Airmail

by Robert Bly

  You couldn’t turn your head away.

  or

  You couldn’t get your head to turn. ?

  A second sentence I don’t understand—this time it is really vocabulary—is the last sentence of the second paragraph. I don’t understand “bär av,” unless it means “wear off.” And the bookcase is still stronger—than what?

  *******

  In “Preludes”: in Part III, I can’t understand the grammar of the clause beginning “trots att.” (unless it means: “despite the continuing circumstances of grief, it is the lightest apartment in the whole city.”)

  In the sentence beginning “Saker” I can’t understand the words “med om,” though I understand the meaning of the sentence. Forgive my new typewriter—its mother was frightened by a Latin manuscript, and it doesn’t believe in pauses...

  In “Med älven,” there are “igenkistrade ögon.” Are those eyelids stuck together by some sort of glue or are they merely pressed together (temporarily) by their owner?

  *****

  I just went in for lunch, and told Carol about the hen poem, which I managed to recite for her. When I finished, she said, “Tomas is marvelous. The whole poem is a revelation. And Tomas is a storyteller too, that’s what’s so good—so it is a revelation with story telling.” Or story telling with revelation.

  Your hard-working friend...I’m the only person

  in California working!...

  Robert

  Standing Up

  In a split-second of hard thought, I managed to catch her. I stopped, holding the hen in my hands. Strange, she didn’t really feel alive: rigid, dry, a white ladies’ hat full of plumes that shrieked out the truths of 1912. Thunder in the air. An odor rose from the fence-boards, as when you open a photo album that has gotten so old no one can identify the people any longer.

  I carried her back inside the chicken netting and let her go. All of a sudden she came back to life, she knew who she was, and ran off according to the rules. Henyards are thick with taboos. But the earth all around is full of affection and of sisu. A low stonewall half overgrown with leaves. When dusk begins to fall the stones are faintly luminous with the hundred-year-old warmth from the hands that built it.

  It’s been a hard winter but summer is here and the fields want us to walk upright. Every man unimpeded, as when you stand up in a small boat. There is a link to Africa I remember: by the banks of the Chari, many boats, an atmosphere positively friendly, the men almost blue black in color with three parallel scars on each cheek (meaning the Sara race). I am welcomed on a boat—it’s a canoe made from a dark tree. The canoe is incredibly rocky, even when you sit on your heels. A balancing act. If you have the heart on the left side you have to lean a bit to the right, nothing to be in the pockets, no big arm movements please, all rhetoric has to be left behind. It’s necessary: rhetoric will ruin everything here. The canoe glides out over the water.

  What a wonderful poem!

  [on envelope]

  Thank you for “Skiss i oktober.” But “speak for yourself,” as my Grandmother used to say when I told her we were all descended from apes.

  “Jag är jordens.” Or am I wrong? I don’t know.

  Sorry to hear about BLM. Soon The Sixties will be the only magazine left alive? I worked on Seventies 1 last night. You’re all over it.

  12 Nov, ’70

  Dear Tomas,

  Please comment! I couldn’t get in “too long” for the stairway because of the adjective problem in English. I could try “lengthy”—but the sound is not so good.

  The problem in the final stanza was to keep your repetition of “glömma” in “glömskans.” We can’t do that in English—“forgetfulness” and “oblivion” are both extremely weak and won’t join with a strong word like “hell.” So you can see how I tried to solve it.

  For “snabbt snabbt” I can also say “quickly quickly” or “swiftly swiftly” but the first implies very short steps, and the second a kind of gliding motion.

  I love the poem.

