by Robert Bly
I sent the paper about The Minnesota Writers to our boss of the Writers’ publishing house. How is Franklin? Love to you all. Please forgive this mess. I am hunted by djinns.
Tomas
17 March, ’73
Dear Tomas,
Beacon has sent me a few queries I can’t answer, and I have to pass them on, with apologies, to you.
1. Martinson’s poem “Namnlöst,” why is it called Namnlöst, when he mentions her name, Clary, in the poem? Would it be Nameless, by the way, or Namelessly? in English...(poem from Nomad)
2. One of Ekelöf’s poems, from Färjesång, the group called “Etyder,” is called “Sung.” What is that? A Swedish word? or the Sung dynasty, and therefore not to be translated?
3. For the anthology entitled Modern lyrik...is The Modern Poem ok? “Spökskepp” I trust is “Ghost Ship.”
“Nomad” I trust is “nomad.”
Don’t forget to send me the title of your poem about looking for light switches in the woods...looking for fuses on the bottom of rivers is a lot of fun, too...
Your friend,
Robert
24 March, ’73
Dear Tomas,
I don’t want to go to Göteborg! I just want to sit in your house and hear the stones roll through the windows, while all the panes remain whole. Yes, truly. The only other thing I long for is for both of us to pay a visit, for a half hour or an hour, to Harry Martinson. As you know by now, the Swedish Institute collapsed in a disgraceful way under your pressure and awarded me 1,500 Swedish crowns...oh joy oh joy! It means I’ll buy a lot of goat cheese in Norway...
Love, Robert
I’ll come May 1st (or the night of the 31st), and will be with you June 1, 2, 3, 4. I have to fly to London and home on the 5th.
March 25 -73
Spring is early this year. It is the first day without overcoats! This evening Emma is singing in the cathedral, in a cantata by our friend Werner Wolf Glaser—she is a member of the choir, not soloist. (The text is—humbly—chosen by Glaser: Rilke, Schiller and Glaser himself! He has published a book of poems at his own expense.) He is a brilliant Jew from Köln, a refugee in Denmark until 1943 when he was smuggled to Sweden.
The Göteborg reading was for an audience of writers. And some of their friends. They did not use me well. Instead of talking with me they gave small speeches about “the meaning of poetry” etc. One middle-aged lady—a rather unknown poet—was nice and said that Krig och tystnad was one of her favorite books. I think she wants to hear your poems primarily. But some of the other ones probably see a glimpse of hope to be translated by you. Especially one former Englishman, Martin S. Allwood (he was not present when I was there but he sent a mesage that you should come, he was so eager to see you). Allwood has started a sort of translation industry and wants to have you in the business, I think. If he is good or not I don’t know, but I know that he is prolific. Too prolific. The only possible day for a visit by you seems to be May 30. I leave it to you to decide, but if I were in your shoes (like whales eating the grass) I would hesitate to accept.
I have always been fond of the mad Walking in ditch grass poem. So here is a first version. With liberties.
Walking in the Ditch Grass
The spring wind blows dissatisfactions
and mad architects, two-mile long tails,
and my shoes like whales
eat the grass, sweeping through
the grass, eating
up the darkness.
The night is windy. Sleek cows fly
across the sky. Samson
is angry.
So much of women
in this uneven grass.
(RB original)
Note. So much of women, what does it mean. So much of femininity? Or so many women? Or? Does “sleek cows” mean that the cows are shining? (real welfare state cows?) Does uneven grass mean that some leaves are tall and some are short or does it mean that the grass is rough? Do the cows fly, like aeroplanes or birds, or are they simply running in the sky direction? You see how complicated your poems are, you need a real professor Richards to give lectures about you for months.
Love and peace
Tomas
Västerås 29 3 [1973]
Dear Robert,
I don’t know why the title of the Martinson poem is “Namnlöst.” Maybe he could not give a name to the poem so he simply called it “Without Name.” “Sung” is Chinese, not Swedish. It means “Sung.” “Modern Lyrik” means “Modern Poetry.” The title of my lightswitch poem is still “Further in”—“Längre in”—I hope to find a better name before the book is published.
The translations of Ingegerd Friberg are not bad. Her fault is that she is too close to the English text—she does not dare to let go—naturally, she is humble. As a good woman she does not know that the name for “firebombs” in Swedish is “brandbomber,” not “eldbomber.” “Nedhangande grenar gin platsen låg”—is bad word-by-word translation—Gustafsson is better here. “Eremilën” and “Att se in i ett amibile” are good translations. The poem about walking in the woods and the November birch is not bad in Swedish but I think I can do it still better. May I? You will see it in my next letter.
I was hypnotized yesterday. I am not a “deep trancer”—sorry to say—but I can become one probably. The state of mind was fine anyhow and I felt happy afterwards.
I got the Hawaiian magazine. Fine! This young Minnesota poet is good—Louis Jenkins—one of your best pupils. Did I meet him?
It is evening. I am rather satisfied and extremely stupid. Have you ever gotten such a stupid letter from me? My IQ is 78. Good night.
Monica is doing something in the kitchen. The dog is growing and growing. Be careful! Hope to see you soon. Your old 1-2-6 (ectomorph)
friend Tomas T.
29 March, ’73
Dear Tomas,
O wonderful! A chance to talk about my own poem...it has five layers, three of which you should avoid, they have caused temporary or permanent insanity in all the readers who have ventured into them, their shoes are later found in ditches many miles from their homes, in the hospital, their noses retain scratch marks for many weeks...
“Sleek cows”...like cows in Denmark, they are fat, and terribly self-satisfied...their skin may shine a little from sheer good health but they are not spiritual beings at all...just well-fed and well-cared-for cows...I don’t know why they’re in the poem. Maybe Samson has just thrown them! I doubt that, he was crazy about jawbones of asses, that was his thing...In any case, they fly across the huge midwestern sky like enormous passenger airplanes, crossing in front of you from east to west.
“So much of women”...I wrote this poem as it was, on a walk in the ditch just west of our house one spring...so you have to imagine the long natural grasses that grow in the ditches around there. Eventually some fool farmer comes and cuts them, but this was early enough in the summer or spring so that no one had cut the grass yet, and it was wonderfully thick, around my ankles. So I wanted to end with the mood of that grass, which was so un-super-ego, so un-welfare-state, so un-Nixon. At first the line was “so much richness / in this long ditch grass.” No doubt “so much darkness / in the long uncut grass” came in then “so much of the future / in this long ditch grass”...but none of them were right. Then I decided that by “the future” what I meant or hoped for was that I would come closer to my own feminine soul...and that closely cut lawns must be like crew-cuts on men, and uncut grass is like the long hair of women...so it finally settled down, after about a year, to “So much of women
in this uneven grass.”
You can still use “long ditch grass,” or “uncut grass,” or “grass never cut”...whatever will make the image clear.
In the original the “dissatisfactions,” which are also dissatisfactions the poet has with his own (overly masculine) psyche, or with
his present life, are in the plural. The architects are insane, from too much planning no doubt, and are trying to build their buildings from the top floor down, the tails (on invisible animals) are approximately three kilometers long...it’s just important to have many confident syllables there:
mad architects, two-mile-long tails...almost every one of the syllables in that line receives emphasis and a long-seeming vowel...
Göteborg sounds horrible. I’ll punish them by sending Mark Strand there to read.
Love, Robert
5 May, ’73
Dear Tomas,
I am in an airplane on the way to Honolulu! I was supposed to meet Voznesensky here tomorrow, but the Russians decided not to let him come, after he wrote several naughty poems you’ve probably heard about...pulling the ears of bureaucrats and talking of his trips to the U.S. I’ve just done a few other readings to clear up debts, including a reading last Tuesday at the Donnell Library, where I found many of your fans...I read them the new “We got ready and showed our home” poem of yours. The audience clapped so long after the first stanza that I almost decided to give up reading poems of yours at all, and clapped after every
[Editor’s note: Some text is missing here.]
a version of the November Birch poem has come, but I don’t have it with me, for some reason. So I’ll just make a few foolish generalizations. The poem was written up in Northern Minnesota, where one feels the land much less used or conquered by human beings. The spirit finds that exhilarating. I think I used the word “obedient” to describe the farm land around Madison, which I was about to go back to. The farm land is like a cowed schoolboy, who has had all the rebelliousness crushed out of him, no doubt by administrators and psychological counselors.
I know “sodden body” is difficult, but it’s related to the poem “Suffocation” in The Light Around the Body, when the psyche becomes wholly filled with “worldly” detail, the body grows thick and sodden (as in the opening lines of “Hair”). “Sodden” is used to describe a washrag, for example, so soaked with dirty water that if you lifted it, the water would drip out. It is also used, oddly, to describe a man totally drunk in Ireland. It is then a term of contempt. So it suggests weight, grossness (like John Mitchell’s face), an utter absence of the spirit.
A rumor is going around the U.S., started by me, that Harry Martinson is your spiritual father. In fact last week when the Nation printed two of my Martinson translations, he was simply identified in the contributors’ notes in one sentence as “Tomas Tranströmer’s spiritual forefather.” That seemed to the Nation sufficient justification for his existence, I guess.
Watergate is having powerful impact here, possible only in a nation where the people are becoming rapidly infantilized, and have given over decisions on what is right and wrong to Daddy—how furious they are to have the decisions handed back again!
