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[LAUGHTER] SPEAKER 1: I think they're all stoned.

SPEAKER 2: Lonely.

SPEAKER 3: You were.

SPEAKER 2: He's the slowest guy I've ever seen.

[LAUGHS]

[SIDE CONVERSATION]

[LAUGHS]

SPEAKER 4: Before I introduce the singer and dancer and raiser of consciousness who is with us today, many of you already love them now, just a few announcements. The reading today is sponsored jointly by the English division and the college center.

And there will be one last reading this year, which will be a student reading by some of our student poets and prose writers. That'll be on Wednesday the 17th in the art lounge. And we've had a group-- I don't know how many of you are aware that we've had a group of writers who have been meeting together this year and reading to each other and going over their work.

And this will be a chance to hear them if you come on the 17th at 11:30 and become fans, as many of us are, and want to hear him again just as soon as you can. So I'm glad to announce that you can hear him again very soon.

There is a benefit for Guatemalan earthquake victims with Robert Bly reading, and the [? mime ?] Rick [? Shulk ?] will be there, singer Kim Livingston, the Uchawi dancers. They'll present an evening of music, dance and so forth on March 14 at the West Bank auditorium at the University at 8:00 o'clock.

And if you want to get tickets, you can get them more cheaply from me. We're not allowed to raise money on campus, but you could get them from me for $2.50 in my office or outside the school or something. Gosh, to introduce Robert Bly is-- just seems to me a real honor. I came across his poems years ago when I was wandering out in the country, and I used to carry some of Robert Bly's poems with me.

And what I loved then was the sound, the music, just the beautiful flow of sounds. And then after becoming very aware of Robert Bly as a maker of these beautiful flows of sound, as well as seen as impressions of nature and so forth, then I became aware that something was happening in his poetry where there was a kind of movement taking place that was sweeping him along.

It's as if he had been caught up in a-- he had found some kind of spiritual or cosmic or mythic movement that had just swept him with it and carried him way beyond even the individual consciousness or ego into areas of myth and symbol and archetype and mask. And with it was just lifting the reader up into what I feel is, perhaps this overused cliche but nevertheless, a real state of a higher consciousness, a higher spiritual consciousness.

And it became more clear that to me that what was happening is a really giant of a poet was emerging on the scene. And watching growth and changes in Robert Bly as somebody not from Minnesota, and then coming here and finally hearing him read and realizing that the man is a dancer and singer in the true tradition of the great prophets and priests who convey the spirit to us in their words was a marvelous revelation. And I know that it will be a revelation to you too. Those of you who have gone already know this. So Robert Bly.

ROBERT BLY: Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. That was a wonderful thing.

[APPLAUSE]

I'm going to be here this afternoon till about 4:00 or so. And I'll read this morning. Some people have to leave at 11:15 or 11:20 for class. When it becomes time for that, just raise your hand so that then those who want to go will go, and then I'll read another. I'll read until 12:30 or 12:45 or something like that. And then I'll be back at 2:20 for a discussion period. Where is that going to be?

SPEAKER 4: A314.

ROBERT BLY: A314. And any of you who want to come and talk, please come to that discussion period. Well, that was a lovely introduction. I don't know when I'll ever get a better one. And I kept thinking, that's pretty good for a Norwegian Lutheran.

[LAUGHTER]

So I think what I'll do is begin this reading and maybe end it with some poems of Kabir. Kabir is a 16th century Hindu who writes in a tradition that we don't have much. That of the-- first of all, in his poems, the music and the speech and the body are all united. So his poetry was sung, all of that's gone in the translation. So you're only getting the words.

At the same time, the underlying mood of his poems and what he says theologically is entirely opposed to our whole tradition of St. Paul Lutheranism women hating. It has nothing to do with all that stuff. And it is odd for a person who likes St. Paul to read poetry. Do you understand the contradiction? Since philosophy comes out of here, poetry comes out of the whole body.

If you don't like the body like St. Paul-- I was talking to a religion professor just beforehand, and he was saying that he'd been reading something about St. Paul. And St. Paul keeps saying, oh, yes, you've been persecuted. I've been persecuted a lot more. You've been in prison. I've been in prison 20 times. It's too bad that you have to have sex. Well, if you do, you better get married. Better if you're like me, and you never feel anything.

