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Article: He may look like a rock star, but he's really a people's poet; Robert Coles argues that Springsteen sings in the tradition of Walt Whitman.(FEATURES)(BOOKS)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- December 16, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Timothy C. Davis
The concept of songwriter as poet has been around for some time. And ever since a youngster named Robert Zimmerman decided to leave his home in Minnesota to seek fame under a new moniker, Bob Dylan, people have been calling pop stars "poets."
Robert Coles, the Pulitzer Prize- winning psychiatrist at Harvard University, has no problem with this trend. Poetry, he suggests, didn't go underground in the late '50s and early '60s - it went overground, to jukeboxes and concert halls, and anywhere young people congregated to share their passions and pain.
To be a poet in Coles's eyes, you don't necessarily need sophisticated ...