  Your friend,

  Robert

  Västerås 18-11-70

  Dear Robert,

  I got 2 letters from you today, thank you, I am for the present confused and rather happy—suddenly there are not only unpaid bills covering my table. The other day I got the whole Mörkerseende in French—translated by a professor in Lyon and yesterday he wrote me that he has found a French publisher too. More sensational than that—some fellow is translating me into ICELANDIC. I also got a letter from Mr Leif Sjöberg in N.Y. ordering me to send immediately and by air my collected works to Miss May Swenson—he did not tell why. Is she going to criticize your translations somewhere? I think she is the same person as the poet May Swenson (whom I have not read), or is it a common American name? It sounds so incredibly Swedish.—

  The letter from the professor in the solid brick house in Tennessee was shocking—I return it hereby. I did not know that Tennessee was that bad. (But it is in accordance with the election outcome, when Albert Gore was fired and replaced with a Nixon man.) Shall we make a reading in the Deep South? I have studied the election results carefully. A professor in Vermont has made a list of all the congressmen and given them an anti-war score from 0 to 100. I have gone through the list and looked after what people have been re-elected. For Minnesota there are 2 extreme doves: Fraser (100) and Karth (86). Both were re-elected. The moderate dove Blatnik (with a score of 70) was re-elected too. So was the hawk Zwach (25). The worst man in Minnesota with an anti-war score of only zero is NELSEN—I have not found out if he is re-elected or not. But another hawk, Langen (0) was fired. Were any of these people from your neighborhood?

  Let us turn to the more pleasant battlefield of translating problems. I am very fond of your “Standing Up” version. I have the impression that you have caught the right tone—at the same time it should have the relaxed storyteller mood and the deadly serious mood of exposure before death.

  I like the liberties of your translation. The start is almost SEXY “I managed to catch her!” The word “sisu” is the problem. It is a Finnish word, often used in Sweden in some special connections. Most frequently by sports journalists. It means “tenacity,” “stamina” and “fighting spirit”—not the theatrical fighting spirit of General de Gaulle but the silent, stubborn, discrete Finnish unconquerableness. I think the word got into our language during the Finland/Soviet war 1939–40 when the Finns were holding back a nation 50 times bigger than their own. But today the word is used mainly when describing sporting events, especially if some Finn is fighting. I think it is the first time the word has appeared in poetry, it gives a pleasant shock. It gives these trivial sports associations but at the same time the word is exotic, like the word “taboo” in the previous lines.

  The Sara people is not a problem. Sara is a tribe in Chad. The scars on the cheeks are the signs of the tribe members (you can see it on the present, bad, president François Tombalbaye, who is a Sara). It has nothing to do with Sara in the Bible. “Tribe” is a better word than “race” here—it is not a special race, just a group among the Sudan negroes. I think the reason why I capitalized the whole word SARA was that if I wrote “Sara” I would think of the woman’s name, but “SARA” makes more exoticism.

  The Bookcase. Robert, I think you are too proud. Don’t despise your helpful friend, the dictionary. “Kvicksilverpelare” has nothing to do with “pellets.” “Pelare” is the same word as the English “pillar.” So it is an enormous column/pillar of mercury rising (as inside an enormous thermometer—when you have fever). I don’t know enough English to judge about the two proposals for head-turning expression. It means simply you must not turn your head away. “Bär av” is a typical spoken language expression. “Nu bär det av” a mother (or father) says when sitting with her child on a sled, just when they start sledding down a slope. In American films they often say “here we go” in such situations. Perhaps
you should translate it “now when we set off” or something like that. Your last question “and the bookcase is stronger—than what?” is probably not to be answered. I don’t know. Well, it is unclear in Swedish, it could mean “the bookcase is still more powerful than I have succeeded to describe in the previous part of this damned poem.”

  Preludes. “Trots att det fortfarande råder sorg” is just a contrast to the lightness of the apartment, because mourning, grief, is associated with heaviness.

  “Saker jag varit med om här” is a spoken language expression. It means simply: Things (events) I have taken part in (experienced)...“Saker” does not mean pieces of furniture, playthings, concrete substantives, it means events. Like “thing” in “a strange thing happened to me yesterday etc.”

  Standing Up again. You missed the word “varsamma.” Unimpeded but careful, when you stand up in a boat you have to be careful. The word “varsam” has nothing to do with cowardice, it is used when you take care of small babies or tiny animals, it has a certain tenderness around it.

