Francesco Donadio, Freewheelin’ in Rome. La vera storia della prima volta di Bob Dylan in Italia. [“Freewheelin’ in Rome”: The true story of Dylan’s first time in Italy”]. Rome: Arcana, 2022, pp. 160. Review by Alessandro Carrera, University of Houston A few years ago, Francesco Donadio, a music journalist, radio programmer, and author of […]
Steven Rings. What Did You Hear? The Music of Bob Dylan. University of Chicago Press, 2025. 360 pp. Review by Jonathan Hodgers, Trinity College Dublin. Here we have an important book about Bob Dylan: one that puts analysis of the music first. Steven Rings has antecedents in terms of monographs (which he acknowledges in […]
Bob Dylan. The Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through the Open Window 1956–1963. 8CD, Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, 31 Oct. 2025. Review by Gayle Wald, The George Washington University Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said—but what mattered if […]
Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood). Copyright © 1967 by Dwarf Music; renewed 1995 by Dwarf Music. Lay Lady Lay. Copyright © 1969 by Big Sky Music; renewed 1997 by Big Sky Music. To Ramona. Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music. All songs written by […]
Todd Almond. Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Broadway’s Rebirth. Bloomberg, 2025. David Browne. Talkin’ Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America’s Bohemian Music Capital. Hachette Books, 2024.
Alessandro Carrera is Moores Professor of Italian Studies and World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston, Texas. He has translated the songs and prose of Bob Dylan into Italian, including Chronicles, Volume One and Tarantula, and authored La voce di Bob Dylan. Britt Eisnor is a writer and researcher. Britt graduated from Emerson College in 2019 […]
Odetta on Bob Dylan Interviewed by Griffin Ondaatje and Craig Proctor Writer and filmmaker Griffin Ondaatje interviewed legendary folksinger Odetta in Toronto on November 18th, 2001 for an unreleased documentary he made with colleague Craig Proctor. The transcript is published in the Dylan Review for the first time, ahead of a future collection of […]
“The Drafts of ‘Brownsville Girl,’ Found and Lost” By Bill Lattanzi Bob Dylan has been surprisingly generous describing his writing method over the years. When he was young, he’s said, the songs came straight from the unconscious: “the early songs … were mostly all first drafts … It’s like a ghost [wrote them].”[1] As […]
“Thought/Dreams” By Michael Gray (2025) “Time brings to his deserted cot No tidings of his after lot; But his weal or woe is still the theme Of my daily thought, and my nightly dream.” Poor Alice is not proud or coy; But her heart is with her minstrel boy. This is from the […]
“Don’t They” By David Sheftman The rhymes don’t work They don’t. Don’t they? The rhythms gone It is? OK. And here I stand At 83 Etched lines on my face Weak at the knees. Voice like a jaggedy blade Eyes hiding behind shades Dying a little And some days a lot […]
