Airmail

by Robert Bly

  Best

  Tomas

  1981

  6 Feb 81

  Dear Tomas,

  I was in SF last week, and found out to my surprise that Truth Barriers is nearly sold out! That means they’ll do another printing, and in the fullness of time (that is, not in advance this time) I’ll get another two thousand dollars and you’ll get another thousand dollars—Sierra Club is very surprised...

  I was in Michigan also this trip and met your niece! That was another surprise. The teachers standing around immediately got excited, and are longing for you to stop there—at Alma College, or Central Michigan Univ at Mount Pleasant when you come to the Writers’ Center at Cape Cod. Do you have any plans for going west? We’d love to see you here, but I’ll be out reading during April—My reading times are Oct, January, and April this year—so the best I can hope for is to meet you somewhere!

  Love to Monica!

  Your friend, and

  probably one of the

  barriers to truth,

  Robert

  1 Sept, ’81

  Dear Tomas,

  This is just a note to say hello, along with some goodies and baddies, the sort of illiterate babble that passes for reviews in our nation. I hope you are well! Mary is here, helping me answer mail. Did you know that Biddy is going to Harvard this fall also? Two of them! Carol’s book, by the way, called Letters from the Country (short essays on country life, what Samuel Johnson called “the idiocy of rural life”) has gotten marvellous reviews, including one in Newsweek in early June. I hope your family is well, and that you had time this summer on the island to write some poems! Yes, Americans think a lot about production, you know...

  I’ve just come back from a week-long conference on Pythagoras, in which I was outnumbered by Englishmen, and even more frightening, English numerologists. Plato’s solids were talked of a lot, and the arithmetical basis of God. At one point the question was considered: What is the fundamental substance of the universe: a tetrahedron or a horse? I favored the horse, myself, as did Kathleen Raine—she had Blake to guide her, who was very fond of horses—but we were outvoted, and it was decided that the horse is himself made of tetrahedrons.

  No one mentioned music for three days, even though Pythagoras always began his instruction with the monochord...the instrument with one string, on which one could study harmonies. Luckily I had my dulcimer.

  We are all well here. I suppose with your Petrarch Prize you will not write any more to poor Americans, but if you feel like it, your friend here will receive your letters with great pleasure. Don Hall says that he’s terribly lonely, and it seems to be spreading. Ruth sends her best. She is working now for the county in the area of child-protection, and has 24 families.

  With love,

  Robert

  1 Sept, ’81

  Dear Tomas,

  I just found a letter of yours from late June! It contained your strange dream, no doubt about your tripartite personality—is this Father, Son and Holy Ghost? If so, which is the Holy Ghost—you or me?

  Perhaps I represent the poetry side of you, or—as an American—perhaps the uncultured side! Anyway, I’m glad the religious part gave the uncultured part or the poetry part permission to see you! in Västerås!

  You can see why I stick to writing poetry rather than becoming an analyst.

  The news on the budget looks grimmer every day. The inflation that is causing the huge deficits springs from Johnson’s expenditures—without additional taxes—during the Vietnam War. So “inflation” leads to “inflation.”

  Write soon! Love,

  Robert

  10 Oct, ’81

  Dear Tomas,

  You know I answer your letters! But by telepathy—that is the newest way. Very elegant.

  I miss Sadat. He was an earth father, a little like Frey, always worrying about his children. What if Osiris and Frey were the same?

  We’re well here, glad and feisty. I’ve written my first essay on form, and now have to eat all my words praising free verse as the only food conceivable for true Christian folk. Mary and Biddy are both at Harvard, and seem to love it. Sam had his appendix out: it turned out to be only an acid stomach! Noah is practicing the piano; your godson makes models of Spitfires & Messerschmidts!

  Love,

  Robert

  1982

  29 june 82

  Dear Robert,

  you are back from Greece of course? Tell me how you got along with the Olympian gods! It is really time for a good old-fashioned letter from you: cryptic handwriting, encouraging words, sublime gossip. After all we are not so old! With some effort I can almost feel like 38. Or 12.

