Working on the book last night, I was about to mention something about Edgar Allan Poe. (We are using a synchronicity related to one of his stories.) But as I was about to utterPoe’s name, I started to say Bob Dylan. Suddenly, in my mind the two men’s images merged, and I blurted out: “I think Bob Dylan is the reincarnation of Edgar Allan Poe.”
There was no Dylan music playing in the background, nothing to reference him. Just as I said that to Trish, our daughter Megan walked up to me with a CD in hand and a shocked look on her face.
The CD was Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, which I’d given her a couple of weeks ago to copy onto her iPod. The photo on the CD shows Dylan tipping his hat in greeting, almost as if in acknowledgment. He’s also smiling, a rarity in his photos. Like Poe, he’s not known for a grinning visage.
Maybe it’s just imagination, but it was definitely synchronicity when Megan appeared at the right moment with the right object in hand. And, hey, the two are both master poets. One is the best known American writer, the other one is the best known American singer/songwriters of all time. And both are known as eccentrics. – Rob
Whatever colors you have in your mind Ill show them to you and you’ll see them shine
Bob Dylan – Lay Lady Lay
***
UPDATE from ‘Rue Morgue Avenue’
There apparently are many recorded references to Poe by Dyan, including this one:
In 2003, interviewed by Robert Hilburn in Amsterdam, Dylan said that in adolescence Poe’s poetry had ‘knocked me out in more ways than I could name.’ Dylan also mentions Poe twice in Chronicles Volume One (2004), and that December, interviewed on US-TV by Ed Bradley, when Dylan says that the burden of being perceived as a ‘prophet’ in the late 1960s made him feel like an imposter, he elaborates: ‘It was like being in an Edgar Allen Poe story and you’re just not that person everybody thinks you are, though they call you that all the time.
bobdylanencyclopedia
(thank you, Gypsywoman)
i thought you would find the dylan encyclopedia blog interesting – great update – and i checked out more recent photos of dylan myself – such striking similarities to poe!!! remarkable!
Fascinating! Thanks for the update.
Thanks, gypsywoman. Will check it out! & love your post!
just fyi – you should check out /bobdylanencyclopedia.blogspot.com for a dialogue on the poe/dylan thing – i was curious after our exchange above so i googled poe/dylan and came across this blog – great reading – jenean
If you look at a recent photo of Dylan, the resemblance is stronger – the mustache, the craggy features. However, I've never heard of Dylan invoking Poe's name.
very very interesting – the whole thing –
well, first of all, lay lady lay is one of my all time favorite dylan's pieces – LOVE it! anyway, it's really interesting that you are posting on poe – saturday i posted one of his pieces on DREAMS at my "dream journal" blog – your post reminds me of a bit that:
For I have revell'd, when the sun was bright
I' the summer sky, in dreams of living light
And loveliness,- have left my very heart
In climes of my imagining, apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine own thought- what more could I have seen?
his words IN CLIMES OF MY IMAGINING…WITH BEINGS THAT HAVE BEEN OF MINE OWN THOUGHT – WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE SEEN? remind me of your theory of the poe/dylan connection – and THEN, look at the similar physical characteristics in their photos – wow!