Hard Rain

• What makes the question-and-answer format so effective?

• Why is repetition a powerful device in this song? Which words and phrases stick in your mind?

• Is Dylan hopeful, despairing, or warning us about the world we live in? What is your view?

• Are the images in this poem the truth, a version of the truth, or one person’s opinion?

Write a poem or lyric about a hard day in your life, a hard day at school, or what is unjust in today’s world.

Plan your poem by brainstorming ideas using these headings:

• Where did you go?
• What did you see?
• What did you hear?
• Who did you meet?
• What will you do now?

Use your best ideas and rework them into lines that are 11–13 syllables long. Then, try to rework your lines to fit the rhyming pattern in the original song. If you get stuck, try using the same rhyming vowel sounds as the original song, and use a rhyming dictionary to help you. -ee, -in/en, -er, and -ar are good starting points.

• Tip: If it sounds right, it is right.

Work in pairs or small groups to create complete verses, following the structure of Bob Dylan’s lyrics. Read your lyrics alongside the original lyrics to compare rhythm and rhyme.

• Explore the ballad form and the question, answer, repetition, build-up structure of Lord Randall. See here and here.
• Discuss how Bob Dylan uses personal experiences and turns them into universal symbols.
• Brainstorm sensory experiences, symbolic events, and emotional turning points to use in their poems.
• Model writing one or two stanzas with the class.
• Consider collating students’ verses into a themed class poem.

• A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan song lyrics.
• The call and respond poem ‘Lord Randall.
• Information about the Bob Dylan song.
• Listen to the original version of the song by Bob Dylan 
• In A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Bob Dylan uses symbolist imagery in the style of Rimbaud. Read more about Rimbaud here.
• Bob Dylan said he created the song by using the first lines of songs “he thought he would never have time to write.” He said, “Every line in it is actually the start of a whole new song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one.”
• If you keep a journal, or you look through your previous stories, essay, assignment and ideas, can you create a poem using just the first lines of pieces of writing?
• Or, can you find inspiration for new song or poem by looking from the first lines of other Dylan songs?
• Consider investing in some rhyming dictionaries. Our list of great dictionaries for children and teens has some good examples.
• If you create a class poem, you could evoke School of Rock’s Mr Dewey Finn and perform it to this karaoke backing track. There’s a chord chart here.