  Have Bonniers sent you Böckernas Värld with the prose poems? I am not responsible for the introduction about your life and work. It was not a very good introduction but I have seen much worse.

  Love to you all! A word of praise from Carol’s lips is more dear to me than praise from hundreds of Pompidous. Monica sends her best greetings.

  Tomas

  P.S. Med älven. Their eyes are stuck together with some ideological glue.

  Västerås 19-11-70

  Dear Robert,

  the messages go quickly down the long Atlantic mailroad in these days. I think your version of “The Name” is excellent except for one thing. You write “the Hell of unconsciousness...” But it is not “unconsciousness,” it is oblivion. I have in the previous part of the poem written: “I’m fully conscious, but that doesn’t help.” Well, then you can’t call it “unconsciousness” a few lines later. I don’t think it is important that “glömma” and “glömska” are related. You say that “forgetfulness” and “oblivion” are “weak” words in English. “Glömska” is rather weak in Swedish too. I think the problem is that in English the strong word “hell” comes first, and the weak word “oblivion” afterwards, so you get an anti-climax. In Swedish the weak word “glömskans” comes first and then as a terrible crescendo the strong word “helvete.” Then you get a climax, not an anticlimax. Is it possible to say “oblivion’s hell”? Another solution would be to use the words “wide awake” instead of “fully conscious” in the first part of the poem. That is all for tonight. Warm greetings

  Tomas

  20-11-70

  Dear Robert,

  Umph...Well, let us start the translation business again. Today we have “Breathing Space in July” or “Breathing Space July” as I prefer to call the poem (did you notice that?).

  Monica thinks that your translations are a little better than the original texts. The poems grow a little. For instance this poem is bigger in space. You have translated the whole scene, from the Swedish archipelago with its small, gray bridges to a Californian scenery with “ocean docks,” it’s the Pacific no doubt.

  I think the first stanza is wonderful.

  The second stanza is “Californian.” I don’t know if I shall object to the “ocean docks” or not.

  The third stanza sounds very good but the man is not necessarily r o w i n g (do you ever row in California?). Actually I wrote the stanza after a trip in a motor boat, around whole Runmarö.

  That it is a kerosene lamp is never written in Swedish, but I think it is good to have it there. So no objections. But I am not sure what the “chimney” is? In my childhood we had, roughly, 2 types of kerosene lamps

  I have the former in mind, when reading the poem, but I have the suspicion that you have the latter. “The chimney” must be the glass pipe of nr 2. I imagine the islands/moths crawling over the s h a d e of nr 1. Could it be called “chimney” too? Love Tomas

  20 Nov, ’70

  Dear Tomas,

  Here are “PRELUDES.” It’s hard to decide on the pronouns for the first two stanzas of part II. And this is just a first draft typed up to see how it looks.

  I’m not sure if you’d like the suggestion on the wall paintings to be:

  The outline left behind on a wall when a picture that has been there a long time is removed

  or

  Perhaps the pictures are still hanging there on the wall.

  Help me with this!

  BOSWELL

  Preludes

  I

  I shy from something that comes hurrying katty-corner through the blizzard.

  Fragment of what is to come.

  A wall gotten loose. Something eyeless. Hard.

  A face made of teeth!

  A wall, alone. Or is a house there,

  even though I can’t see it?

  The future...an army of empty houses

  feeling their way forward in the falling snow.

  II

  Two truths approach each other. One comes from inside, the other from outside,

  and where they meet we have a chance to catch sight of ourselves.

  The man who sees what is about to take place cries out wildly: “Stop it!

  the hell with it all, if only I don’t have to know myself.”

  And a boat exists that wants to tie up on shore—it’s trying right here—

  in fact it will try thousands of times yet.

  Out of the darkness of the woods a long boathook appears, snakes in through the open window,

  in among the guests who are getting warm dancing.