[LAUGHTER]

He's laying an enormous boulder around the neck of Christianity. So I said to this man, I'll become interested in the church at the point they have a Nicaean conference, and we move all of Paul's books from the New Testament.

[LAUGHTER]

So I'm going to begin with reading a few poems. Here's a lovely one. This is Kabir. He went, and he lived in a Muslim country where they sing to God at dusk. [VOCALIZES] He thought it was beautiful but--

"I don't know what sort of God we've been talking about.

The caller calls in a loud voice to the Holy One at dusk.

Why? I don't get it.

Surely, the Holy One is not deaf.

He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks.

Go over and over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead,

Wear your hair matted, long, and ostentatious,

but when inside you there's a loaded gun,

how can you have God?"

It's a good question for Ford, let alone Ronnie Reagan.

[LAUGHTER]

It's also a good question for a lot of us that did a lot of anti-war work when we all called the policeman pigs. When deep inside you there's a loaded gun, how can you have God? You want one another one? Oh, yes. Everybody now is feeling more the sense of what love is more than my generation. They mainly knew about passing tests and stuff. And it could be his time it is also that way.

But he notices a strange thing. He says,

"Oh friend, I love you, think this over

carefully! If you are in love,

then why are you asleep?

If you have found him,

give yourself to him, take him.

Why do you lose track of him again and again?

If you're about to fall into heavy sleep anyway,

why waste time smoothing the bed and arranging the pillows?

[LAUGHTER]

Kabir will tell you the truth, this is what love is like,

suppose you had to cut your head off

and give it to someone else,

What difference would it make?"

[LAUGHTER]

You see, it's very strange for us to hear humor in a religious poem. We've been in churches once too often.

[LAUGHTER]

You want to hear this again?

"Friend, I love you, think this over

Carefully! If you are in love, then why are you asleep?

If you have found him,

give yourself to him, take him.

Why do you lose track of him again and again?

If you are about to fall into heavy sleep anyway,

why waste time smoothing the bed and arranging the pillows?

Kabir will tell you the truth, this is what love is like,

suppose you had to cut your head off

and give it to someone else,

what difference would it make?"

Well-- and the Orientals have this terrific metaphor which they use again and again in all of the religions, which is that, all humanity is asleep. We're all asleep. You can make wars in your sleep. You can make love in your sleep. You can even write books in your sleep, but they'll only serve to put other people to sleep.

[LAUGHTER]

And the next statement is, if mankind knew it was asleep and wake up. So the hard thing is trying to find out that you are asleep. And don't be mad at yourself for it. It's nothing to do with the original sin. You're just asleep, that's all.

[LAUGHTER]

So Kabir describes the situation when he wakes up, when he's awake, and he feels this terrific energy inside. And then other times when even though he has awakened, he falls back asleep again. And here is one of his poems describing that.

"When my friend is away from me, I'm depressed,

Nothing in the daylight delights me,

Sleep at night gives no rest,

Who can I tell about this?

The night is dark and long, hours go by.

Because I'm alone, fear goes through me.

I sit up suddenly.

Kabir says, listen, my friend, the one thing in the world that satisfies is a meeting with a guest.

Inside this clay jug, there are canyons and pine mountains,

and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!

All seven oceans are inside,

and hundreds of millions of stars.

The acid that test gold is here,

and the one who judges jewels.

And the music from the strings that no one touches and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I'll tell you the truth, Listen, friend, the God whom I love is inside."

If you want to hear a poem again, just raise your hands like this. So once enough for that poem.

"Inside this clay jug of the body, inside this clay jug, there are canyons and pine mountains,

and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!

All seven oceans are inside,

and hundreds of millions of stars.

The acid that test gold is here,

and the one who judges jewels.

And the music from the strings that no one touches,

and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I'll tell you the truth.

Friend, listen, the God whom I love is inside."

[APPLAUSE]

Here's a lovely one.

"Everyone always says to Kabir, why don't you write some more poems? And he says, why don't you read the ones I wrote?

[LAUGHTER]

He says,

"Why should I flail about with words when love has made the space inside me full of light.

