Robert Bly, most of you know, but he's certainly a poet of conscience. Can you hear me? Robert Bly, most of you know, he's certainly a poet of conscience, of brilliance, and he somehow makes poetry a little bit dangerous. I stepped on my glasses on the bus and there's something in the metabolism. I stepped on my glasses on the bus and there's something in the metabolism.

[01:32]

I stepped on my glasses on the bus and there's something in the metabolism. I stepped on my glasses on the bus and there's something in the metabolism. I stepped on my glasses on the bus and there's something in the metabolism.

[02:43]

I stepped on my glasses on the bus and there's something in the metabolism. So let me say to start with, what a joy I feel to be with this community. I admire it very much, and even in Minnesota we can feel it sort of low, out there. It's a lovely intensity I feel from members of the community that I have seen at my readings. And there's some way in which what you're working on is what the poets are working on. Many of you write poetry yourself.

[03:47]

So I thought I would read in four little parts here, and maybe we'll have a break if you wish in the middle. Remember at any time interrupt me with a question or whatever. In places where the poetry reading has remained alive, such as Nigeria and Russia, they know that a poetry reading and a string quartet concert are not the same. In a string quartet concert everyone pretends to be very, I mean everyone is very cultured and very silent. It's a disaster for a poetry reading. A poetry reading is not an act of culture. It's an act of warmth or family. And poetry readings, what we're experiencing tonight is one of the oldest creations of human beings. When a group of human beings get together in something that resembles a cave, and then someone says a few outrageous things, and everyone feels better.

[04:54]

And then we lost that for four or five hundred years, and the invention of movable type we lost it, where the poem goes to the page. And I thought about it last night. I went to a conference on Pythagoras that was given at Lindisfarne this last summer, and a very interesting detail came up. A man, a friend of Keith's, was talking about what happened to the solid. In ancient times, the solid, Pythagoras dealt with solids, and those were five-sided, eight-sided solids, twelve-sided solids. And the interesting thing was that he dealt with them as solids. They now know, for example, that in the Babylonian schools, the children were given actual triangles, which they had on their desk. They were actual solids that they dealt with, that was true. When Plato came in, he made one slight change, and the change was very interesting. It went like this. The man telling it held up a solid, like this, two ends here, solid.

[06:02]

Then it had five sides, so he took a piece of paper and he cut a hole in it with five sides. Then he passed the solid in and out of the paper. Then he said that Plato said that this paper is the same as the solid. That was the amazing thing that happened. From the point of view of Pythagoras, it was a disastrous development, because Pythagoras would not allow any teaching to take place without the body. Pythagoras would not begin a lecture without his monochord. This penetrates through the body. When you were in Pythagoras's school, you could not attend a lecture until you chanted for two years. Not only couldn't you give one, you couldn't attend one. This would cut down our lecture people considerably. Pythagoras then, once he had struck the chord, would break it in the center, so you'd hear

[07:12]

both. Then he'd break it farther up, so you'd hear three. Then he'd break it farther up, so you'd hear four. Then he would mention that the relationships between the sounds that you just heard and their measurement in inches or millimeters is the same as the relationship between the diameters of the planets, and that those relate to the distance between the anal chakra and the signal chakra, the sexual chakra, and the stomach chakra, the stomach chakra and the heart. Can I ask a question? Please. How did he know the diameters? Well, they dealt with the speeds of the planets, and they had done a lot of work in that by that time. They knew the speeds of the planets, and there was some deduction about the diameters. So there's a question as to whether he was dealing with speeds or diameters. I mean, that's a good question you said. But the point of the whole thing was that when you're finished with this, you recognize that

[08:16]

we live in an extremely mysterious universe, and that the center of it comes down to the body. So when this was picked up again in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, then you see those figures with their hands up like this and they circle around, and it's that old Pythagoras teaching. Well, what Plato did was to destroy that by saying that the paper flat here is the same as a solid. That is where arithmetic comes from and geometry. When I was in high school, we studied the triangles flat on the page. Isn't that interesting? Incredible. And that's why we didn't have any body. I was in high school. I mean, it isn't why, it's just all about the same thing. But it's very interesting to think that what the ancients meant by a poetry reading was a case of solids in which the poem goes out and it floats in the air in between all of us. It floats out there somewhere. It's an actual solid. And then what you do with movable type is exactly what Plato did with the solids. You put them flat on the page. And the poem then loses its solidity and it loses its volume.

[09:17]

And in some way, it no longer reacts with our body. So the poetry reading then is an attempt to go back to a pre-Platonic situation, a more Pythagoras situation. And that's terrifically interesting. And that is why in ancient times, the musical instrument was always used with the poem. Well, I hadn't planned to do this, but I'll begin with a little poem of Basho that I've always loved. And I'll say it to you first in a voice as if it were on the page. He was in his garden and Buddha's temple bell stopped ringing. The temple bell stops, but the sound keeps coming out of flowers. The temple bell stops, but the sound keeps coming out of flowers.

[10:18]

The temple bell stops. The temple bell stops, but the sound keeps coming out of the flowers. Can you feel the difference? Another little Basho. It's late. It's fall and a full moon. I walked around the shore of the lake all night.

[11:29]

It's fall and a full moon. I walked around the shore of the lake all night. I'll say that wonderful remark that Basho can use as a comment for this reading. The most wonderful remark Basho said. He said, the trouble with most poetry is that it's either subjective or objective. That about takes care of it for us. It's a wonderfully witty statement actually. It's funny that you call this a reading. You see, he's exactly right. It struck me again and again. You see, we are so trapped on the page and in the platonic view of solace that we don't have a word for this. The other day I was reading The White Goddess and I found that the Welsh had a fine word for what is happening when the poem is out of the solace.

