Barring one clear jewel - Francisca (1981) - and a strong, Tempest-like late statement on mortality (2001's I'm Going Home, starring Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich), much of his output seems either willfully obscure (The Uncertainty Principle, The Letter), dull (A Talking Picture, A Caixa) or just stagey, over-literal and awkward (er, most of the rest).
But if only those tempests strong enough to cause serious damage are studied, a disturbing picture emerges.
Released on 11 September, the same day as Love and Theft in 2001, and likely his strongest album since then, Tempest also arrives more than 50 years since Dylan's debut.
"The Tempest" is the strongest Shakespeare opera since Aribert Reimann's "Lear," and the Met, which knows the country of the past all too well, has edged toward contemporary life by adding this work to its repertory.
Now 71, his fiery "Tempest" was a clear, strong winner, mentioned on 37 ballots and netting 14 first-place votes.
Ideals still strong, Our love boat caught in hormones' tempest.
I stay under the covers waiting for the tempest to calm but it grows stronger and heavier until I'm convinced the tent is going to be blown clear off its perch into the dark choppy waters below.
The performance was particularly admired for George Bennett's performance as Caliban; it was described by Patrick MacDonnell in his An Essay on the Play of The Tempest published in 1840 as "maintaining in his mind, a strong resistance to that tyranny, which held him in the thraldom of slavery".
Dhaka Theatre's Tempest, adapted by Rubayet Ahmed, is short on words but strong on both music and dancing, reflecting the company's taste for mixing traditional forms of performance with more modern ideas.
But Jupiter is 5 times farther from the Sun than is Earth and sunlight is only 4percentt as strong there as on Earth, not enough to generate the observed tempests.