I know that the diamond is wrapped in this cloth,

so why should I open it all the time and look?

When the pan was empty, it went up.

Now that it's full, why bother weighing it?

The swan has flown to the Mountain Lake,

why bother with ditches and holes anymore?

The Holy One lives inside of you.

Why bother opening these other eyes at all?

Kabir will tell you the truth.

Listen, brother, the guest who makes my eyes so bright has made love with me."

Notice the difference between that and the sermon, hmm? One of the problems-- I live in a little town three hours west of here-- and one of the problems, of course, is that if you imagine that God as being entirely male and you're a male, you have to meet him up here. Understand that?

In the ancient world, always they never had-- they could never imagine the Godhead as being entirely male. One of the greatest blows to Western civilization from which it's never recovered was the decisions of the early church to leave the feminine out of the Godhead. You have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Notice anything missing?

[LAUGHTER]

In the ancient world, the divinity and the feminine were united in the great mother for 400,000 years maybe. And even in Greek times they would have six male and six female gods. Zeus would be there with Hera. So we were one of the first civilizations which has ever had the experiment of trying to leave the feminine out. And the Catholic Church, at least, brought in the Virgin Mary. But I'm a Protestant.

[LAUGHTER]

And that stuff had nothing to do with not paying taxes to Rome. It had to do with getting that figure of a woman out of the church. Well, so San Juan de La Cruz, St. Teresa, they have poems like this because she imagines herself making love with a male Godhead all the way down. But the male is saying, oh, no, I can't do that.

[LAUGHTER]

Do you want to hear this poem once more? "Why should I flail about with words when love has made the space inside me full of light? I know that diamond is wrapped in this cloth, so why should I open it all the time and look? When the pan was empty, it flew up. Now that it's full, why bother weighing it? The swan has flown to the mountain lake. Why bother with ditches and holes anymore?

The Holy One actually lives inside of you, why bother opening these eyes at all? Kabir will tell you the truth,

"Listen, brother, the guest who makes my eyes so bright has made love with me."

"I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty," that the first line I ever saw of Kabir. I saw it in a book called 100 Poems of Kabir. It's still in print done in Victorian English. And all I did is translate that book from Victorian English into American.

So these are not translations, they're some kind of versions. But that's the first line I saw, and it's exactly as it was in that book. "I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty." Understand the poem? Understand the line? Spiritual world is around everybody. And everybody says, I'm so thirsty. I can't find God. I'm an existentialist.

[LAUGHTER]

Kabir says,

"I laugh when I hear that the fish and the water is thirsty.

You don't grasp the fact that what's most alive of all is inside your own house,

and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

[LAUGHTER]

Kabir will tell you the truth, go wherever you want, to Kolkata or Tibet."

He could also say, go wherever you want to the Washington cathedral or to Palestine.

"If you can't find where your soul is hidden, for you, the world will never be real!"

[APPLAUSE]

My inside--

"Listen to me, the greatest spirit, the teacher is near.

He's standing close to you right now.

Run to him.

You have slept for millions and millions of years. Why not wake up this morning?"

[LAUGHTER]

You want it again? No, once is enough for that one. So one of the things that's said is that with us, waking up involves if you're a male, waking up your female side. Joe Namath is in such a deep sleep that nothing could ever wake him up, [LAUGHTER], because he has no relation to his female side at all.

And it turns out that in this world, men tend to treat women in the same way that they treat their own female side. And when you have a heavy, brutal jet fighter pilot, or sometimes the heavy, brutal PhD teacher, sometimes what happens, he beats up women because he's already beat up the female side of himself.

Same with men with women. Women treat men roughly as they treat their own male side. We're brought up in Minnesota. Women are brought up to stay in the kitchen, be nice, which means you have no relation to your male side at all. Therefore, what happens? If you ignore men, I mean, you live in a house with one, but what is it? Some kind of thing. I don't know.

I understand men feel lonely when they're with women who have no development of the male side at all. Just like you feel lonely when you're with a man who has nothing but the male side. So they talk about that a great deal in the "Awakening."

"Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates,

And the new love opens them.

And the sound of the gates opening wakes

the beautiful woman asleep.

Kabir says, Fantastic!

Don't let a chance like this go by!"

