by Robert Bly
Oh you’re a bloody genius!
So here, I lift a cup of tea to you! It’s 11:44 A.M. Congratulations and thanks!
By the way, did you notice that your Hemligheter på vägen cover was used as the model for A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War? Yes. I sent it along to the printer, and told him to imitate your cover exactly, even to the color! He did.
I enjoyed Bengt-Erik Hedin’s essay—I’d love to see more reviews, if you have extra copies of them—it gives me a sense of what Swedish criticism is like.
I’ll send you the most insulting review I’ve ever gotten—it’s wonderful, he objects to everything about me except the size of my shoes!
Jim Wright is reading in New York tonight. He has a fine new poem on Leopardi, which will be in the next Sixties, along with a poem about our poaching activities.
Lowell and his friends are not all pleased by my article on Lowell’s poetry in the last Sixties (the red one). It is the only really harsh criticism he has gotten for about ten years, and I’m accused of not bowing to the golden calf. I am very much in the doghouse in N.Y. now, but it’s a cozy doghouse, I don’t mind!
Thursday about 10 of America’s hoarse and chain-smoking larks go down to Houston for a sort of songfest in the bare trees of Texas. We’ll all be sitting about there on the branches...I’m looking forward to it, mainly because Gary Snyder will be there, whom I’ve never met. Also there will be Robert Creeley with his one eye, Don Hall with his huge stomach, W. S. Merwin with his 55-year-old wife, May Swenson with her lead-soled boots for stomping on male poets, Carolyn Kizer with her cynical Washington smile (she is rumored to be a mistress of Pres. Johnson’s) etc. etc.
Write soon! Warm wishes to Monica & yourself from the Minnesota frontier.
Yours, Robert
* * *
The Viet-Nam poem about the ghost train is terrific too!
back
O blessed, silent poetry-reading public, I love you!
back
1967
Västerås 1-7-67
Dear Roberto,
some German professor is doubtless going to publish Robert Bly’s Briefe in 16 volumes someday. Don’t let this vision of the future scare you off writing a speedy reply to this letter! I need a little transatlantic blood transfusion.
During the fall I’ve been working on psychological assignments, among other things for an institute for people with CP. I’ve also been suffering through a Vietnam depression and reading reviews of my book. I’m very interested in hearing what people are saying about the Viet Nam war right now. In Europe opinion has turned against the U.S. In Sweden, for example, according to Gallup only 8% support American political policy. From what they write in the Swedish papers, it doesn’t appear that there’s been any change of opinion in the U.S., rather that the hawks’ position has become stronger after the election. Typical of the obvious pessimism concerning anything about America is that the local paper in Västerås wrote that the election of Hatfield in Oregon was a triumph for official policy—Duncan was described as a dove! I was completely horrified of course and called the paper’s foreign editor and pointed out the error. He apologized again and again. He had—like Homer—dozed off for a while. That anyone who was elected should be a dove naturally seemed so improbable, especially since Rea...R...(I’m having trouble getting the name out) R E A G A N won so big. %+)/11R(%&!!! How did the vote go in Minnesota?
And now for something less meaningful. From my last letter you will probably have gathered that this time I got some pretty negative reviews. Most have been positive but in Aftonbladet, in some ways in DN, in BLM, and a few more, other notes have been struck. A long article about cultural life in BLM was written by a specialist in POP (Leif Nylén) who unfortunately felt he had to assert that TT in his “passivity,” “resignation,” lack of ideology etc. has to be included in “den förbrukade litteraturen” (used up literature). A sort of grotesque Tranströmer-debate1 ensued. My defenders were plainly more numerous than my antagonists. I have at this point been defended both by old Communists and by right-wing authors. Mainly they’ve disliked the fact that I haven’t reconstructed myself enough, that I’m not interested enough in the mass media, McLuhan, POP or “Concretism.” The other accusation is that I’m insufficiently socially and politically “engaged.” Now it happens that I have in fact been doing social work full-time for 7 years—you’re perhaps thinking that would grant me a kind of exemption—ah, then you aren’t familiar with the current Swedish cultural climate. The political accusation consists of the fact that I’m not directed by ideology; this year one should preferably be a card-carrying Marxist. Instead, suspect elements of old-fashioned individualism, including religiosity, have been detected. I don’t think it’s possible to give a sense of the present Swedish cultural climate to any foreigner. I’m sending an article from DN as a sample all the same.
Another item from DN is the photo of the T family that appeared at the end of an article. You’re not getting the article itself, however—it actually embarrassed me: the reporter had taken it as his mission to present me as an extraordinarily “engaged” person!
You can’t tell from the picture in the paper, but I am at the moment 110 years old and long to be allowed to retreat for a period of meditation. Naturally, I’m longing most of all to write some verses again. Getting to read something good that was written this year, by you for instance, would be a sort of stimulus in that direction. I’m told there were poems by you in Poetry. Send them for God’s sake!
