William, Sir Muir

“The tree (of Islam) is of artificial planting. Instead of containing within itself the germ of growth and adaptation to the various requirements of time and clime and circumstance, expanding with the genial sunshine and rain from heaven, it remains the same forced and stunted thing as when first planted some twelve centuries ago.””

“walking it’ to ‘came off it while riding it’. Whatever is the case, Dylan was undoubtedly recovering from the 1966 world tour that nearly killed him and probably would have, had he carried on with it, as originally scheduled. Instead, he was lying low in Woodstock and reading voraciously. Ginsberg says he took the following for Dylan to read: “a box full of books of all kinds. All the modern poets I knew. Some ancient poets like Sir Thomas Wyatt, Campion. Dickinson, Rimbaud, Lorca, Apollinaire, Blake, Whitman and so forth.” Although Ginsberg does not list Shakespeare among the ‘ancient poets’, I am inclined to think he was included in the ‘and so forth’, or at least that Dylan used some of his reading time re-acquainting himself with Shakespeare because we do know that Ginsberg was talking to Dylan about Shakespeare on the phone soon after this visit.35””