You can read it for women also.

"Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates,

and the new love opens them.

And the sound of the gates opening wakes

The strong male asleep.

Kabir says, Fantastic!

Don't let a chance like this go by!" Well, I'll give you one more poem by Kabir, then we'll go to something else.

"Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing.

All Earth creatures, even the supernovas, are swaying between these two trees, of the conscious and the unconscious, And it never winds down.

Angels, animals, insects by the million, human beings, also the wheeling sun and moon, ages go by, and it goes on.

Everything is swinging, heaven, earth, water, fire,

and the secret one slowly growing a body.

Kabir saw that for fifteen seconds,

and it made him a servant for life."

Once more? It's very interesting in the opening line between the conscious and the unconscious, a third thing is put up a swing. Freud did wonderfully in understanding that there is an unconscious. It's still not accepted in Madison, Minnesota, but they accept it in Vienna.

But New Orleans are ahead of us. They imagine a third thing very clearly, and they've had many people who are able to visualize that third thing as clearly as Freud and Jung have visualized the unconscious. So we're on the way to that.

"Between the conscious and the unconscious,

A third thing has set up a swing.

And all Earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees of the conscious and the unconscious, and it never winds down.

Angels, animals, insects by the million, human beings, also, the wheeling sun and moon, ages go by, and it goes on.

Everything is swinging, heaven, earth, water, fire,

And the secret one slowly growing a body.

Kabir saw this for fifteen seconds, and it made him a servant for life."

When I read that last line, it reminds me of Jakob Bohme. Our greatest spiritual man who was a cobbler in Germany in about 1510. And when he worked, he always worked with physical things. Working with your hands is a great help in any kind of spiritual work. Therefore, you meet woodcutters who are often far more spiritually advanced than anyone will see in the intellectual world. So he was a cobbler.

And then what he'd do is take a silver plate and put it in front of him while he was making his shoes. And the light would come in and hit that silver plate. And then he'd concentrate on the light where it hit there. He did that about 10 years.

And one day in that little beam, he saw an incredible thing. He saw the entire universe absolutely unified like notes of a fantastic song. It took him about 10 seconds he saw that, and he spent 30 years after that trying to write out what he saw in 10 seconds. Same kind of an experience.

Well, let's go on with something else. So why this, what I've been describing, is a kind of a freedom, which is impossible for us really to get near. We are Westerners. We have had a long tradition of people like St. Paul who destroy the words of Christ, who violate Christ's sense of the unity of the human body.

Christ was not anti-female. Christ had Mary with him and other women all the way through. He refused to stone the woman caught in adultery. And then these patriarchs come along in the church and destroy all of that. And we're left with this-- well, many other things. Industrial revolution comes. We're not interested in what's inside, only in what's outside. We're told to be nice, respectable, make money, all those things.

So it's impossible for us to leap into the kind of thing that Kabir has. But the movement is going towards it. So let's talk a little bit about why we don't get there. I'll read you a few poems. We all feel a despair that's holding us down, pulling you down. You can feel it very strongly in the last couple of years. Just pulls you right down to the ground. You understand what I'm talking about?

Call it apathy. I don't care what you call it. You begin to feel it in America. I begin to feel it around 1960 or so coming in then. And then it came in the form of the Vietnam War, and now it's still with us. And I wrote a little poem, "My Little Town."

I was driving into Madison, and I saw a whole bunch of old, used car tires piled out of town. Oh, God, it's frightening. That's like our people. When we weigh them out, we pile them up like used tires, and they sit on the outside of the town. We put up a television set there so the tires can watch television.

"Come with me into those things that have felt this despair for so long--

Those who have moved Chevrolet wheels that howl with a terrible loneliness,

Lying on their backs in the cindery dirt, like men drunk and naked, Staggering Off down a hill to drown at last in a pond.

All those shredded inner tubes abandoned on the shoulders of thruways,

Black and collapsed bodies, that tried and burst, and were left behind.

And those curly steel shavings scattered about in the garage benches,

Sometimes still warm, gritty when we hold them,

Who have given up, and blame everything on the government.

And those roads in South Dakota that feel around in the darkness."

