues #2" -
"Tell me now, am I wrong in thinking/That you have forgotten me?"

Tristia, Book 5, Section 13, Line 18
"that I'm wrong in thinking you have forgotten me!"
----------------------------------------------
"Workingman's Blues #2" -
"You are dearer to me than myself/As you yourself can see"

Tristia, Book 5, Section 14, Line 2
"wife, dearer to me than myself, you yourself can see"

Well, it's certainly good to know that Bob is reading important literature and poetry. I thought he was just a song and dance man.

Bob and his lawyers ought to sit down and review the laws on copyright and fair use. Adapting lines from Ovid for songs is a great idea, but an English translation will be in copyright for 75 years after publication, and lifting lines verbatim is probably violating copyright.

Manipulating found language is a standard technique in avant-garde poetry, and there is a traditional poetic form (called something like "centime") which requires the poet to use lines from other poems. Some of the Ovid examples show very clever manipulations of the source material to suit the song.

There are really only two issues about all these borrowings: is the resulting song entertaining and memorable? Is credit properly acknowledged?

In the case of WMB2 and Ain't Talkin I think it is. And no, the credits are not properly acknowledged. But it is fun discovering them.

Really, i don't see what the big deal is here. Most of the lyrics used were changed slightly, regardless- so there is no sense of ACTUAL Plagerism... it's just an idea taken from. It's like a tribute. My opinion is.... Modern Times is a pretty damn good tribute.

Ovid did not have a publisher so there's that.

But the people who
translate his work--that's intellectual property--
Translation is an art form in and of itself.



Of course, the lines he re-arranges are ones that would be standard translation, there's that.

But it's also one of those things like quoting the bible. It's a given more or less where the line comes from. (??I've always assumed that anyway)

NOw poets and fiction writers include "notes" at the back of their books, and the notes mostly inform the reader if he/she wants to do further research. And naturally, intellectual property.

Wow. I'm thinking about this guy from grad school-his book had a ton of those notes.

But then I did a creative thesis so I'm not somebody who ever had to worry about it that much. If it was a poem I'd written, I would definitely write something like, "(after Walt Whitman)" under the title. Once I wrote a whole poem that totally rips up Wallace Stevens. I called it "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Tuna." and I recently mailed it off to a lit mag. Since the poem is a parody, I wrote, "With deepest apologies to Wallage STevens." If it ever gets accepted, I might have to write something in the "Contributors NOtes" or something.

Yeah. That's why I'm makin the big bucks. I only retained 10% of what I learned in grad school.

Oh, and thanks for sharing. The Ovid references sneaked right by me.

First song on the record;

"I've been sittin' down studyin' the art of love..."

That's one enormous clue (even if those cited here are from the Tristia)!

Like I said 10%. That's why it's great to have friends.

(I like The Metamorphoses sp???, but I all I want to do is skip to the part I need to look up and re-read. If I had to say a favorite, I'd say Orpheus and Eurydice. Sometimes I just go there and forget why I went in there in the first place. Oh, well. . .)

If Ovid had anything about him, he'd sue. come on ya wimp!

Ovid's an interesting source, as he was the Bob Dylan of his day in some ways, but suffered a reversal of fortune by being bruised by a sexual scandal (he apparently witnessed an infidelity he might have reported to the Emporer but failed to do so) and was exiled to a colonial outpost on the Black Sea, where he wrote some of the poems Dylan was reading and using.

Plagiarism doesn't merely mean copying words verbatim. You don't avoid plagiarism by changing a few words here and there. The fact that Ovid or the King James Bible is in public domain has nothing to do with whether or not Dylan is plagiarizing. It's also not merely a matter of opinion. Many people here just don't have the expertise to be competent judges of the issue.

In most of the cases with Ovid, the lines serve as allusions to or echoes of a very well known work of Latin poetry, and are no more plagiaristic than if you wrote a song begining with the words "Thou shalt not kill," at least on an individual song by song basis. But taken all together, the translator, if the translation is still in copyright, could argue a case for co-writing credit and/or punitive damages.

When Old Crow Medicine Show wrote a song using a Dylan melody (two melodies actually) and chorus lyrics, they gave Bob co-writing credit and hence a share of royalties. I'll bet if they had not done so, Bob's lawyers would have been sending cease and desist letters at the very least.

What siiie we dig im up and see if ee's got the bones to do it!

sorry. I can't keep from pushing my fingers into all those nice shiny keys