Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate. Image: wikimedia commons.

Bob Dylan (who changed his birth name to honor the poet Dylan Thomas) won the Nobel Prize for Literature today. It is the first time the prize has been awarded to a songwriter; although many would argue that Bob Dylan is a poet, like fellow laureates T. S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, whose work is deepened with music. Among Dylan’s anthems, “Blowin’ in the Wind” was performed at the Washington Mall just before Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Bono, citing Keats, stated that Bob Dylan “juggled beauty and truth.” What is the role of the poet in political change and world issues?

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.