Several folks have made a career out of disparaging Bob Dylan. Bob never made claims to be a protest singer or a revolutionary, so those who feel he sold out his principles weren't listening in the first place. Dylan committed the unforgiveable sin of scoring enormous popular success and having his songs covered by everyone from Joan Baez to the Turtles. That success does nothing to diminish his craft in my opinion.

Songs like Blowin in the Wind, Don't Think Twice, All Along the Watchtower,Like a Rolling Stone, and countless others earned him the title of Spokesman for a Generation, but he laid no claim to it. The songs attained tremendous success because they were accessible and well written.

Is Dylan a poet? He has never said that, to my knowledge. And while many of his lines hold up to comparisons to Cummings and Eliott, there were clearly a lot of weak rhymes and tongue-in-cheek images.

No the only claim Dylan ever made for himself was that he was a songwriter. And in my opinion, he's not only right, he is one of the very best, no matter what Ewan MacColl says.