  It is a bitter thing that we could not meet in the U.S.A. The rest was OK for me. The readings went well except in New York—Saul can tell you about that—3–4 stoned people were disturbing the audience and the ladies from the Academy of Am. Poets did not look happy. A Mr Haba from New Jersey called me the next day and was very kind. He is a teacher and knows you—you published a love poem of his.

  The worst during the globe trip was the line of people waiting for a bowl of soup in San Francisco.

  As soon as we landed in Sweden we had to have an invitation to take part in the Petrarch Prize celebration of 1982—as a previous prize winner I (and Monica) were invited this year too—when the prize was given to Ilse Aichinger. We went to Switzerland, Sils-Maria, Nietzsche’s summer resort. They have a big old-fashioned hotel there which could take charge of the strange collection of German professors and literati that compose the gang around the mecenat Mr Burda who gives the money. So Monica and I spent 4 days in June in Switzerland and 3 days on trains. We also met Mr Lars Gustafsson who has left Västerås and his wife Madeleine and now is going to marry a 25-year-old woman philosopher from Texas! She is a specialist in pre-Socratic thinking. Lars is still writing 3 books a year. And I am slowly accumulating a new book of poems. This time I will publish it after 5 years, not 4 as usual. So spring 1983 seems to be the time. I was shocked to find—a couple of weeks ago—that I was writing a poem in Sapphic meter, something I did in the early 1950s. Is it Reagan?? Compare with your own development. We will both end up as neo-classicists!!

  Tomorrow Monica, I and the dog will go to Runmarö and spend a week there—that is all that remains of our vacation (spent in Australia). Paula will stay in Västerås where she works as a bicycle renter for tourists to rent there. Later, in late July, she will spend her money as a so-called train loafer, “tågluffare” (or is the word “train bum”?)—last summer she went to Greece that way together with 2 friends. Nothing unpleasant happened to the 3 girls. Emma lives in Göteborg and is working as a ticket cashier at Liseberg, the Tivoli of Göteborg.

  Monica sends her best to you. We will now go to Stenbro, where you lived in 1968, and fetch some marinated herring my sister-in-law has promised.

  Weather is gray but you cannot have everything.

  Love

  Tomas

  30 June, ’82

  Dear Tomas,

  I just got a letter today from some loonies in Madrid, who told me I was invited to a Congress of Poets there in 3 weeks, which was news to me; and then I saw your name on the list too! I’ve already agreed to go to Russia during those same days...oh such excitement!—The group will be Susan Sontag, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Terkel and Erica Jong! I wish you would or could come along! We’ll go to Kiev for some sort of Writers Conversation, sponsored by Norman Cousins. Are you going to Spain?

  I heard marvellous things about your readings in the U.S. earlier this year. We are well here, if somewhat short of money. Everyone is short of money!! The IRS came earlier this month and audited me...I told my children goodbye and prepared to go to prison for twenty years—but to my amazement the auditor told me that in general my deductions were “conservative.” I could hardly believe my ears. To hear my
self described as respectable in my (last?) outpost of outlawry was of course a blow...I was elated for days, to realize that I could continue to live with my children and wife...

  Do write soon!

  Love,

  Robert

  14 July, 82

  Dear Tomas,

  Thank you for your new letter! Did you get the one I sent to Runmarö? Some other Swedish poets beside your honorable self will get a chance this fall to disturb stoned people in the audience at the Guggenheim...five Scandinavian poets—I remember Nordbrandt, and Paal-Helge Haugen (Norway) will be there in late September—along with the COMMUNIST MOZART POET Sonnevi! A small press in New York is going to bring out my translations of his poems to coincide with that visit, which should please the NERUDA WATCHDOG. I’ll be there myself to take part in the eternal, never-ending panel.