I go to South Dakota, I get chills. Boy, it's lonely out there. So I'll give you a couple of these depressing poems. You want another one? I noticed one day in Madison that the dental clinic kept on their sprinklers, even when it was raining. It's got some meaning. I don't know what it is.

[LAUGHTER]

So I started a poem with that, and I never did find out, but I wrote a poem anyway. Dennis continued-- It's called "The Great Society."

"Dentists continued to water their lawns, even in the rain.

Hands developed with terrible labor by apes

Hang from the sleeves of evangelists."

I mean, we did all this to produce Billy Graham? We worked for four million years to produce Billy Graham, who thinks Nixon's terrific and goes to the prayer breakfast, says, there's no tapes or anything. He's a purveyor of truth.

"Dentists continue to water their lawns, even in the rain.

Hands developed with terrible labor by apes

Hang from the sleeves of evangelists.

There are murdered kings in the light-bulbs outside the movie theaters,

And the coffins of the poor are hibernating in the piles of new tires.

The janitor sits troubled by the boiler,

And the hotel keeper shuffles the dark cards of insanity.

The president dreams of invading Cuba.

Bushes are growing over the outdoor grills,

Vines over the yachts and the leather seats.

And the city btoods over ash cans and darkening mortar.

And on the far shore, at Coney Island, dark children

Play on the chilling beach, a sprig of black seaweed,

Shells, the sky full of birds,

while the mayor sits with his head in his hands."

I don't know what else to read you. Want to hear "Sleet Storm on the Merritt Parkway?" OK. I won't read it. I'll read something else.

[LAUGHTER]

You want one on watching television? One of the most evil things that's ever been invented is television.

[APPLAUSE]

A friend of mine, Tom McGrath, who's a marvelous poet who lives up in Moorhead, one time went back to his home town of Sheldon, North Dakota, and started to wander around at night. And he came to an abandoned farmhouse, and it used to be horses and stuff in the barn. And he comes near this farmhouse where a friends of his used to live, and he sees this blue light coming out of the window.

[LAUGHTER]

And he looks, and there they are. And he says, man, this whole Dracula thing, I understand it now. Everybody's got a Dracula inside their house that sucks your energy right out through your stomach into this thing. You watch it for three hours. That's how people felt after Dracula finished with their neck. [LAUGHTER] And that's blood that goes to feed the capitalists. They love it. Rockefeller is so fat and juicy. Mhm.

[LAUGHTER]

And so it's an ugly, anti-human thing which industrial countries use to suck the energy out of their people so that they'll vote the right way and so they won't make any trouble. You watch the television long enough, I guarantee you'll never go to any demonstrations. You'll be so sick of the world, you'll forget the whole thing. So let the Guatemalans die. I saw it on television.

Another thing that's horrible about it is the passivity, which is getting worse and worse. In a television set, you don't have to do anything. Just sit there and watch it. And, as we know, that it'll keep you as an infant. The difference between an infant and adult is that someone else does things for an infant. Adults do things for themselves. So if you want to become an adult, then it's a good thing to get rid of your HI-FI set.

What you do is you listen to a Mozart symphony once and you break the record and write a symphony yourself. I mean, who is he? He's supposed to write all the symphonies? You understand. I'm just talking about the passivities involved. There's 1,000 ways we're involved in. All right, here's a poem. "Watching Television."

"Sounds are heard too high for ears.

From the body cells, there's an answering bay.

Soon the inner streets filled with a chorus of barks.

We see the landing craft coming in,

The black car sliding to a stop,

The Puritan killer loosening his guns.

Wild dogs tear off noses and eyes

And run off with them down the street--

The body tears off its own arms and throws them into the air.

The detective draws fifty-five million people into the barrel of his revolver,

Who sleep restlessly as in an air raid in London.

Their backs become curved in the sloping, dark.

And the filaments of the soul slowly separate,

The spirit breaks, and a puff of dust floats up

Like a house in Nebraska that suddenly explodes."

Last line isn't very clear, but it means that if you watch, you're still alive now. Got a lot of juice in you. You go ahead, get married early, get two or three kids, get trapped in your house while your husband goes off to bowl, you'll end up watching television. By the time you're 35, you'll be gone. You'll wake up one morning, and your soul is gone. It's like a puff. Like a brake it brakes. It's like a house in Nebraska. You're watching it, and all of a sudden it explodes.

