How many roads must a man walk down?

Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?

Nobody knows whether Bob Dylan will eventually emerge and accept the Nobel Prize for Literature for "having created a new poetic tradition within the great American song tradition." So far, he has not, and that has caused a lot of anxiety among the Nobel committee who have to complete all the procedures before the official awarding of the prize on Dec. 10. Interestingly, even if Dylan refuses to accept an award because it was initially set up by an armaments manufacturer, the Nobel committee will still continue to include the name of Bob Dylan on their list of winners of this year's prize for literature - just as they do for one of Dylan's famous predecessors in the same category, Jean-Paul Sartre, who declined it in 1964 on the principle that he never accepted any official honor.

But is Dylan a literary figure or is he - as he called himself - a "man of song and dance?" 

The surprising choice of the Nobel committee fuelled a discussion that has been simmering for decades over the dividing line between poetry and songwriting. The easy answer that a contemporary literature scholar would give us would be that poems do not have music and lyrics do, that poetic verses are written to be recited and not sung. But many would also put forward value judgements, such as that poetry is "more serious," that it requires more mastery in literary forms, more sophisticated perceptions and intellectual depth which consequently means that lyrics are less serious, less complex and more shallow.

This argument may also imply that poetry is something that ordinary...