[12:38]

I'm like, a mother moon was also. So I thought of saying, I will give a mother moon water so, but it doesn't seem. But I agree with you completely. And the other day I, why do we call it a reading? Because if you read it off the page it's not a reading. It's platonic. Because the voice is trapped then. The voice is caught. I had a dear friend whom I like very much and I hadn't seen her for a long time and she was reading and I went to see her and she was reading off the page. And I had the strange sensation that what it was like with those, you know, sometimes you go in a room and there'll be these little curlicue things going along the edges. Uh-huh. And I sort of saw her voice go like this. It got a little bit away from the page and then went back. Little bit away, then went back. Little bit away, then went back. But when, where a poem is memorized, then the voice has the opportunity to go, it flies and is able to investigate space.

[13:41]

So, I thought the other day of a possibility, poetry concert. Oh, great. How does that sound to you? Does that sound better? Yeah. But what about the people who don't play instruments? But it's still a concert, isn't it? Even if they don't use an instrument. Yes. Yes, I think it's Goethe that said, the most beautiful instrument in the whole world is a human voice. So that's what we try to do with the poetry. Hold on. How about poetry sharing? Well, it puts us back in the 60s again. You know, a lot of these words we use in the 60s, you have to watch out for them, because when someone says, I'd like to share this with you, put on your armor, boy. Oftentimes it's equivalent to, please stand still, I'm going to bust you in the mouth. So, I like your idea, and if you can come up with a synonym for sharing,

[14:42]

it would be a wonderful thing. Because his understanding of it is quite right. As I mentioned in Nigeria, they consider that a poetry reading has three elements to it. The poem, the poet, and the audience. The poem is quite separate from the poet. And that is why it doesn't matter whose poem is read, particularly at a poetry reading. But it's important that someone be there to do it. The poem alone cannot do it. It's got to have the whole human psyche present. And the audience has to be present. The audience has to come up and speak and object and say, I don't want this, read a decent poem for a change. And if the audience does not... And it was very interesting, I asked Etheridge Knight, who knows a lot about this, and I said to Etheridge, what does this mean about the audience? And he said, well, in the oral tradition, first of all, there is no fixed form of a poem. There is no original of any poem. And this was discovered by the people at Harvard, Lord and Perry, when they went to Yugoslavia in 1920, and they found old men in the mountains

[15:44]

who memorized 15,000 lines. And when you wanted them to come down for your county fair, they'll do it. How many lines do you want? Fifty bucks, we give you 75 lines, and it goes on this way. Now, none of those things are fixed in any way. They think Achilles died around 1845, and they are still telling you about Achilles. But on the other hand, if you say to them, someone in our village said, two boys had a knife fight outside the bar, and one of them killed the other. Could you put that in the poem? Oh, certainly. So about halfway through, suddenly he said, Achilles acted just like... And pretty soon comes Ivan, and... Wow! But the point is that the poem is open to the situation. And this amazed the academics, because they'd been looking for 40, 50 years for the original of Homer. There isn't any. So as I said, in Nigeria, when the audience which responds and allows itself to respond with the body and so on, and the radiation is coming, then the poet notices when the line is not...

[16:45]

is dead. And at that point, he rewrites it on the spot. It may have been too private a reference. Maybe it's a reference to some past president that people have forgotten. So you have to rewrite it in terms of Reagan, and then everyone will understand. Again, when you go to the printed page, you lose your solids, and you start getting obsessed with the printed page itself. Sometimes I'll be doing a poetry reading, and I'll look out, and someone, a man and his wife will be going through a book of my poems, and they'll go, my, my, my, this is very bad. You can't take it into the ear and the eye at the same time. So then I change the line, and they say, look at him. So then I notice him, and I start changing lines all over the place. I change the whole poem. They're flipping through the book. I'll begin, then, with a poem.

[17:54]

We'll go through several sections. I'll do one little poem. We'll begin with an inauthentic life. Let's begin there. It's something we all know about. Inauthentic life. And there's something wrong. And then, then I'll do a few poems of grief. And then I'll do a few poems on fathers and sons. And then we'll end with a few poems on form, maybe, tonight. Strange sequences in the psyche. I don't know where to go. Do one on, this poem I wrote when I was about 30 years old, 28 or something like this. See if I can remember it. The fall has come clear as the eyes of chickens. Strange muffled sounds come from the sea.

[18:58]

Sounds of muffled orlocks and swampings and lonely bays. Surf crashing on unchristian shores and the wash of tiny snail shells. In the wandering gravel. The first stanza. It's a little poetic, but the little snail shells coming up and down are not so bad. And the wash of tiny snail shells in the wandering gravel. Second stanza. Something is wrong with my life. I feel it. Sense it. As I walk down the stair holding a cup in my hand. My body feels bloodlogged, sodden, solemnly. Something here caught in dependency. Third stanza. Something homeless is looking on the long roads.

[20:00]

A dog lost since midnight. Sometimes in our country, men come out from Minneapolis with beautiful hunting dogs and then when the pheasant season is over, they throw them out of the car. And they wander around in the roads for several weeks. Something homeless is looking on the long roads. A dog lost since midnight. The box elder bug who doesn't know his walls are burnt. His house is gone. Even the young son, S-U-N, is lost. Wandering over earth as the October night comes down. Feel it? Remember that little thing? Ladybug, ladybug, hurry on home. Your children are burned, your house is gone. Remember that little one? How does it go? The house is on fire and your children are burned. Ah, I couldn't put in the children's too much. Something homeless is looking on the long roads.

