We in this country live with politics that is frantic but trivial. There are no fundamental things contestedthings fundamental because they stir the hearts, minds and lives of virtually everyone.

I don't understand Bob Dylan. Maybe that's how it should be: something that fascinates is something that does not have to be, or cannot be, understood. I read Dylan's book of poetry, Tarantula, which he wrote in 1966 when he was twenty-five. In it, words move not like letters, not like vessels of meaning, but as sound, in their repetition, consonants, emphasis, and syllable length: