by Robert Bly
Yes the readings are getting more exciting. At this one, as I was about to begin, six surrealists shoved an enormous cream pie in my face. Then four “street poets” leaped to their feet and decided to beat hell out of the decadent intruders. So it goes!
[Editor’s note: RB commented on a copy of the essay “Politics, Poetry and Prophets” by Peter Bates:]
Dear Tomas, You see they are demanding I write more political poems! They think seals and billfolds are not enough!
Västerås May 19-77
Dear Robert,
a large part of this province is underwater. I just returned from a drive through the Strömsholm area where the fields are flooded, the trees standing in a lake, the waves coming closer and closer to the castle—the snow melted too quickly this year, partly because of the ruthless clean-cutting of the woods in the northern part of Västmanland...(see my poem for Mats and Laila!)...well, spring is here and I have decided to start writing letters again. I have thought it over many times, if I should go to the U.S.A. this autumn and I have found that I should. My poetic ego needs it, my poor poetic ego has shrunk so much that I have to use a magnifying-glass every morning to find it...
You never told me about what has happened to Östen Sjöstrand in California. You sent me a letter telling me the sensational news that you were going to some place to hear Sjöstrand lecture or read or whatever it was. What was it like?
(turn the page softly)
Here are two pieces. The headache piece was not seriously meant, I sent it to Géza Thínsz, who is a fellow sufferer of migraine, as a private message. He translated it into Hungarian, I protested, but he tells me that it is so damned good in Hungarian and many Hungarians have congratulated me. So maybe I should add a note: “written in Swedish but should be read in Hungarian.”
In the other piece (I don’t know if I should call it “julpsalm” or “minusgrader”) is the word “solkatt” (sun cat) which in Swedish means a reflection of the sun...If I have a small mirror in the sun I can throw a reflection on a wall, or in your face (you will get dazzled), this bright spot is called “solkatt” in Swedish and it is not in my dictionary but now you know what it means.
On Saturday my old friend the composer Glaser in Västerås will have a “salong” for a couple of friends. He brings people together and then plays his own compositions for them. This time he wants me to read something in the pause between his piano sonata and his symphony nr 1, so I will read prose poems by us. Maybe the hockey poem and some more. Maybe I should also tell them some stories about you.
Love to you all. I have come out from my winter hole, so please send me a letter and say hello!
Tömas
28 June 77
Dear Tomas,
How good to hear from you! Since yesterday I am an inhabitant of my new eight-sided house on my new land on the shore of Kabekona Lake!!!!! Loons all night, harsh crows, woodpeckers, thrushes, weird unidentified chortlings, the unconscious scattered out among a thousand small creatures in the brush! Please write me here: c/o Cry of the Loon Lodge, Laporte, Minn, 56461. The people at the Lodge are friends, and we get our mail there. Carol is here, also Noah and Micah. Mary and Biddy are at a language camp nearby, learning French.
About the lies—in late May I decided I couldn’t stand the deceit and unclearness any more and I told Carol what I feel about Ruth and what was happening there. Carol knew with some part of herself, and with some part not. So there has been much grief here. And many old griefs in the marriage, also involving lies—in which, as you say, I live evidently as a fish in muddy water—came to the surface. But for all of us, there is a relief and even a lightness in the clarity at last. It looks as if Ruth will go to the Jung Institute in Zurich this winter, while we all figure out what to do. Don’t grieve for us—I tell you this from a similar desire for clarity toward and among the men and women I love—that we love—so I include my love to you and Monica. You should probably not tell Monica yet. Carol may want to do that when she feels the time is right.
Your friend,
Robert
7 July, ’77
Dear Tomas,
I’m thinking of you on your island with nothing to read, and so I’m sending you my longest prose poem of recent times! It’s all about a piece of wood I picked up in a pasture—thank God there aren’t a lot of poets walking around in pastures up here, who knows how many more such ob
It looks roughly like this
I am in good shape, only about $10,000 in debt, but I hope to raid the universities this fall to make up some of that.
The order of prose poems planned for the Swedish book is fine. I’m sending the editor a photograph today if I can find one.
I’ll write soon about your AMERICAN TOUR this fall, which I’m looking forward to very much! I’ll get Mark Strand to introduce you at every reading, with a forty minute talk about “Nothing,” then Allen Ginsberg will play several Indian instruments during the reading to provide authentic Swedish flavor, and finally a concrete poet will close with his new poem “Tractor Sounds.” As soon as that is finished, he is immediately given a university position, and your books are confiscated by the library, along with your sweater, which you unwisely took off during the reading: that is sold to Texas, and becomes a permanent part of the “Lars Gustafsson Collection.”
Do write. Love, Robert
[undated, 1977?]
Dear Tomas,
A few notes on “August Rain.” The towels are from swimming—ones the children left outdoors near the cars when I brought them home the day before from the swimming pool. The “stoop” which you’ve translated as “pall” is the small wooden platform just outside the screen-door entrance to my study (the schoolhouse). I don’t know what you call it. I could have watched the rain from inside the screenporch, but I would have missed some, so I sat outdoors (dragging a chair out with me). (Just an ordinary wooden chair.) “Become crowded” should give the feeling of lots of people on a sidewalk. “Farstu” and “verandan” are in the English both “porch,” the little screenporch alongside the schoolhouse. “Livere numarna” I don’t recognize. The belts are the simple leather belts a workman might wear—he left for the hospital so quick he didn’t get a chance to change it from his “everyday” pants to his “Sunday” pants—“the bachelor” would be a 65 year old farm worker who never had money enough to marry. “Wainscoting” is the old wood boards that used to be put along the bottom of walls. It implies an old farmhouse, never remodeled. The “trunks” are the ships’ trunks that get heavier in-between our trips to Europe every four or five years, or even the “suitcases” that get heavier in-between my poetry reading trips. I guess it must be “trunks” because they rub against the side of some old steamer’s hold, and somewhere make a hole in the wooden side of the ship. The last sentence is the most important in sound. It should sound triumphant and joyful—water coming in after a long drought!—and only after the reader has taken that in, and is glad, does he notice that it is also an image for the death of the speaker.
If you have one more to do, try “November Day at McClure’s” or “Grass from Two Years” or “Windy Day at the Shack.”
Love, Robert
Västerås Oct 7 -77
Dear Robert,
strange how encouraging it is to hear your voice on the telephone, even when you have nothing encouraging to say! A good gift. Life is rather calm now. I have returned from a trip to Norway. That small country in the west has received some Swedish culture: from Västerås a boys’ choir and the famous writer Lars Gustafsson. I followed in the steps of the boys’ choir to Kristiansand—Lars went to Ålesund. I also visited Bergen (together with Jersild and 2 nice ladies who wrote children’s books). And alone I went to Stavanger where my offering to give a reading was rejected by the Norwegians but accepted by Robin Fulton, who teaches English there: he gave me one of his lecture hours—we discussed (in English) translation pr
oblems and so on with his students. But Kristiansand was very warm and Oslo too. I gave a lecture for the Scandinavian language students. One of them wants to write a thesis about me but the teacher said that he would probably not be allowed to—everything later than Hamsun is regarded as improper there.1 Anyway, I am more pro-Norwegian than ever. A country without city culture. “Lutefisk” with bacon. In “Teatercafeét” the waiters are Indians nowadays—how exotic to hear an Indian speak Norwegian! In Stavanger there were a few buildings as ugly as the new ones in Sweden. (Oil boom disease.) But the rest is completely Norwegian.
I will publish a new book next year. Two poems are needed still. They are underway. But some of my colleagues seem to be able to finish a whole book more quickly. I will die as a still-promising poet at 80...
You mentioned Boston. Where in Boston, and who? Our dear sad-voiced Hamburger? Is Boston a good landing place for the Swedish Nightingale? Or should I leave the U.S. from Boston? Maybe I should land in Oberlin—or Minnesota—to get some good and bad advice about what translations to use during the trip. The Field people have no hesitations about giving advice. I sent them some translations and they came back with a letter saying that they had 43 proposals for changes in the translation. It would be easier for them to give these proposals face to face.
Maybe this is a good air trip: Stockholm-Minneapolis-Cleveland-LaredoBoston-Stockholm. Instead of Laredo you could propose other places very far south. The University of Galveston? The Pensacola Poetry Center? (I am looking at my map.) But let us not forget Atlanta. I was moved because they had me so recently and yet want me back.
It is good to know that we have some time to think about that before I rush to the airport. But who knows? You might disappear again, not returning until April 15. In that case I will be in America already, sitting on my suitcase at the Miami airport crying for Betty Kray.
Everybody in your house is warmly hailed
by
Tomas
* * *
“Especially when written in non-Norwegian dialect.”
back
1978
Jan ’78[?]
Dear Tomas,
I started working today on your tour, so I’m not captured by a flying saucer after all!! I want you to get to New Orleans...What is happening in Sweden? Here we are waiting for blood transfusions—the poetry is getting worse. I think it must be mercury in the water...I’ve finally finished my Rilke translations I’ve worked on for 20 years, and Harper & Row has promised me $4,000 for it! We’ll be rich!! Right now I’m so broke the children couldn’t go to the basketball game tonight—only Carter’s brother is rich in this administration. We are all well here, and I’ll tell you all that is happening and has happened when you come!
Rip Van Winkle’s doctor,
Robert
Västerås Jan 20-78
Dear Robert,
wonderful to hear that New Orleans is possible. And to hear from you, it was a long time ago! Many things have happened and at the same time not very much! We are well but a little overworked. Monica’s colleagues in the hospital are a frail sort, often ill, so she has been on duty too much since Christmas. Epidemics are harassing Sweden now. I have been active too, in my job and also writing to Oberlin, to the Swedish Institute and a Yes-reply to Iowa. The Swedish Institute wants to send me to Seattle first. Here is a sketch of my trip.
North pole
Minnesota
(Minneapolis? Meeting you)
Seattle
Iowa
workshop
around april 1st:
Oberlin
(We together—you longer than I)
preliminary sketch. Is it realistic?
The South!
(Please help me with these addresses)
Home
Texas?
(Lars Gustafsson recommends Austin, a Christopher Middleton...) Have you any contact with them?
My economy now is almost as bad as that of Sweden in general. But on Wednesday I will go to Stockholm and sell my new book! I finished everything except the title (do you have any good titles left over?) two days ago. The most difficult thing to finish was the long poem I include in this letter, a mini-sized Faust, “Ihr naht euch wieder schwankende Gestalten,” confessions of a too complicated psychologist. All the people mentioned are my previous clients, including myself 10 years ago: “En konstnär sa: etc.” The opening scene is from a motel in Laxå, West Sweden in 1969. That was a bad night! Stop Tomas, you are talking too much. Any difficult words in the poem? “Kohandel” is a funny old fashioned slang word for give-and-take deal, mostly in politics. I find in my dictionary the word “log-rolling,” which seems mysterious. “Karbol” is a cheap purifier used in hospitals, probably “carbole” in English. “Det lyhörda huset” means a house that is insufficiently sound proofed, where you can hear what your neighbor is doing.
I remember that I did not thank you for the beautiful Snail-book. How ungrateful! But I was grateful when I read it.
I have seen only one review of our Bly-volume in Swedish. It was Björn Håkansson in Aftonbladet, saying some nice words about you and attacking the Publisher for not giving enough information about you (about your service in the navy probably) but the publisher, or rather, Aggestam, thought that you are so well known in Sweden that a presentation is unnecessary. I also met a person who said “I don’t agree with your foreword at all”—he thought I had written your foreword because my initials were after, meaning that I am the translator. I will send you clippings when something interesting arrives...
How is my godson?
Love
Tomas
Västerås Febr 19-78
Dear Maestro,
a short note about what happens here. I had asked the Swedish Institute for a contribution to my U.S. trip, got a half-promise and waited for the definite word. The other week came this message: Sorry, we have spent all our money for this budget year, try again after July 1. Then I wrote to Betty Kray, who had sent me a nice letter, and asked for 3 days free lodging in her house in New York—I wanted to start in New York because that is the cheapest trip. But the other day I had a preliminary positive answer from another foundation, so I will probably get some travel expenses paid after all. I will probably start with New York anyway, not Seattle...Well, that depends. If you have promised me to some place in California it would be a good idea to start in Seattle, but otherwise Boston or other places in the east would be better. Tell me! What I will do is probably this: I’ll buy a ticket for New York and back plus a $390 ticket for endless flights inside the U.S.A.—my travel bureau tells me this exists, maybe only for Europeans? Well, send me a small note anyway, I am eagerly waiting for information so I can draw a map. I have always loved maps.
In the meantime, take a look at the two clippings from Sweden. Lundkvist has read the prose poem anthology. He is not included himself. Gyllensten is angry. The article is one of the better volcano eruptions since Strindberg’s days. Gyllensten is of course too paranoiac here, the narrowmindedness and the need to make the great men shrink is not quite so systematic and conspiratory as it is described here. But he has lanced a boil with a carving-knife. Will the patient be better or worse?
Ironwood wants to make a special Tranströmer issue. They sent a Wright-issue with your horse David in it.
Love to all on the farm
Tomas
Västerås March 16 [1978]
Dear friend and Impresario,
I think I will go back to Sweden April 19 and that means that IF somebody between Austin and New York City is interested in a reading on the days 16th–18th I am willing to do it. I can see Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama etc., wonderful states full of universities and poetry freaks...And if Austin says no (which I hope it doesn’t) I can do readings anywhere south of Oberlin during April 14th–18th.
Your questions about “Galleriet”...The fac
es are pushing forward through the overpainting of oblivion. As if through a wall. Or as seals pop up to the surface to breathe...The part with “hissen.” It is the same hiss (elevator) as you once traveled in, when we visited my mother’s apartment in Stockholm in 1968. In Sweden we have the following system of electric lights in staircases of houses. A button is pushed and then the light lasts for 3 minutes or so, then it is dark and you have to push a switch again. So I arrive (one winter evening) when a previous person has switched on the light 3 minutes before. It suddenly gets dark, except inside the lift, where there is a separate lamp, which is always on. Do you understand? So when the whole house is dark the lift is shining (and rising) like a diving-bell. And as I live on the 5th floor I pass floor after floor and imagine faces looking into the lift when it passes each floor. I am ten years old.
There is a snowstorm today. Horrible. It was spring yesterday. I know so little about your situation now but I am thinking of you. Here is all well. Monica sends her warmest
Tomas
Västerås May 11-78
Dear Robert,
it’s unbelievable: cold and windy, a true winter day. And Sweden was beaten by Czechoslovakia (in ice hockey) by 6–1. I am in a miserable mood, trying to feel better by writing to you. You left the coffee shop in Minnesota...after a while Keith Harrison arrived, more energetic than ever. I remember nothing from the reading except that I (for once) followed your advice to let the host do part of the reading, Keith in his forceful Australian...The party afterwards with an Indian couple: Mr. and Mrs. Ramanujan. I slept in Keith’s house. Close to his bathroom in the upper floor is a flight of stairs so steep that an abyss opens. In the middle of the night I went to the bathroom in complete darkness, went back, took a long step and suddenly found myself hurtling into the abyss, but turned miraculously, almost in the air, and was saved, went back to bed, slept, went to Oberlin, hugged the whole Oberlin lot, gave a reading in a very loud voice without dropping a single syllable (I questioned the whole audience afterwards). After this the trip went well, my Minnesota (or Louisiana) disease conquered. Two professors met in Austin, both fluent in Swedish, especially Bob Rovinsky, who is also a distinguished marathon runner. During the walk in the Lyndon Johnson part of Austin the following day I happened to meet two dwarves and I also bought some good records. In Atlanta Coleman Barks met me, it was moving to see him again (I met him last time in the U.S.), we went quickly to Troy, had some catfish on the way there, and stayed overnight in Ed Hicks’s house. Have you met that man? He is a 2-7-1, an extreme muscle type, a former baseball star, now a Faulkner specialist and also a pilot with his own aeroplane. He is very nice. I found that in Troy I was a sort of test pilot myself—Ed used me to prove that he could make his colleagues and superiors accept a non-Alabaman, non-Southern, even a non-American poet in Troy. They did not want to pay of course. But he forced them to...The reading was funny, in a restaurant, with a nice audience including some necktied professors. Next day through a tornado to Indianapolis and Muncie. I don’t think the reading went very well there, the audience was like a Swedish one. The flight home was taxing, delayed by tornadoes etc. When we left Kennedy airport a flash of lightning hit the plane, the purser in front of me fluttered up like a rooster in an earthquake, which was more discouraging than the thunderbolt itself...I forgot to tell you that I was very happy to have your parcel in Muncie—those wonderful dolls! 2 great penates.