[21:04]

A dog lost since midnight. A duck among the odorous reeds. The box elder bug who doesn't know his house is gone. His walls are burnt. Even the young son is lost. Wandering over earth as the October night comes down. Well, that's that state we live in. We lived in it all through high school. The inauthentic life. When you lie all the time. I lied always in high school, no matter what people asked me. I wanted to be more like a basketball player. The other day I was with a group of men in Minnesota, there was about 12 of them. They'd been reading the article I did in The Wild Man. They asked me to come and talk to them and I did. And I mentioned this, you know, that I, the whole trouble with the disturbance with the mail begins when you lie all the time about what it is you are and want and to be. And as soon as I said that, all the men, there was 12 sitting in the edge of the room,

[22:06]

they went down just like this. And we all went back into that grief. And finally one man said, I wonder if there ever was a basketball player. Wonderful remark. Maybe the basketball player himself. So the mails are thrown off in there. And of course, it isn't only that. We began that early in our life, to agree to live inauthentically. And the phrase I take from Joseph Campbell, who is one of the people I love. If I'm within 500 miles of where he is, I go. And he was, I was with him and he gave an incredible lecture on the 14th century. And he said the problem in the 14th century was the inauthentic life. Because there were so many arranged marriages. The church insisted on it and insisted the marriage could not be broken. So inauthentic life became such an amazing force

[23:07]

that eventually the Provencal poets and others came up with the idea that there was, there was a love that was separate and authentic. That's what they wrote about and it had nothing to do with marriage. Terrified the church. Eventually they burned them all. Well, so it's a very live issue. All right, so, all of you work on this and is very strong in coming into the inauthentic life. So, let's go on then. Leaving the inauthentic life, what happens next? I had no idea in high school. None at all. I lived alone for three years. I made it, I went to New York, I made a living one day a week as a file clerk, as a house painter. I could live for six days in what I made and won. I didn't do anything. I didn't know anyone so that wasn't difficult. And so, when people ask me, how did you get the small amount of sincerity that you have?

[24:11]

My answer was, live alone for three years. And they ask me, I want to be a poet, what shall I do? I say, live alone for three years. They immediately leave. It's not their idea of the whole thing. But really, when I think of it now, I don't think that's accurate. Solitude is marvelous as a place to heal our wounds. Our wounds to ourselves. But now, I think more and more, the whole thing is connected with grief. The ability to feel grief. So, we'll use that tonight as a door. Grief is a door into feeling. It's a door that we don't use in the United States. Where we're terrified of grief. We haven't grieved over the Vietnam War yet. Can you imagine that? How many years it's been? I was in Russia this summer for a conference in Kiev. A writer's conference.

[25:18]

And that moved me the most in Russia. I couldn't believe it. After two days, I realized I was in a country that understood grief. And they grieve over the Second World War. You know, they lost 20 million people there. We lost 400,000. And so, when you're with a Russian, it's just right there. It's right on the surface. The war's over a year and a half ago. But that wonderful feeling that you have in Russia, that we do not have, is connected with their ability to grieve, I think. So, I was tremendously moved by that. Shall I give you a poem by a Russian, then? Sure. Anna Akhmatova. We'll do one poem of Anna Akhmatova's. Born in 1885. Stalin especially hated her. She stayed in the heart here. He hated her. Called her half nun and half whore, which really wasn't bad. But... No, I'm just kidding. And, uh...

[26:21]

About 1950, someone published one of her books illegally, and the Russians lined up four to five blocks to buy it. The price went up to 50 rubles in two days. Then Stalin heard about it. And he called back not only the books from the bookstores, but every book sent to a library. Then he put a soldier outside her house. She had her appear at the window twice a day to indicate she hadn't committed suicide yet, or left Russia. So... One of her poems. She's been translated for the first time now by a woman into English. She's translated... The men have ruined her. Or that have done it. But a woman has translated her now. Jane Kenyon, a young woman in Vermont, New Hampshire. And I'll read you one of Jane's translations. I did not light the candle. I did not close the door. I did not...

[27:22]

I could not bring myself to lie down. You don't know how tired I was. And to think that everything's ruined. That we suffer like the damned in hell. Oh, I was certain that you would come back. Oh, I was certain that you would come back. Hey, look. I'll do it once more. I did not light the candle. I did not close the door. I could not bring myself to lie down. You don't know how tired I was.

[28:26]

And to think that everything's ruined. That we suffer like the damned in hell. Oh, I was certain that you would come back. So she brings us into the point where she's most vulnerable. And then she stops. And she hands it to you. And it's so strangely light. It doesn't weigh us down. It's true grief, it isn't complaining. It isn't blaming anyone. She made a mistake in perception. You like one more of hers?

[29:32]

Yeah. Anna Khmatova. She got out of Russia once when she came to... Came to England. The English had grace enough to offer her an honorary degree. At Oxford. And she came out in 64. And in Russia, because... I don't know, I can't... Don't say because. In Russia we know that there is a love... That there's a feeling... A feeling that there's grief and that art has great dignity. That the artist has great dignity. And she had had severe arthritis for a long time. And when she came off that train in London, there's a photograph of her coming off. And she has no arthritis. She... Not a trace of it. Because the dignity of art does not allow you to bother about arthritis if you have it. So she comes right off there, looks like a queen walking. And then she died a year later. And this is the last one, the last poem she wrote before she died.