  III

  The apartment where I lived over half my life has to be cleaned out. It’s already empty of everything. The anchor has let go—despite the continuing weight of grief it is the lightest apartment in the whole city. Truth doesn’t need any furniture. I have made a big circle around my life and come back to its starting point: a room blown empty. Things I loved so much now appear on the walls like Egyptian paintings, scenes from the inside of the grave chamber. But they are more and more blown clean. For example the light is too stark. The telescope held up to the sky. It is silent as a Quaker’s breathing. All you can hear are the doves in the back yard, their cooing.

  24 Nov, ’70

  Dear Tomas,

  May Swenson is a poetess of very dubious ability whom I know fairly well. Her parents were Swedish, from the country, converted to Mormonism by Mormon missionaries, and so transported to Utah!!! where May Swenson grew up. She’s lived in N.Y. for years now. She is very anti-man. I remember an incident from the gathering of poets at Houston several years ago. Don Hall was there, round and full of childish, stomach-type charm and warmth as always. Two young girls—about 15—who called themselves the Houston Society of Young Poets, had taken a liking to Don’s face, and had presented him with a balloon. It was a sort of formal reception, in a ballroom, and Don looked lovely, walking around with his blown up balloon floating about him. He suddenly came to me, mad as a wet hen. I said, What’s the matter? He said, “May Swenson pricked my balloon!” (She had just put her lighted cigarette against it, looking him in the eyes, and popped it.) He said, “That’s the meanest thing I’ve ever seen a human being do!” He was crushed.

  She belongs at the same time to an elegant, conservative, rather decadent we-like-rich-folks literary set in New York—they’re always on prize committees of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and such things—and so I’m sure she does like your poems, and also thinks it would be a favor to you to rescue you from the barbarian, Robert Bly—

  So let her go ahead—you really can’t stop her anyway. And maybe you can improve her translations a bit. It will be interesting to see what she does.

  For “The Name”—try this:

  But it is impossible to forget the fifteen second battle in the hel
l of nothingness, a few feet from a major highway, where the cars slip past with their lights dimmed.

  Sometimes patients in hospitals will describe the “sense of nothingness” they felt while under ether.

  Both “oblivion” and “forgetfulness” are impossible, and never used in spoken English any more. Do you think “the hell of nothingness” would be a possible solution?

  I enclose “At the Riverside.” I’m not sure I understand the visual suggestions of “snurrar trögt och hjälplöst hän.” I hope you’re happy having mocked me about the mercury thermometer. Capricorns are very sensitive to mockery—spiritual hemophiliacs...

  Yours as always,

  Robert

  P.S. Would you send me another copy of Mörkerseende? I want to use it as a model for the pamphlet, and my copy is wroten on (to speak in Anglo-Saxon). Thanks.

  25 Nov, ’70

  Dear Tomas,

  I’ve now finished the first draft of Mörkerseende! Here are the last two, “Traffic” and “The Bookcase.”

  I need some help on Bookcase. Check the tenses carefully throughout. The last sentence of the second stanza is still very difficult for me, even though I know roughly what it means. The problem is that there are so many shades of meaning, which I can turn the reader towards by slight alterations in the English, and I don’t know what to do. Would you write me a few sentences, discussing each part of that three part sentence (beginning “Man kan tydligen inte resa”), and its relation to the rest of the poem.

  I’m sending the third draft of Traffic. I had a lot of trouble with that poem; I think it looks fairly good now. “Mr. Clean” is a man in a white suit who appears in television commercials, I think for household cleaning products, useful as I recall for kitchen sinks, toilets, etc. He is a cartoon character.

  In this draft I tried “chassis” (I haven’t checked the spelling of the plural)—a word used mainly for car bodies, but taken over from the French word for, I expect, carriages. The old Chevrolets always had a small metal plate by the running board saying “Chassis by General Motors,” meaning someone else may have made the motor and tires. “Vehicle” is no good, implying wagons.