Yale's Youngest

American TEvSS" Wiederkehr continuedfrom previous page porting the guitar, the guitar extending the bass. This is the spine of the song, you realize, or its heartbeat, banging against the spine." Every word somehow has more meaning because of its symbiotic relationship to each note and the varying levels of their intensity. Each instrument joined with Dylan's words gains velocity until in the third chorus they are described as shattering everything: The intensity of the first words out of Dylan's mouth make [sic] it seem as if a pause has precededthem, as ifhe has gathered up every bit of energy in his being and concentrated it on a single spot, and as if you can hear him draw that breath. "How does it feel" doesn't come out ofhis mouth; each word explodes in it. Here Marcus tells us the song "doubles in weight." By the third chorus Dylan "has blown the song to pieces. . .." Now the "simple, straight, elegant [organ] lines are breaking up. . .." Everything is flying out from the center. Marcus follows Dylan over the years, demonstrating the elusive nature of this unique song. The inability to recapture that moment in the studio is illustrated by Dylan and Michael Bloomfield's (guitar) reunion fifteen years after the song was recorded: Bloomfield fingered his rolling notes, but he couldn't play the song. ... [I]n the way that, like so many Dylan guitarists who over theyears. . .have copied Bloomfield's notes as blankly as Bloomfield was doing this night, he could only copy himself .... Marcus's insightful and entertaining observations reflect the elusive nature ofDylan's song, bornfrom a world influx. The straggle for Bloomfield to duplicate his own work proves Marcus's proposal: the song was not solely about the musicians who recorded it—it was about the moment. And yet, over the years, the moment has managed in some sense to linger. The song that could have— and maybe even should have—changed the world for the better, didn't. Marcus touches on Dylan's movie Masked and Anonymous (2003), which echoes the notion of a world that has lost its way. Dylan as Jack Fate is almost forgotten. When they do remember Jack, they can sing his songs, but they no longer know what the words mean. At this point Marcus moves from Masked and Anonymous and me forgotten poet to misinterpretations ofDylan's works in theform ofcovers of"Like aRolling Stone," covers that are so far removed from the original that they reflect this lack ofknowledge—which demands the question: did anyone ever really understand the song at all? Those covers, however, demonstrate the crux ofMarcus's book: that the Highway 61 Revisited recording of "Like A Rolling Stone" was a musical miracle ofsorts—a nexusjoining art and the anxieties of a world in flux. Dylan "and the audience changed over the years, but except for stray moments the song had gone as far as people playing it could take it—or as far as it could take whoever tried to play it." Dylan remarked: "It's like a ghost is writing a song like that. ... It gives you the song and then it goes away, it goes away." Marcus's insightful and entertaining observations reflect the elusive nature ofDylan's song. He examines not only the song, but also its creation bom from a world in flux. Moreover, Marcus demonstrates the power ofthe song even ifmisinterpreted and misused. Marcus reminds us that, even today, whetiier you hear it on the radio or courtesy of your iPod, "you are not quite hearing a song you have heard before." "Like A Rolling Stone" is fresh and relevant every time it is heard—"it cannot carry nostalgia." JeffWiederkehr lives in San Diego. Yale's Youngest Wayne Miller Crush Richard Siken Yale University Press http://yalebooks.com 62 pages; cloth, $26.00; paper, $14.95 Richard Siken's Crush opens with the brief poem "Scheherazade," the title of which highlights Siken's interest in storytelling—its ability to frame andreframe experience—which isjust one ofCrush's preoccupations. The poem closes by introducing another recurring idea, "how all this, and love too, will ruin us," though for Siken...