[30:33]

This is 1964. By the way, not only doesn't she blame... Our poetry has a lot of blame in it. But she praises the outside world in every poem. She never has a poem that doesn't have some praise of trees or ocean or something in it. Do you understand that? Do you realize how many poems in the United States there's never a single tree? Or a single rock? Or the ocean isn't mentioned. Praise, that's what Velka said. Poetry is basically praise. That's what it basically is. And you can feel it in here. Are you ready? Aanu ek maatonga. A land not mine

[31:38]

Still forever memorable The waters of its ocean Chill and fresh I recited, that's the first stanza. I recited it one night. And I said, I don't understand this stanza. And a woman came up to me afterwards. And she said, Robert, I think that ek maatonga means by this another human soul. A land not mine Still forever memorable And the waters of its ocean Chill and fresh The sand on the bottom whiter than chalk Late sun lays bare

[32:45]

The rosy limbs of the pine trees Sunset on the ethereal waves I can't tell if the day is ending Or the world Or if the secret of secrets Is inside me again How's that for a poem? That's called a poem. Did you like it again or not? You had to speak up and say it. Ask him. Gorgeous at the end. Gorgeous, gorgeous.

[33:48]

A land not mine Still forever memorable The waters of its ocean Chill and fresh Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk Late sun lays bare The rosy limbs of the pine trees Sunset on the ethereal waves I can't tell if the day is ending Or the world Or if the secret of secrets

[35:03]

Is inside me again What did you say? I think somebody out there screamed one more. Did you say one more or not? Someone yelled in the street. One more, yeah? I'll tell you one other thing that moved me. I feel very glad that Baker Roshi is going to Russia. And that the Estonian people, you know, they love us. And the other day at the Face of the Enemy conference it was clear that Russia considers itself as our younger brother. And the man said, you know, Roosevelt promised us four billion at Yalta to rebuild. Then he reached in his pocket and he brought out a paper. And he said, we lost 63,000 kilometers of railroad track, 7,000 villages, 21 million cows.

[36:08]

He named the sheep. The buildings. All of those lost. And he said, but you gave the money to the Germans. Oh, I can feel it. You gave the money to the Germans. And actually, Arthur Cox was there from the former OSS and CIA. He's doing a lot of work for August Nirken Arms. And he spoke up and he said, not only did we give the money to the Germans, but as soon as we set up our military intelligence over there, we hired General Galen, he named him, who was the head of the secret service for the Nazis as the head of arms. I said, how could we have failed to see how the Russians would perceive that? Have you read the Particle Sun? Lot of grief there. Lot of grief. But he was there yesterday asking us to recognize him as a younger son. He said, if we're so incompetent, how come we're the second nation in the world?

[37:10]

Yeah. Won't you? And then, of course, the commander said, do this, do this, do this. And then we loved him. And he said, you always want us to change. You want us to change and then you'll love us. But we don't ask you to change. He said, besides, it doesn't work. You know, you can't love each other all the time, but you can still make a deal. You can still make a compromise. You can still help the world from being destroyed. You must take us as we are, he said. Ah, it was beautiful. Wasn't it beautiful? It was beautiful. You have to take us as we are. Do you remember those times for any of you who were married early in which you were sure you could change the other person? Uh-huh. If only you'd do this. Famous times. All right. Let's go on then. Um, so, we're still in the grief era, you know. I want to give you a few more grief moments. Shall I? Why not? Why not? Give you a

[38:12]

Gerald Manley Hopkins. Oh, so wonderful. In my little town, I live in a town in Minnesota, Moose Lake, it's actually. And the minister there is a friend of mine. He reads Jung and, uh, and poems. You always know when you've got a good Lutheran minister now if he reads Jung. Wow. That's a good one. One out of ten thousand, but that's him. Anyway, so, so, um, he said, we're having a thing on grief and I know you've been writing some grief poems. Would you come and give a little talk in between services on grief and then we'll have The Undertaker the next week. And I said, certainly. Very good. So, I memorized. I thought, what poem do I know that's central in grief? Gerald Manley Hopkins. So I wrote, I memorized this poem and I'll give it to you. He knew a young girl named Margaret and one day she was out and she saw the golden grove, which was a grove of oaks, the leaves falling off, and she came to him weeping. And he wrote this poem.

[39:15]

Margaret, are you grieving over a golden grove on leaving? Leaves, like things of man, you, with your fresh thoughts, care for, can you? Ah, as the heart grows older, it will come to such sights colder. Nor spare a sigh, the worlds of one would leave me alive. But you will weep and know why. Ah, no matter, child in name, sorrow springs are the same. It is the blight man was born for. It is Margaret you mourn for. I think it was the first poem I ever read when I was in college. I was about a sophomore that went all the way into me. I was just stunned by the idea that when we mourn it's for ourselves we're mourning. Oh, it's so beautiful. And then if you're a little

[40:18]

apologetic or guilty, you say, oh, isn't that selfish to mourn for yourself? I mean, that's really wrong. And gentlemen, don't give me any of that nervous stuff. Don't apologize. That's exactly right. Can I do it for you once more? Yeah. Gorgeous work on sound here. Gorgeous work on sound. Tremendous. Watch that Margaret come up at the end there. Margaret. And, um, and it's so beautiful when you have a genius in sound you're dealing with, remember what, what, uh, Basho said? The trouble in most poetry is it's either subjective or objective. Now part of the objective world is sound. Sound was here before we were. So if you're writing poems without sound, it's too subjective. If you're dealing with sound in your poem, you're dealing with something non-human. Does this make any sense to you? Mm-hmm. He does it.

