In his early years, Bob Dylan saw himself as both a songwriter and a poet. He included complete cycles of poetry and lyrical prose in his records, and long poems were published in magazines of the folk and beat scenes; he recited the poem "Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie" at concerts. The lyrics served as his workshop for ideas, allowing him to make self-commentaries to both friends and foes, connecting the poetry of his songs with the literary traditions of Rimbaud, Brecht, and the Beat Poets. This volume offers, for the first time, a bilingual selection of Dylan's poems and prose poems from his beginnings up to 1974, supplemented by some programmatic texts from recent years. Edited, translated, and with an afterword by Dylan expert Heinrich Detering.