Well, have you had enough depressing poems now? Hmm? Yes? Great. One of the things that is said then is that, what do you want to do? Do you want to join the Guru Maharaj Ji? You'll end up more passive than you were before. Guru Maharaj Ji is a nice man, but he wants all of you to be passive if you become his disciples.

So all of this is nonsense. We can't talk this way. Too many generalities. So one of the things that is said then is that poetry and your spirit are involved in your imagination. We can't become saved at once. We can't become like Kabir immediately. It's impossible.

But one thing that you can do is to let your imagination get involved in your daily life. Which means you keep a journal. You write little poems every day. Don't have to be great poems. Point is, you imagination wants to enter your daily life. Now imagination is in Bob Dylan, and your daily life is washing your hair.

That's a big split there. Let Bob Dylan take care of himself. He's doing all right. You write your own songs. Get yourself a guitar and write it, and you'll be amazed at how your imagination will pull in funny little things that happened to you yesterday. I saw a dog turd on the street. Hmm. Actually, if you sing it, it sounds pretty good.

[LAUGHTER]

Probably an old high school teacher anyway. So funny things happen to us. There's a high school class here today, junior high school. If you have a teacher good enough to bring you to something like this, you've got a good teacher. Because most of the teachers want to keep you right there. You're mine. And I don't want you to learn anything else.

[LAUGHTER]

So, therefore, poetry doesn't really involve the whole business of getting published in stupid magazines like The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly and all that. It's nothing to do with that. It has to do with feeling the imagination every day. I know all sorts of poets who write every day. They never send a poem out. What's the difference? I read them to their kids. It's more fun to read poetry to your kids than it is to send it off in some dumb magazine thing where the editor says [MUMBLES].

[LAUGHTER]

So I'll read you a couple of some new poems I've written. I live in a farm in Western Minnesota where I have four children. And I make a living going out one week a month giving poetry readings. I'm out now. And these are wonderful.

[LAUGHTER]

So I don't work in-- I mean, I don't go out in December and January because those are very good months for working for me. I'm a Capricorn. We love snow, and I like to stay home. And then I owe the grocery store $1,500. So all my children say, daddy, aren't you going out pretty soon? So I'm out. So I wrote a whole group of poems which began with the thing. "My Friend, This Body Is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood." It's got good sound in it. Camphor and gopher wood, starts me off every time.

[LAUGHTER]

So I'll read you a couple of these poems.

"My friend, this body is made of camphor and gopherwood.

Where it goes, we follow even into the Ark,

As a light comes in sideways from the west over the spring buds in the winter trash."

And my grove, I didn't clean it up last winter.

"Comes over the winter trash.

The body comes out hesitatingly, and we are shaken, we weep.

How is it we feel that no one has ever loved us?"

I had my hand up like this when I was writing,

This protective lamp-lit left hand,

Hovering over its own shadow on the page seems more loved than we are.

And when we walk into a room where we expect to find someone,

We do not believe our eyes.

We walk all the way over the floor and feel the bed."

[RUSTLING]

Here's a poem I found in a notebook. And, I don't know, I must have written it because it was in my own handwriting. And it was in a journal. I keep a journal and write poems in it, and then I don't look at them for five to six months. That's wonderful. You look back, you get surprised. Beautiful.

So I found this poem, and It must be mine. It's called--

"He came in and sat by my side, and I did not wake up.

I went on dreaming of vast houses with rooms I had not seen,

Of men suddenly appearing whom I did not know, but who knew me,

Of thistles whose points shone as if a light were inside.

A man came to me and began to play music.

One arm lay outside the covers.

He put the dulcimer in my hand, but I did not play it.

I went on hearing.

Why didn't I wake up? And why didn't I play?

Because I am asleep.

And the sleeping man is all withdrawn into himself.

He thinks the sound of a shutting door

Is a tooth falling from his head,

Or his head rolling on the ground."

[RUSTLING]

This is a poem called "Finding the Father."

"This body offers to carry us for nothing--" Isn't it unbelievable that this body will carry us around day after day, all the ways we're mean to it. Really incredible.