[41:21]

Many do it. Watch this one go now. I memorized the poem and the wonderful thing about a poem is it's called Learning It By Heart. Mm, I love that. Got that in my heart then. And it's called Learning It By Heart. And then a couple lines come. I'm shaving. I'm doing it all the time. Same thing. Ah, no matter child the name. I said it, uh, 50 times the second day my kids are like, Daddy, what's going on? I'm in the bathroom and I'm saying, Ah, no matter child the name. Ah, no matter child the name. Come on, say it with me. Once more. It's a tune. Come on, louder. Ah, no matter, child, the name,

[42:24]

Sorrow springs are the same. Ah, no matter, child, the name, Sorrow springs are the same. Put it in your chest now. Ah, no matter, child, the name, Sorrow springs are the same. Do it with a little anguish, huh? Ah, no matter, child, the name, Sorrow springs are the same. Once more. Ah, no matter, child, the name, Sorrow springs are the same. It is the blight man was born for. It is margarine you mourn for. All right. One more. I beg your pardon. Certainly.

[43:25]

All of you know Pablo Neruda's work. I thought he was the greatest poet alive. I found him a long time ago in Oslo. And I translated him. And I read with him several times. And, um... And I was with him in Colombia in his last reading there. And after our Andy came in, he was a great friend of Andy's, Andy made him ambassador to Paris. And, of course, all during that time we had the CIA, was paying the truckers in Santiago not to bring fruits into the city so that the housewives would rebel against the regime. And it couldn't go on television. Neruda didn't know that at the time. But Neruda turned to the audience and said, I have to go tomorrow morning to Paris to negotiate a loan for Chile with the World Bank. I don't think we'll get it. He said, I think you can bring us down. He said, I think you probably will bring us down. His name is Coleridge,

[44:34]

and the poem is called The Ancient Mariner. I want to urge you to read that poem. Because if you bring us down, we will be an albatross around your neck. And he said it sweetly, not with the slight tinge of anger that I had. And, um... And it didn't... Then we brought them down. The CIA brought them down. We brought them down. We brought them down. We brought them down. And Neruda was having an operation for cancer of the prostate at the time in Chile. And they brought him news Andy had been shot and he went into depression and did not come out. And the doctors... I read the account of his wife, and I wept. The doctors didn't want to treat him that night. Because they knew the hunter would be in in the morning. So... So, um... When I... When I found out he had... They told me he had died, they called me and said, how do you feel on papers? And I said, I feel fine. He wrote his work.

[45:35]

He did it. He got it all done. It's all mine for him. But I had more grief than I thought. And about six months later, we had a little drought in Minnesota. And my... My, uh... Some little weeping willows I planted were dying. And I went off to my riding shack. It's some miles away and there's a granite quarries in between, near Ortonville, for those of you who know it. And, um... I don't have water at my shack, so I brought some water with me. Well, Neruda's always connected with water. He lived on... He was the Negro on the shore. He had the second largest seasonal collection in the world when he died. Every one of them picked up himself. Here's the cans. Water in prison. So I wrote this poem on the way. I'll read it to you. It's called, Morning, Pablo Neruda. Water is practical, especially in August. This faucet water that drops into the buckets that I carry to the young willow trees whose leaves have been eaten off by grasshoppers.

[46:37]

Or this jar of water that lies next to me on the seat as I drive to my shack. When I look down, the seat all around the jar is dark. For water doesn't intend to give. It gives anyway. And the jar of water lies there quivering as I drive through a countryside of granite quarries. Stones soon to be shaped into blocks for the dead. The only thing they have left that is theirs. For the dead remain inside us as water remains in granite. Hardly at all. For their job is to go away and not come back even when we ask them. But water comes to us.

[47:41]

It doesn't care about us. It goes around us on the way to the Minnesota River, to the Mississippi River, to the Gulf. Always closer to where it has to be. No one lays flowers on the grave of water for it is not here. It is gone. I'll give you a small poem I wrote on sorrow.

[48:42]

Sorrow and grief are related. They're both very different from depression. Depression is passive. If you refuse to go into grief, yourself, then sometimes it'll go along alright for ten years or so and then a hand will come up and pull you down. That's called depression. For the ancients, they believed in active work with this. You went down yourself two or three times a day. That's called grief or sorrow. So I'll give you a poem I wrote on sorrow. This is a form that I use. Each poem has 85 syllables. It concentrates on one or two sounds.

[49:43]

What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse of wheat, barley, corn, and tears. One steps to the door on a round stone and the storehouse feeds all the birds of sorrow. And I say to myself, will you have sorrow at last? Go on. Be cheerful in autumn. Be stoic. Yes. Be tranquil. Calm. Or, in the valley of sorrows spread your wings. Once more?

[50:50]

The third line mentions a round stone in Norway, you know. I'm Norwegian originally. The stone, the old storehouse is up above the ground and then there's a great big round stone right in front and you step up to the storehouse and the stone. I was very touched by it when I went to Norway. So that mentions it. All right. So it's oar. It's oar poems. Could be called a little concerto in the key of oar. Do you know what I'm saying? When will I have sorrow at last? Like so many of us were sort of professionally cheerful. Sort of missionaries of the smile. And you're in Europe and you're with a whole bunch of Americans. They're all smiling like men. So wonderful to see a Frenchman

[51:53]

come down a French street. Ask him how he is. He says terrible. How are you? What is sorrow for? It is a storehouse of wheat, barley, corn and tears. One steps to the door on a round stone and the storehouse feeds all the birds of sorrow. And I say to myself will you have sorrow at last? Go on.

[52:54]

Be cheerful in autumn. Be stoic. Yes. Be tranquil. Calm. Or in the valley of sorrow spread your wing. I'll do one more homage. I gave the name homage to the it's a French word I found one day at a flute concert. Connected with a word, French word connected with the singing of birds. What choice do we have but to go down? How can I be close to you if I'm not sad? The clam tumbles in the surf

[54:00]

and amber holds the secret desire that the bee fell before his room grew silent. The lonely man reads by his lamp at night. What is it that we want? Some ancient man half bear and half human knows what we want. And the more he talks to us the swifter we tumble down. Give it to you once more? See what is that one in there? That's an um.

