[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by JonPR

Oh I know all about Dada (I'm an arts graduate)!

I don't believe Dylan was a dadaist though. Many of his lyrics - in fact most - make good sense, and have a poetic charge. Even if his poetic techniques were sometimes crude, amateurish, there are plenty of beautiful images in his songs, some of them stunning. He always took music dead seriously, even when he was trying to be funny - just not in the same way as many of his fans did. I don't think he meant to feed the nerds.
Yes, that's a kind of additional angle. You have a few possibilities:

1. Complex poetry that means something, and is understood correctly (as the poet meant it).

2. Complex poetry that means something, but is incomprehensible..

3. Complex poetry that means something, but is misinterpreted (given the wrong meanings).

4. Complex poetry that means something, but is perceived as Dada-ist nonsense (assumed to have no meaning at all).

5. Dada-ist wordplay that is clearly nonsense..

6. Dada-ist wordplay that is perceived to be complex poetry (and thereby misinterpreted).

7. Dada-ist wordplay that accidentally evokes unintended meaning.

IMO, Dylan, at different times, was responsible for 1-4. I can accept occasionally he was responsible for 5-7. And of course sometimes he just wrote fairly straightforward song lyrics, not "poetry" at all, except in the sense that they rhymed and scanned!

John Lennon was never really much good at 1-4. But (at least in I Am the Walrus) he had a good crack at 6. (His books, btw, used sardonic neologisms based on puns, with occasionally unintentional surrealist impact - i.e., they sometimes worked as 7.)

Leonard Cohen, meanwhile, barely wrote complex poetry at all. He had the skill to use common language to express deep meanings - just the occasional striking image - seemingly surreal, but loaded with meaning. ("You notice there's a highway that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder"; "The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor"; "I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet".)

(Rest of your post is great stuff, no further comment here. )

Trying to get briefer in each reply, so as not to overwhelm the thread (if I haven't passed that point already...

Dang! That's a fine list there of the various ways folk, in both song lyrics and page poetry, depart from the straightforward and narrow. Yes, Lennon had a strong preference for nonsense intended as nonsense. Dylan has so many modes, but Dada and put on was one of them. He'd improvise it in his mid 60s interviews. There's a good deal of non-sense stuff in the Basement Tapes era material for example. Non-sense turned into song lyrics has an advantage, in that listeners won't necessarily be bothered by "What the heck is he talking about" if there's a nice tune, a compelling performance, some rocking riffs, or a refrain line they can relate to. I think of some of Pete Brown's lyrics for Cream.

I knew about Dada as an art movement not as a literary one before my project, I was kind of surprised at the range of the literature when I dipped into it. The couple of Tristian Tzara poems I've translated are more emotionally charged, intentionally so I think, than I expected. At least in the UK, I suspect the whole "Art School" as a place for the academic odd-balls factor led British lyricists onto that influence

You mentioning Leonard Cohen reminds me that I need to translate some more Lorca, apparently a big influence on Cohen.