Lots of interesting Dylan-related content out there right now, what with the new album release and all. It’s hard to keep track (and some of us might even have lives). But I don’t think the following should be missed, even it might make some fans a little kind of queasy at first.

Scott Warmuth is the one who discovered that Bob Dylan used lines from the U.S. Civil War era poet Henry Timrod in some of the songs on Modern Times. He has continued plowing that furrow, and is currently writing about what he’s discovering by applying his methods to the songs on Tell Tale Signs. His revelations regarding the previously released song ‘Cross the Green Mountain are, to me, most dramatic of all so far.

I think that a lot of people (though notably not the writer of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs) have known that Dylan drew directly on a Walt Whitman poem (Come Up From the Fields, Father) for one verse of that song — where a letter arrives telling of a son who is wounded in battle, when in reality he is “already dead.”

However, Scott Warmuth has just identified six more Civil War era poems from which Dylan drew phrases while writing ‘Cross the Green Mountain. You have to read his post for the details and evidence. He says that all six poems can be found in a book called “Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith” by Alfred Porter Putnam, published in 1875.

So, it’s pretty clear that in writing this song, Dylan deliberately immersed himself in Civil War era poems, and absorbed not only their spirit but also particular images and phrases. It cannot but take me aback a little bit: ‘Cross the Green Mountain is one of my favorite songs, and now I see that some of my favorite lines were written by, well … William Newell and Louisa Jane Hall.

What do you think and say about all this? Different people will come to different conclusions, as ever. If Dylan had published a book of poetry — “Poems by Bob Dylan” — and had all these things in it, with no credit to the previous poets, long-dead though they are — he would be judged by just about one and all as being guilty of plagiarism, pure and simple. But that’s not what he did. He is writing songs, and in doing so is drawing on these old poems, and also shining a light upon them (with the assistance of Scott, at least). And he is coming out of a tradition of songwriting that reuses and swaps things around and echoes older sources as a matter of course.

It sure is fascinating, in any case. Earlier this year, when asked about winning a Pulitzer, Bob Dylan said , “I hope they don’t ask for it back.” I guess maybe he was only half-joking.

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