[55:06]

That's a little concerto in the key of um. Um is a beautiful sound. Um. M is pretty good too. N is one of the favorites of mine. N is beautiful. This is an um one. Um. I value very much the work of James Hillman. James Hillman has said a magnificent thing. I'll tell you in just a second. We'll go back. He said. He realized that something very strange is happening to us. Do you realize that Freud brought out the interpretation of dreams in 1899? That's 83 years ago now. Do you realize how much the psyche has changed in 83 years? Our psyche. Wonderful things going on in this century. Wonderful. And our psyches are actually changed. And one of the ways that they're changed is that there's becoming a secret connection between our psyches and Greek mythology. Greek mythology is alive to us now.

[56:08]

More than it has been for 2,000 years. Something strange is happening. I was with a woman in a car today and she said you know I'm 40 years old and I have a 17 year old daughter. So it was time for me to begin to read about Demeter and Persephone. Who would have said that in the 19th century? An academic thing. She didn't. She went to it like bread. And she told the astounding things that she had found out by just reading little things in that. You want to hear one? Sure. This is what she said. She said I read over that thing with Demeter and Persephone and you know Persephone is taken down. She's taken down. She's taken down. That's not to be considered a bad thing. She was taken down. Now when she came back up again and met her mother she said there's a strange, strange scenes in those myths because she and her mother are seeing each other for the first time. She and her mother are exchanging things for the first time you know as people. You feel that? When she came back up again then you feel it. And she said why is that? Well she said I think it's because Persephone is a queen now too.

[57:11]

You see it's two queens who talk to each other. So if you wish to talk to your mother it's necessary to go down and become a queen there. Then when you come up. Very nice. Very nice. I would have never thought of it in a thousand years but she understood it instantly. All right. He says that underneath our lives there's a river it's called Hades and that river is flowing beneath ours it's parallel to the sea it's parallel with ours but it's flowing beneath it. And Hades is moist. Hades is moist. There are tears in Hades. The dead are there too by the way. And when you're at a wedding and you suddenly start to cry don't wonder why you cried. You cried because it's so beautiful when human beings honor each other in this way in themselves. It's so beautiful that you fall into Hades like that.

[58:13]

The tears come. You're in Hades. And at a funeral I've fallen into it's one of the first times I understood I fall into a funeral I fall into Hades during a funeral and it isn't because the person died. I remember very clearly an old friend of my father's died after the funeral and said Joseph Joe Benson was born in Rock County, Iowa and at the age of 20 he moved north to Le Sur County, Minnesota. At the age of 24 he was united in marriage to Emma Anderson So beautiful to hear a human life spoken of in that simple clear way. I went right down boy swept and wept and wept. That's called falling into Hades. And of course we don't trust it in the United States so we bring cookies and coffee right away. And if you stay there I mean it too long. So that's a wonderful thing he said the ancient world descended into Hades two to three times a day. There was no problem with depression in the ancient world. It's hardly mentioned 85% of our troubles come

[59:15]

when you're connected with depression. Another thing that's terrifically interesting is the purpose of all great artists is to drop you into Hades. You're walking along and you're down. Don't know what happened you're down. And Johann Sebastian Bach try him sometime. You're going along and all of a sudden he says how'd you like to go? And you come back up and he says here's another variation. He's a genius at that. Goldberg variation up, down, up, down. Just when you think you're safe, down you go. He just changes a slight note and down you go. So What choice do we have but to go down? How can I be close to you if I'm not sad? The clam

[60:18]

tumbles in the surf and amber holds the secret desire that the bee fell before his womb grew silent. The lonely man breathes by his lamp at night. What is it that we want? Some ancient man half bear and half human knows what we want. And the more he talks to us the swifter we tumble down. Well, thank you. Well, it's already ten after nine

[61:23]

and I'd like to read you another group maybe a few love poems and I wanted to read a few poems on fathers and sons which I haven't gotten to yet. Would you like to have a break now? Do you want to go on to a few father poems? Do you need a break? No, not at all. I'm trying to hold myself down. I used to read three and a half to four hours. I went to Carnegie Tech with my head and I had to read poetry readings since 1920. I read for four hours. But so alright, I'll read for ten minutes or so. I'll do a couple father poems. Shall I? And then when we come back I'll do some love poems and a couple of form poems. Okay. What feeling the man in the United States has and he has men, much, but I'm trying to say that

[62:25]

the feeling usually comes to us through our mothers. In a way, the mother in the house represents feeling. The father often represents the world. That was certainly true in the 19th century. And since feeling is so dear to men they often are very close to their mothers for many years. 35 or 40. During that time their father's off there somewhere. The son often has the erroneous belief that all the feeling is with the mother. This is an erroneous belief encouraged by the mother. You know, you and I are sensitive. I don't know about him. Sometimes the daughter and the father, do you know that one? The father says to the daughter,

[63:26]

you and I are sensitive. I don't know about her. So sometimes there is as it was in my family a conspiracy between the mother and the son to keep the father out. So it takes a while before the son is able to understand that there is tremendous before he turns toward the father and before he understands not to accept his mother's view of his father. It wasn't done. You know, there is competition for you and more feelings and what do you expect? So, then the son comes to the point of realizing how much feeling there is in the father. The father, by the way, all these years can't say anything. What can you say? I've mentioned that when I used to go home it would always be the same thing. I'd sit and talk with my mother on the sofa and then if I remembered it I'd go in the bedroom and say goodbye to my father. Don't you think he heard all that? Father is not allowed

[64:28]

to say anything. He doesn't say anything. It's been going on a long time. What can you say? So when I realized that I decided to end that. And end it doesn't mean shouting at your mother. It was all done on her unconscious and yours. It was done before the age which you could talk. So, words don't help much. So what I would do is I said my father had one part of one lung removed would be in bed quite a bit. So when I go home I sit in the bed with him. I sit down with him. And after a while if my mother wants to talk she comes in and says something. Nothing has to be said. It's all understood. Very well understood. I suppose after two or three months of that I reached over once and I put my hand on my father's knee. He didn't pull it away.