Västerås has suddenly become a cultural city, since the editor of BLM, author, philosopher, lecturer, Father of Swedish Literature and Bly-translator Lars Gustafsson has moved here. He lives in a special writer’s residence in the old part of town. He has just visited Berlin, where he read his own work on TV. There he shared a lodging with Kenneth Rexroth, who displayed a strange knowledge of modern Swedish literature. Among other things he said that he very much appreciated Tranströmer’s translations of himself (I’ve never done any) and Lars G’s poems in French (Lars has never been translated into French). Now it happens that Lars has so much on his mind at the same time that he often mixes them up (he believes for example that some of your poems are written by L. Simpson) and if Rexroth is of the same type, the strangest collisions are bound to occur.—On the subject of what you said in your latest, I’ve brought up the subject of BLM’s Vietnam-poem issue with Lars, and he says he’s sent it to you.
Warmest greetings to the family. I was happy that old “Out in the Open” was appreciated. It’s a sort of intercession for the U.S. among other things, and may all the prayer mills grind day and night for the good and hidden powers.
Yours,
Tomas T.
Västerås 1-15-67
Dear Robert,
your translations arrived in the mailbox while I was sitting eating breakfast with a visiting Finnish poet and author of children’s books. I ran my eye hastily over the letter and told the abovementioned party (since he asked) a few things about its contents. Stephen Potter couldn’t have arranged a better situation. For a moment he seemed to believe that this was what ordinarily occurred at breakfast in my house: that the foremost poets of the continents send me their translations and suggestions for publication. My delight, however, couldn’t be concealed for long.
And now the commentaries: “Track” seems wonderfully aptly translated. “Lamento” also—“hug” is a good variant for “klappa om.” “Summer Grass” is more like a Fantasia on a theme by TT, but fully acceptable, perhaps better in its English version than in its Swedish one. “Kyrie” good, possibly with the exception of “loud steps”—the Swedish words “tunga steg” [heavy steps] are not in the first instance a description of SOUND but of a kinesthetic experience. “A Winter Night” probably can’t be translated so that the rhythm is retained. One can choose: either to make it over some and have the rhythm intact or to do as Sixties alway
s does in cases of this kind. I think now that you have in any case, and in spite of being so literal, succeeded well in preserving the dactylic quality of the poem (Sixties doesn’t like iambics either!). The final lines should maybe be reduced somewhat, “feel” and “entirely” probably aren’t strictly necessary? Maybe “entirely” should stay in for the sake of the rhythm. Feel?
“From an African Diary” sounds so good in your English version that I wonder if it wasn’t conceived in English from the outset and the Swedish text isn’t a kind of translation. One thing is Swedish however, and has caused a misunderstanding. HÖTORG ARTIST is something special that you don’t know about. Hötorget is a square in Stockholm where formerly (and maybe also now) bad art used to be sold cheap. The sort of landscapes with pines and red cottages, portraits of gypsy women, sunsets. It refers in other words to mass-produced, conventionally painted pictures in oils which were sold cheap by vendors on the street. HÖTORG ART has gradually come to stand for cheap, mass-produced, conventional art. HÖTORG ARTIST, in other words, is the same as the German “Kitschmaler.” Kitsch would be the German word, but what is the English? Well. When I was in Africa I discovered that there is hötorg art there too. Vagabond salesmen in Uganda, Burundi and the Congo sold pastels cheap—I bought one. The strange thing was that the human figures in their stereotypical form were thin in these pictures. There’s the idea of the first line. Instead, you’ve conjured up the picture of emaciated Africans in the marketplace. The meaning, in other words, is: On the paintings of the bad congolese artist the figures move about skinny as insects.
“A tourist” in section 2 corresponds to “turisten” in the original version of the poem, which I must have sent you sometime. In the book I’ve changed it to “utlänning”—the foreigner. The episode is autobiographical (the place was Bangui in the Republic of Central Africa). I probably changed it from “tourist” to “foreigner” for reasons of vanity. I didn’t like to consider myself a tourist! (Besides, it was preposterous that anybody would be a tourist in the Republic of Central Africa.)—In the last section you have the plural for some reason, the students, but in Swedish it’s one student. Dare I believe that the German plural ending -en (“ach die Studenten, die Studenten”) has influenced you? (In Swedish the plural would be STUDENTERNA.) Under the title of the poem I’ve put “(1963)” in the book version—it’s best to date things in these times.
“Allegro” is all right except for line 8. I don’t become a man who takes it all calmly, no I MIMIC ONE.
1-25
I’ve gotten a book, very well known in Denmark, by Poul Borum, called Poetic Modernism, which goes through the most important poets from Baudelaire to Eugen Gomringer. One chapter is entitled “Young America” and includes the names Berryman (“who for heaven’s sake must not be confused with the frightful women’s-magazine poet John Betjeman”), Lowell (his For the Union Dead is explained as being “somewhat weaker”), Plath, Snyder, Ashbery, Levertov, Creeley and Bly. Of the last-named he writes “clear, deep and funny and necessary poems.” You are further praised for translations “based on relevance and not on formalism.” “Poem in 3 parts” and—“Über allen Gipfeln” are quoted.
