Dylan is still a very fine writer, Slag, but his talents seem to be moving more to prose lately. Have you read his book "Chronicles - Volume 1"? It's a fine piece of writing, really brings back the time.

I agree with everything you've said about Leonard Cohen. The man is a true poet of the highest calibre. He has said that it sometimes takes him years to craft a specific song before he thinks it's ready. That means he is using a very different approach than Dylan does.

Dylan seems to come up with stuff fast...in a "flash" of insight. I call that "instinctive" writing, and that is the way I write songs too, and I find it produces the best ones. The ones I have to labour over and tinker with for lengthy periods of time usually get discarded, because they're not so good at all. I'll tell you what I think is really happening with those "flash" songs....I don't think they're coming from me, I think they're coming through me from a source that is way beyond me (though ever near), and I am like the pen that's being held in that source's hand. I am the scribe, that's all. My own character, of course, does affect how the message comes through a bit...but I am not the original source of the message. I'm serving that source in my own way, as best I can.

I can't speak for how Cohen does it, but I'd say he has honed the craft of being a poet to a tremendously high level. He's like a master luthier of songs. I'm sure the same "source" helps him too, but he works differently through the process.