It means that next time we’ll elect a mother—look for a Presidential candidate who is a stomach type—he will win.
Write soon.
The Jeane Dixon of Madison
Minnesota
Robert
Västerås 29-6-73
Dear Robert,
here are 2 pictures of the late Mr Trans...pardon, here are 2 l a t e pictures of Mr Tranströmer, the Swedish Bard.
I want to have them back after they have been used by Beacon Press. It was difficult to get them.
You will get 100 dollars from Författarförlaget soon. Don’t complain, it is not my fault that the American economy has been handled so badly that 100 dollars are not worth much today.
From now on my address will be
Gatan, 13038 Runmarö Sweden
The summer started with fantastic sunshine, Sweden was—as the previous year—one of the hottest places in Europe. This week I have been working still in Västerås, with the family safe on the Island. For the first time since the early sixties I have no serious problem to live with and I hope that will be a good position for writing something. What a pity that you can’t live on the Island too, this summer!
Hope to hear from you soon.
Love
Tomas
P.S. Do you think it is necessary to write to Harper’s and Wesleyan? Could you not simply give the permission for publishing? Suppose they say NO. We will publish the poems anyway.
4 July ’73
Dear Monica and Tomas,
I told Carol all the details of my visit with you, and she was properly impressed with all the work we did, and all the goodies we managed to eat up, and the walk into the suburban wildness, where there are always fingers of foreigners poking from the ground, asking for a bed. I had such a good time with you all...thank you for it. Stockholm seemed very prosaic afterward, and James Tate seemed to be suffering stomach pains from having eaten some huge canary—Gunnar Harding is still hungry, but I noticed some feathers around his mouth. I went into the washroom, and carefully brushed mine off...
I’ve been studying your fruit-poem, though I disappear into a vast abyss each time I come to Salamo...perhaps it’s the name of one of the new Italian works in Västerås...
Carol has sold her story to New American Review—that’s like being invited to visit the Pope—and is likely to be paid $600 for it!!!!!!! The children’s interest in my poetry is fading now—
Love
Robert
Västerås 18-8-73
Dear Robert,
You will have some more money from this rich country soon, the fee for your poems in Författarförlagets Tranströmer book Stigar, but it will be only half of the Dagens Nyheter fee—there must be some difference between the honorable publishing in a Newspaper and the more humble appearance in a Book (as there is a difference in status between a big guy who writes journalism and a small guy who is a poet)! Your poems in Stigar are: Ensamhet om natten i skogarna, Sex vinterdikter i avskildhet, Promenad på dikesrenen, Gräver efter mask, På Mauis klipper. Or shorter: Six winter poems late at night about digging worms in the spring ditches of Maui.
I read the whole book for a small audience (mostly middle aged ladies of both sexes) in Leksand, Dalecarlia, in July and after the reading I asked if they wanted to hear some poems once again. Well, what happened was that they asked for your poems “I want to hear this winter poem by this wonderful American...” etc. So I am trained now in reading your poems (without trying to do a choreographic interpretation of the black crab).
Economy is bad and I am looking forward to the money from Beacon Press. What has happened there? Have Martinson and the widow of Ekelöf agreed? Except for the economy everything is fine, Monica and the children are in good spirits, have recovered from the winter hardships. I have written about 75 lines of Östersjöar and sketched about 100 (I can see no end of it) and I could have done more if the weather had not been so good—a fantastic summer heat has paralyzed the brain often.
The house of my mother-in-law at Runmarö will be empty 10 days in June next summer and you can all live there free of cost if you like. We would all be happy if you could.
My visit to the U.S.A. next year will start in Tucson at February 25. It will probably end one month later in Canada (London, Ontario—Steven Osterlund’s place). In between—do you think there are some nice audiences in New Mexico or Nevada?
Love to you all. I am eagerly waiting for reports about how you are.
Tomas
18 Sept, ’73
Dear Tomas,
I thought you’d like to see the sort of letters your strange countrymen write to total strangers...I’m sending you a copy of Some, a good new magazine...and a little poem of mine enclosed...I’m typing up some new ones...one about a moth is passable...the rest...Don Hall has written an article on Sleepers in which he says I’m the most “systematic” poet in the U.S.—Snyder is second—that’s a stomach type...whatever has a skeleton they find to be too masculine, over-reachers—We have a pony here who is a
perfect stomach type—his name is terrific for that—PEANUTS—he is only quarrelsome if he hasn’t just eaten—his back is so wide and broad you don’t know where to put the saddle—that’s probably a secret of stomach types—was Don Quixote a pure nervous system type?—his horse too...I’m babysitting Micah, he is the sweetest child I have ever seen, even among my own huge brood! Love to Monica—What a good time I had there at her table.