[65:28]

I didn't have... Before that I put my hand on my father's knee and pull it away. I didn't have the instinct to pull it away either. I saw him about three weeks ago and he said to me how's your writing going? I almost fell over. I said what did you say? I was so astounded I couldn't reply. Fifty minutes later he said how's your writing going? Oh well. So, so I will do you I'll do you two poems I think since it's a bit late. I'll do you two poems on the father. First one is called Finding the Father. We're in that situation that I mentioned to you in which you're still very much caught with your mother and it's nothing evil about it at all. It's just that the father is out there. And also it can be said that in our country in our country now

[66:30]

with the industrial revolution having taken such a powerful side and the sons you were with your father all day all year in ancient times. I was with mine as a farm boy all the time. In the afternoon of the industrial revolution the father is away from the house. He cannot get his old bond which is teaching you things. What can he teach you? How to take out the garbage? That's a great grief that's a terrible grief to fathers. And also it means that in the house now the women's it's primarily women's values in the American house. And I like women's values very much but I also like men's values. So therefore it can be said that the father now loses his son five minutes after birth. My friend

[67:36]

this body offers to carry us for nothing as the ocean carries logs. So on some days the body wails with its great energy and smashes up the rocks lifting small crabs who flow around the sides. There's a knock at the door. We don't have time to dress he wants us to come with him through the blowing and rainy streets to the dark house. We will go there the body says and there find the father whom we have never met who wandered out in the snowstorm the night we were born who then lost his memory and has lived since longing

[68:36]

for his child whom he saw only once while he worked as a shoemaker as a cattle herder in Australia as a restaurant cook who painted at night. When you light the lamp you will see him he sits there behind the door the eyebrows so heavy the forehead so light lonely in his whole body waiting for you. And I don't mean that only the young men and the men are hungry for their fathers the women are too

[69:38]

the daughters are hungry for their fathers do you feel it? There are many women in the country who want their father to give them a stronger eros life than he has but two things can be said if he can't love his son he can't give you full love either and secondly we have to realize that for about 20 years in this country some of the women have been saying that men have no feeling and only women have feeling only women have bodies it's been a tenet and you have to realize that men hear that and believe it so it's a possibility that your father believes this how could he make a bridge with you when he has no feeling you told him that so what I'm saying is that if you wish to make a link with your father you have to do it you have to go you should do it before he dies you can do it after he dies too there's not that much change

[70:38]

shall I do this poem again or leave it do it again please the opening lines are are sort of a little aside to Saint Paul whom I really am sick of hold on the other day this same minister in Madison this friend of mine had to read the text and he read the thing and it said and you are to obey your husband and I saw him afterwards and I said oh and how could you have read that disgusting thing and he said well Robert I lowered my voice as low as I could they really are ashamed of that stuff now but then as the ancients would say they act on it we have to call a church convention and remove all of the books of Saint Paul and replace them with books of Wilka why do we assume that they're the only intelligent people

[71:45]

in the world in 6-700 A.D. if they had the right to make these decisions why don't we have the right to make them I don't believe they're any smarter in the country you know if you really read Saint Paul you know what you'd do if you read this stuff you call up Sigmund you say Sigmund I got a case here you have some free time my friend this body offers to carry us for nothing how could you be so ungrateful my friend this body offers to carry us for nothing as the ocean carries logs so on some days the body wails with its great energy it smashes up the rocks lifting small crabs that float around the side there's a knock

[72:46]

at the door we don't have time to dress he wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets to the dark house we will go there the body says the body says and there find the father whom we have never met who wandered out in a snow storm the night we were born who lived in longing for his child whom he saw only once while he worked as a shoemaker as a cattle herder

[73:46]

in Australia as a restaurant cook who painted at night when you light the lamp when you light the lamp you will see him he sits there behind the door the eyebrows so heavy the forehead so light lonely in his whole body waiting waiting for you you have a good audience you have a good stomach for grief I like this audience

[74:48]

they don't get restless they just feed them more they eat more I'll give you one more not too heavy for you? no I'll give you one now without the bouzouki I'm going to just say a bit about the beginning of this poem Basho said the difficulty with most poetry is it's either subjective or objective most of our poetry has always been subjective we begin in here I don't feel good I think my wife is wrong it's called confessional poetry but it's in here it's not connected out there generally all over the Orient they say if you wish to learn about the pine go to the pine you want to learn about the bamboo go to the bamboo poems should be written outdoors and it's important

[75:48]

that you start out there you start out there then you come in here and in the process of that you stitch the two worlds together do you hear me? what I'm saying? did you feel Anik Matava do that? by mentioning the pine trees? yeah stitching the two worlds together beautiful beautiful beautiful work so in this particular poem I had I had been thinking about my father but what am I going to write about my father? am I going to talk about this in here? am I going to talk about a pain? am I going to talk about a feeling of rejection? what am I going to talk about? I'm looking at it wrong I'm looking at it the old American way again the old Whitman way so beautiful inside I'm just going to write ten thousand lines now I was I've done an exercise for eight or ten years in which I take an object and I write about it and I just spend