I get some pretty words myself and am placed between Yves Bonnefoy and Ted Hughes. The American names are actually, from the Nordic viewpoint, original, among other things because the Beatniks are only mentioned as “amusing.”
Till next time!
Your friend
Tomas T.
20 Feb, ’67
Dear Tomas,
Thank you for your notes on the translations! I wonder if “thumps” would do for “tunga steg.” We sometimes say “My heart is thumping,” and there is always a little bit of fear in the phrase. I’m not sure if “A Winter Night” will ever succeed—my first draft was worse than this one. But it’s like walking on a moving wire! The poem sways back and forth in a lovely way, and I fall off! I’m not sure, by the way, exactly what motion the caravan has as it starts off from Lapland. I’m not sure of the suggestions around the whole event. Are there camels in this caravan? It must be a good old Arab-type caravan with face veils and Richard Burton and everyone in it—?
I missed the “Hötorgskonst” completely. We call that “tourist art” or “sunset art” (sunsets are the favorite subject over here—I’ll have to think farther).
I’ve written for Borum’s book—I want to see what he says about you! This guy must be intelligent!
We did our Napalm Poetry Reading in N.Y., showing color slides—unbelievably harrowing things—of napalmed children in Vietnamese hospitals—between the poems. There was tremendous emotion in the audience. Several times when I read comments from State Dept spokesmen—the State Dept is trying to keep the burned children out of this country, and will not give them visas even to be treated by plastic surgeons here so far—the audience hissed with anger at the State Dept.
I’m in the process of reproducing the program, prose quotations, slides, and poems now, so it can be shown in many colleges at the same time. We really don’t need poets for this program—only a good reader and slide projector.
We also took a truck out in various places in N.Y. that week with sound equipment, a short skit about the war, 15 poets, and magnified photographs of the burned children. It was wild. The negroes were very polite. The most unruly audiences (they were street audiences) were upper middle class white areas. On Thurs, when I wasn’t with the truck, they all got beat up by a bunch of Cuban exiles, all the sound equipment smashed, etc.
So at last I’m home, and can bounce on my knee our new son, Noah! We both liked the name Noah because he was a friend to the animals. Everyone said, can’t you find a good Norwegian name for him—Lars? or Olaf? or Eric? I said, how about Jeremiah? So they shut up. Noah was 9 pounds, 2 ounces, and has a majestic scowl.
Thank you for the photograph from DN! Carol says you look lovely with your hair long, and you are to wear it that way always. You have caught us all in your fixed stare in the photo, and look like the Ancient Mariner, about to tell us of tremendous sea serpents you have just seen, ghost ships with all the men in chains, etc. We’ll never get out of the room until you tell that story!
Believe me, Susan Sontag is the greatest bore in the world. Jim Wright out of sheer self-protection, takes a drink every time her name is mentioned. She represents HELL AS (COMPLICATED) BOREDOM. We have your whole Pop art crowd in the U.S. too—but the concrete business is drowned out here because, obviously, one of those concrete poets—they are men made of Lego bricks—can say nothing meaningful about the Vietnam war. So the crisis tends to undermine these buildings built on sand. Interestingly enough, the poets in the U.S. that have proved themselves most able to write strong poems about the situation the United States is in are the romantic poets—Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, Galway Kinnell. That fact has been a shock to the Susan Sontag crowd, as well as the Marxist crowd. The professional leftists haven’t written or done a single memorable thing on the war.
Don’t bother yourself with the attacks on your work—Machado used to get the same thing, and now all his critics say, “Gee, I was wrong!” The only way to read articles on your own books is with one hand over your mouth to keep from laughing.
Louis Simpson always keeps his attacks around for six months before reading them—by then, the book seems like someone else’s, and you can cheer them on more! more!
Of course, Sweden is smaller than the U.S. A criticism in the U.S. is like getting hit with a stone thrown from far far away. It was probably an accident. I suppose in Sweden you have the feeling the stones are coming from nearby—Someone is throwing stones at me! You can almost see the expression on their faces. (faces of the stones.)
Write soon! And send some poems! Everyone says your poems are the best thing in the New Directions annual. And they are!
My best to Monica,
Yours,
Robert
V
ästerås 3-4-67
Dear Roberto,
thanks for two missives: your letter with poems, animals, friendly words and now today some pages from the Nation. But first, loud trumpet blasts from us to herald the birth of your son Noah, friend of the animals! However did you keep from telling us he was on the way? Our best wishes to him—if those are even needed for a baby that weighs so much...
It was fine to read about your tours with the burned Vietnamese children—one seizes upon every reminder that the U.S.A. has a conscience with the most urgent gratitude. All the same, it feels good that you are back in Minnesota just now, safe from furious Cubans and the bad air in New York.
The present degradation of the official U.S.A. torments me as if I were an American myself. Why? What kind of poor, suffering, tortuous thread is it that runs between me and the wrinkled devil’s masks in the Pentagon? Johnson has now lost everything but his face, it stands by itself in the desert wastes, completely hollow. One who is frightened to death of losing face will eventually lose everything except his face.