Shakespeare in the Alley

Devoted to Bob Dylan as a poet

WELCOME, GENTLE READERS

This is the companion web site to the radio series Shakespeare in the Alley which is available through PRX.org to radio stations and to individual listeners alike.

This site is meant to supplement the series by providing additional information, scripts of the shows, resources and reviews, and ways to hear the shows as they are aired by various radio stations around the country.

"I consider myself a poet first and musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet."

~ Bob Dylan

WHO AM I?

I am Dr. Bill King, Professor Emeritus of English, Western State Colorado University (formerly Western State College of Colorado).  I am the author of the first Ph.D. disseratation on Dylan as poet (at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975). You can find chapter one under Resources.This site and the radio series is devoted to exploring Dylan's poetics. Dylan, like Shakespeare before him, is a democratic poet, an artist who reaches out to a wide audience with poetic vision and transforms a medium from popular pap to audacious art. Like Shakespeare in the sixteenth century, Dylan writes for performance, not for the page, in a popular medium experienced by audiences. Both have had their work bootlegged by others until the author released it officially and rapidly received recognition as a genius who changed the way the medium he used was viewed and overshadowed everyone using it for generations to come. In "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," Dylan says "Shakespeare, he's in the alley." That's where I get my title. For more information just follow any of the links. Welcome to Dylan Alley.