"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 boulders,

Lifting small crabs that flow around the edges.

Someone knocks at the door.

We do not 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, he says,

and there find the father whom we have never met,

who wandered in a snowstorm the night we were born,

and has--

who lost his memory,

And has lived since longing 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 forehead so light--

the eyebrow so dark,

Lonely in his whole body, waiting for you."

[APPLAUSE]

Someone asked me to read a poem called "The Dead Seal." And it's a poem I wrote while I was out in California with my wife and children. We were living near Point Reyes Peninsula. And it was a time of the oil spill in the San Francisco Bay when a Standard Oil ship laid out a great deal of oil was started floating in.

It was coming near Bolinas Lagoon, which is maybe twice as wide as this room. It has many shellfish that are unknown elsewhere in the country. And if the oil got in there for two hours, all the shellfish would be dead. So Standard Oil did nothing, but kids from San Francisco state, students from high schools in San Francisco came out and decided to try to save Bolinas Lagoon.

And they took telephone poles and strung them across the mouth with wires and chains, but the oil went underneath the telephone poles. So then they went out in the fields and bought bails from farmers and put out row boas and dove down in the water and wired those bails to the telephone poles underneath. And that worked well, and the oil did not come in.

But in two or three hours the bails disintegrated in the seawater. They had to do it again. So they did it night and day for three days or so and saved Bolinas Lagoon. Then they started to wash birds. Like 1,000 birds came floating in covered with tar and oil floating into the shore like this. And the ones that were farther out, drowned carried down by the oil.

So these kids washed 920 or so of these birds. Took two to three hours to wash every bird with mineral oil. Then they started cleaning up the beach. And then Standard Oil finally sent a man on the sixth day, and said to these students, oh, yeah, good. That's good. We'll pay you $0.75 a day for an hour.

And the kids said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You like your money so much, best you keep your money. You keep it. About two weeks later, I went out and I saw a seal was lying dead in the shore, killed by oil in the liver. And I wrote this poem. I had a piece of paper with me.

"Walking north toward the point, I come into a dead seal. From a few feet away he looks like a bound log. He's lying on his back dead only a few hours. I stand and look at him. There's a quiver in the dead flesh. My God, he's still alive. And the shock goes through me as if a wall of my room had fallen away.

He's lying on his back. The small head up. The whiskers sometimes rise and fall. He is dying. This is the oil-- here on its back is the oil that heats our houses so efficiently. Wind blows fine sand back toward the ocean. The flipper near me lies folded over the stomach, looking like an unfinished arm, lightly glazed with sand at the edges. And the other flipper lies half underneath. The seal skin looks like an old overcoat scratched here and there-- by sharp mussel shells maybe.

So I reach out and touch him. Suddenly he rears up, turns over, gives three cries. Awaark! Awaark! Awaark! Like the cries from Christmas toys. And he lunges toward me. I'm terrified and leap back, although I know there can be no teeth in that jaw. He starts flopping toward the sea, but he falls over on his face. He does not want to go back to the sea. He looks up at the sky, and he looks like an old lady who has lost her hair." [LAUGHTER] He puts his chin back down in the sand, rearranges his flippers and waits for me to go. I go.

The next day I come back to say goodbye. He's dead now, but he's not. He's a quarter mile farther up the shore. Today, he's thinner squatting on his stomach, with his head out. The ribs show more. Each vertebrae in the back underneath a coat is visible, shiny. He breathes in and out.

A wave comes in, touches his nose, and he turns and looks at me-- and the eyes are slanted, the crown of his head looks like a boy's leather jacket leaning over some bars. He's taking a long time to die. The whiskers white as porcupine quills, the forehead slopes.

Goodbye, brother. Die in the sound of waves. Forgive us if we have killed you. Long live your race, your inner-tube race, so uncomfortable on land, so comfortable in the water. Be comfortable in death then, when the sand will be out of your nostrils, and you can swim in long loops through the pure death, ducking under as assassinations break above you. You don't want to be touched by me. I climb the cliff and go home the other way."

[APPLAUSE]

Well, some of you have to go to class. I'll read another half an hour for those who want to stay. I'm going to use some masks now, I think. I started to use masks about three years ago because I have a friend, Keith Gunderson, who's a mask freak. He's sitting down here. He's a freak in general.

