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A two-volume anthology of poetry textbooks written and published in 1970. The books pair popular folk and blues songs with accompanying poems to help students understand and relate to the literary devices being employed within both artistic forms. The books were originally inspired by one of Canada’s most famous musical exports, singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell, who first encouraged author Homer Hogan (associate professor of English at the University of Guelph, Ontario) to attempt the project.

“The rationale for Hogan’s anthology is twofold: first, to provide relevance in college teaching … and second, to give a boost to contemporary American poetry, the enthusiasm for which among students had all but dried up, no matter how popular it remained with teachers.”
From “Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan’s Road from Minnesota to the World” by Colleen J Sheehy and Thomas Swiss, 2009.

Both covers follow the same format, a selection of overlapping photographic portraits of famous musicians, each overlaid with a red circular frame. This device adds a degree of poetic consistency to the images while placing greater emphasis on the subjects’ faces.

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