  I’m glad to hear news about Gustafsson; I was afraid his production was faltering to only two books a year. I myself am very suspicious of pre-Socratic thinkers from Texas! You know when the Parthenon got set up in Nashville the erosion speeded up tremendously in Athens. It’s wrong to read Nietzsche in Oklahoma...just asking for trouble. I try to keep Kafka out of Moose Lake...some things are just against the grain, and will never work!

  Mary is working as a helper to an archeologist in Cambridge this summer; she has typed for months those endless reports, with fractions of inches ostentatiously put on everything. But she is a dear child, and works hard, supporting herself this summer for the first time! Biddy is too, working as a lifeguard in a sort of country club frequented by old people near Boston. Of course most are too old to get into the water, so she has a lot of time for reading! I didn’t have money enough to send them to summer school, which is just as well...

  James Scherer, the eccentric Jungian dentist, has finally made a break with his Past, has sold his business in Madison, and is going to Zurich to throw himself into the Collective Unconscious. I hope there’s some money in the collective unconscious, because he, like all dentists, has tended to live high on the tooth. But I must admire his courage in changing careers in midlife. Imagine if we were suddenly to be Oil Importers, or Members of the Israeli Parliament...

  Noah and Micah are fine; Noah is still car-mad, and will only have posters of cars on his room walls. French chateaus—I tried that—are out; nature in general is considered backward. Micah adores airplanes, and makes models still, working feverishly to bring back the Second World War. Despite all that detailed work, he has a lovely twinkle in his eyes, and a calm, deeply amused smile. I suppose he has so many fools to look at, being littlest, that he is never bored.

  I am becoming positively form-mad...it must be something in the planets, if it is affecting you too. My latest essay included a poem of Horace’s written in Alcaic stanzas...I favor that one, rather than the Sapphic...but still can’t write in it, anyway! Your letter just came, so I haven’t brooded—past tense I suppose: brud—over the poems long enough to understand them. More later. Do you have the Beacon Press book Of Silence and Solitude, with the photograph of my grandfather? I can’t remember if I sent it or not. It reprints an issue of Poetry East ...

  Love from the Kafka-Guardian,

  Robert

  Västerås October 22 -82

  Dear Robert,

  what a miserable autumn! Of course we get what we deserve: too-good first part of the year, Australia, Hawaii, Switzerland, a warm summer, good health. And then to counterbalance these good things some hardship

  during September–October.

  [------]

  Göran Sonnevi had a good time in New York. It is strange that the leftwingers always seem to thrive in the U.S.A.! Tell me about the Scandinavian Circus! When Göran told me about his endless discussions with you about Pythagoras, I felt envy.

  Did people understand his qualities? that he is an honest, truth-seeking fellow?

  Have a look at the Swedish version of your mysteriously sad and wonderful poem. “Prästen faller på väg från kyrkan” is very concrete: he is walking away from a church building. If I translate “Prästen faller när han lämnar kyrkan kan det också betyda” “The priest lapses into sin when leaving the Lutheran church.” [sic] If you want to have that meaning too, I have to use the second version. “Hill” means both “kulle” and “berg.” What do you prefer? I prefer “berg,” it is more Biblical. “Kulle” is too trivial and peaceful. But maybe you are thinking about a real “kulle”?

  Did I tell you about my Bible job? I am one of the translation team for the new translation of the Old Testament. My part is David’s Psalms. I work together with an old professor in Hebrew. (He is also good at old Arabic etc.) So far we have translated the first 7 psalms.

  I go to Holland and Belgium in November, for 5 days only. A Dutch poet, Henk Bernleft, who has worked as a dishwasher in Karlstad, Värmland, translated 60 of my poems instead of the 20 he was asked to translate for a small press in Amsterdam. So it is a real book now, and will be published in a couple of weeks by Marsyas Publishing house.

  Monica is doing a district nurse education. Then she will rule over a whole district, from a bicycle. I have been longing for a letter from you for a long time.

  Love

  Tomas

  P.S. Sensational news! Lars Gustafsson has converted to Judaism! He will marry a Jewish girl in November.

