Allen Ginsberg not Alan Ginsberg! Some time back (January 2014) we ran part of this clip, but here it is again.
Allen’s comments are, of course, from the 2005 American Masters documentary (directed by Martin Scorsese) – No Direction Home – Bob Dylan
AG: “A very famous saying among the Tibetan Buddhists -“If the student is not better than the teacher then the teacher’s a failure” – and I was really knocked out by the eloquence (of Dylan), particularly, “I’ll know my song well before I start singing…”..”where all souls shall reflect it (or, you know, “(I’ll) stand on the mountain where everybody can hear”) – It’s sort of this Biblical prophecy.
Poetry is words that are empowered that make your hair stand on end, that you recognize instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it because somebody’s realized it – Then you call it poetry later.”
AG: “When I got back from India and got to the West Coast, there’s a poet, Charlie Plymell, at a party in Bolinas, played me a record of this new young folk singer, and I heard..”..Hard Rain..” I think – and wept – ’cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation, from earlier Bohemian or Beat illumination and self-empowerment..”
Allen’s eyes welling, visibly moved (all those years on), as he makes that statement.
An earlier Allen-on-Dylan posting can be found here