[76:48]

time in the morning writing about the object and if it doesn't come out a poem fine who says it has to be a poem? the issue is human language is not given to us to communicate with each other it's alright but we can communicate other ways shoulder human language is given us so that we can meet material coming towards us but we can be active towards it not passive when something comes towards you from a dream it's important to take language and go to meet it if a wonderful tree is out there don't just say wow remember that in the sixties? entire language wow that's called passivity the idea if you see a tree that really strikes you you get your language which has been created by our ancestors for twenty five hundred thousand years and you take this language and you go to the tree and you try to meet the force coming towards it with a human force am I saying anything to you? yep and that's a wonderful thing it doesn't matter if it's a poem or not it doesn't matter if it's good

[77:48]

a friend of mine once was interviewing William Bill Stafford and he said to Bill you know Robert said that you write a poem every day is this true? yes what Bill does is he begins writing a poem in the morning gets up at five thirty writes on the poem at six thirty his children get up he makes breakfast for them and does all his stuff and goes off to school then if it isn't finished he puts it up in a place between the kitchen and the dining room and then when he gets home at lunch he writes some more on it and then if it still isn't finished at night he works on it finishes it a poem every day so she said to him well what do you do if you're not very good that day? he said I just lower my standards we have far too high standards he said I'm wonderful I love that the idea is that the language should flow and come out let the superintendents of high schools judge whether it's good you know I don't mean that so So, but at the moment you're doing it, you don't care if it's good or bad at all.

[78:50]

That would be doing it completely wrong. Okay, let's go on then. So I'd been wanting to say something about my father, and I was doing an exercise with some students. I went to visit Bloomington, and I said, let's all write on something. So someone said, I said to the teacher, do you have a, do you have a, are you out in the country? He said, yeah. I said, would you bring in something that looks good from way in your backyard? He said, okay. So he came in with a log about this big, stick he'd found out in the woods, and it was bent like that. He put it on the table, and we all went to work on it. There was nine or ten people there, and I went to work on it. And instantly I looked at it, and it looked like a leg, a crooked leg. It looked like my father's crooked leg. He doesn't have one. So I wrote about it, and then it became my crooked leg. Then I kept on going with that, and I wrote a post form that night, that day, about it. Then I worked on it for a few months, and I realized I had to decide whether it was

[79:54]

my leg or my father's. I've got to make these decisions. I decided it was my father's. So then I did a lot of work on that log. Often times in a looking poem, you do a lot of work on the log, and the looking occupies half the poem, because it's subjective and objective. In this case, none of it was any good. The stuff I wrote on the log wasn't any good. Anyway, I kept working on it, and then I suppose I worked on it a year or two, and then I didn't like it in post form, and I threw it into lines, going down like this, and then there was holes in it. So I took it and I threw it into stanza form, and then it was clear where the holes were. I'd have a lump just right for a stanza, my next stanza, two lines only. Guess what's missing? What I don't want to say. What I didn't want to say, that's why there's a hole there. So I kept throwing it down, and the image came from my friend Don Hall, who did some

[80:57]

work with Henry Moore, and he was there one day, and a young student came in with a little statue of Apollo in clay that he had done, and showed it to Henry Moore. Henry Moore said to him, he said, there's something wrong with this, he said to Henry. Henry said, well, throw it on the floor and see how it looks then. That's very nice. Something a little wrong. Well, I'll just throw it on the floor then. So I finally finished this poem. It's called My Father's Wedding, 1924. Today, lonely for my father, I saw a log her branch, long, bent, ragged, bark gone. It made me lonely for my father when I saw it. It was a log that lay near my uncle's old milk wagon.

[81:58]

Some men live with an invisible limp, stagger, or drag a leg. Their sons often are angry. Only recently, I thought, doing what you want, is that like limping? It leaves crooked tracks in the sand. Have you seen those giant bird men of Bhutan, men with bird masks and pig noses dancing, and dog's teeth sometimes dancing on one bad leg? They do what they want. The dog's teeth say that. But I grew up without dog's teeth. You notice how many respectable men there have been lately? I grew up without dog's teeth. I learned to walk swiftly, easily, no trace of a limp. I even leaped a little. Guess where my defect is?

[83:03]

Then what? If a man, cautious, hides his limp, somebody has to limp it. The surroundings do it. Other people do it. The house walls get scars. The car breaks down. My car always broke down. The car breaks down. Matter, in drudgery, takes it up. On my father's wedding day, no one was there to hold him. Noble loneliness held him. Because he never asked for pity, his friends thought he was whole. Walking alone, he could carry it. He came in limping. It was a simple wedding.

[84:07]

Three or four people. And the minister, dressed in black, lifting the book, called for order. And the invisible bride stepped forward before his own bride. He married the invisible bride, not his own. In her left breast, she had the three drops that wound and kill. And he already had his bark-like skin then, made rough, especially to repel the sympathy that he wanted, didn't need, and wouldn't accept. So the words are read. When the service is over, I hold him in my arms for the first time and the last. After that, he was alone,

[85:11]

and I was alone. He invited a few friends in. His two-story house, he turned into a forest, where both he and I are. The Hunters. On my father's wedding day, no one was there to hold him. Noble loneliness held him. Because he never asked for pity,

[86:15]

his friends thought he was whole. Walking alone, he could carry He came in limping. It was a simple wedding. Three or four people. Then the man in black, lifting the book, called for order. And the invisible bride, the invisible bride stepped forward before his own bride. He married the invisible bride, not his own. Do you know people like that? He married the invisible bride,

[87:19]

not his own. And his skin was already bark-like. In order to reject the sympathy that he wanted, he didn't need and wouldn't accept. So the words are read, when the service is over, I hold him in my arms for the first time and the last. And the last

[88:24]

After that, he was alone. And I was alone. He invited a few friends in his two-story house.

[88:49]

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