  1983

  19 July, 83

  Dear Tomas,

  What a disgrace that I have waited so long to write you! From now on, I’m going to give readings and lectures only in the first half of the year, so that from July 1st on each year I can remain undisturbed in my melancholic, Saturnic mood, and keep my tongue tied up like a bear.

  Here you see me, just beginning this wonderful schedule. So we can write again—at least in the second half of the year! Please do send me the news about Monica, and Emma and Paula. Is Paula still in Uppsala? The children here seem to be thriving all right. I took the boys far up into Canada last week on a fishing trip; we caught lake trout, longer than your arm, bass, etc. Your dear godson, who is 12 years old now, caught a 15 pound muskie (muskellunge) and he is wild-eyed. He stops every fisherman he meets in Walker, and asks about muskie fishing on Leech Lake, and has already bought a muskie lure on his own. The lure itself is longer than your hand.

  Mary has been in Paris since February, having taken off this term to travel. A few weeks ago a Frenchman stopped her on the street in Paris, and declared he wanted to put her on the cover of a French magazine. Her Celtic beauty apparently surpasses those chain-smoking, depressed, structuralist graduate students France produces these days. So she is working off and on with such things, and hopes to make enough money by Sept 1st for graduate school. Biddy is touring Europe on a bicycle with her boyfriend, mostly Southern Europe. Her postcards are ecstatic.

  I suppose you’ve already settled the details you had wonderment about in the Snowbanks poem. “Prästen faller på väg från kyrkan” is right. The fellow stumbles on the church steps. He has been reading too many liberal theologians and is in trouble. The hill is not exactly a mountain but is a large hill. There’s a suggestion of some sort of hill that tourists all like to climb. “Do you think you can make it up, grandpa?” It would take an hour or so to climb, so maybe it is a mountain.

  This is terrifying that you are translating the Old Testament. We are trying to get rid of that book in the U.S., and are supporting bad translations for that reason. But the “Psalms” are different...You know that David had a lute, and so I think you’ve put it off long enough...you have to get a dulcimer soon. I’ve traded my dulcimer for a Greek bouzouki. Maybe David had a bouzouki.

  If you write me, I’ll write you immediately back!

  Love from your old friend, mired in inadequacy

  and self-pity

  Robert

  The translation of “Snowbanks” seems to me excellent.

  Västerås Dec 22
-83

  Dear Robert,

  it’s months and months since I wrote a letter to you. I sometimes have inner conversations with you, tell you stories, ask questions, laugh etc.

  I start with a description of the family situation. Monica and I celebrated our SILVER WEDDING in November, we have been married for 25 years. We are both rather healthy and a little overburdened by duties. Monica has become a District Nurse, and works at a child care center, which means a lot of visits to the homes of newborn babies. There are many Turkish emigrants in her district. And I go on with my psychology. My psalm translation is growing, and I spend a few days every month in Uppsala with the Bible Translation Committee. Emma, now 22, is a shop assistant in a bookshop, selling her father’s recent book, among other things. She is both proud and irritated because the book has been well received—I think she finds me overrated. Paula, 19, is a student, a nurse-pupil, in Uppsala. She has a good time, seems to be out dancing a lot with aircraft officers, theologians and other interesting Uppsala men. She is also very idealistic and wants to reform the hospital system. She does not have any plans to marry though, and I am impatient to become a grandfather.

  What you wrote about the lack of a positive father figure in our civilization of today is mostly true. What I hope to become is a Zeus-like grandfather.

  I have been invited to Texas in April! A former opera singer, now a poet-professor (what a decline!), Cynthia Macdonald, author of Amputations, has invited me to the Houston area for a week, and another fellow to Dallas. What can I do but accept that, with gratitude, put on my most European face and bring Monica with me. We will start in Savannah March 29—an organization called AWP wants me to read there. And between Savannah and Houston is New Orleans. Do you think any university in New Orleans has an interest in letting me stop there and mumble a few snowy poems? I have sentimental feelings about the city, I remember so well when we were there: you, I and little Noah.