[LAUGHTER]

And we went to a mask shop on 7th and Hennepin, and I bought a couple of masks that we were going to use them in the reading. And I tried to get him to come in in the mask, but he wouldn't do it. And finally, I put one on. So I'll put on three masks for you.

The first one was made for me by a woman in Cincinnati. And-- well, it's too bad that one has dropped out somewhere. I can put this one on for you in a second.

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah, it was Guatemalan earthquake people. It's too bad about them. Suffering is a terrible thing. I certainly feel very poor, sad for all the poor people in the United states, don't you? Yes, it's terrible. Terrible things are happening everywhere. But they like me in Grand Rapids.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

Here it is. Here it is. Found it. And a woman in Charleston, North Carolina when I gave a reading came and gave me this hat afterwards, which she had knitted. So I'll put this one on and her hat.

[LAUGHTER]

Some lines by Walt Whitman.

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd.

They do not lie awake at night and weep for their sins,

Not one of them kneels to his own kind who lived thousands of years ago,

Not one of them makes me sick discussing his duty to God.

[LAUGHTER]

Not one of them is industrious or respectable over the whole Earth."

Could you understand the lines of it?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

ROBERT BLY: Wonderful lines of Whitman. Wow. Incredible. So this is another poem which was written by the contemporary Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen. And we're hoping to bring him over in the fall, possibly in the spring. He's never been to the United States. And like all Norwegians, he wants to come to Minnesota.

And this is a poem he wrote, which I translated from the Norwegian.

[SHUSHING]

"The small waves along the shore say shh!

Not so conspicuous,

Not so violent,

Not so remarkable. Shh!

The waves along the headland say shh!

This is our earth, our eternity."

[APPLAUSE]

Could you hear those lines? The animal says, this is our Earth. Maybe it is. Our eternity. In the fairy tales, for example, there's a wonderful woman named Marie-Louise Von Franz. She's the most intelligent psychologist in the world today, in my opinion.

She's 60 years old, lives in Zurich, and has written four or five great books, which she never puts into the mass market. She isn't interested in it. But her name is Marie-Louise Von Franz, and she's the greatest authority in the world on fairy tales.

One of her greatest books is a book called The Feminine and Fairy Tales. And she has gone into the discussion of what's in fairy tales. The chances are there's a possibility that fairy tales were written maybe 4,000 BC by women priests who were young. Many of the fairy stories have to deal with the growth of women.

And their problem was to understand the growth of women. And then it was harder since all written things had probably be burnt by a whole bunch of nomads coming down with their goats. So therefore, you had to also invent stories and scenes so vivid that they would live for 3,000 to 4,000 years until someone like Marie-Louise Von Franz came along who was able to draw back out of them the wisdom that had been put in them.

Wow, incredible these people. So therefore, she does a lot of work on those fairy stories. And she says one thing that's punished often in the fairy story is-- well, the one thing you can't do anything in psychic growth unless you're kind to animals. The two oldest sons are the brutal. [ROARING] The youngest one is the one who is kind to animals, and he's the one who finally achieves in getting rid of the giant, all that sort of thing.

So let's go back down a little bit, shall we? Do you want to go back down a bit? I'll give you another one. This was a mask. I wrote some poems during the war on the Vietnam war. One of them was on counting up the little bodies when we'd find it say on the radio, 32 Vietnamese bodies found yesterday. Nobody objected to that. So I found this mask down at the mask shop in 7th and Hennepin. And so I'll read the poem with a mask on. It's called "Counting Small-boned Bodies."

"Let's count the bodies over again.

If we could only make the body smaller

The size of skulls

We could make a whole plane white with skulls in the moonlight!

If we could only make the body smaller

Maybe we could get

A whole year's kill in front of us on the desk!

If we could only make the body smaller

We could fit

A body into a finger-ring for a keepsake forever."

[APPLAUSE]

Don't clap for your funeral. You like me? I'm called the death mother. Ancient people knew me very well, but then they were intelligent enough to do statues of me. If you don't recognize me-- I'll sleep with you, though. It would be fun, don't you think? Huh? Who would like to sleep with me first, huh? It'll be wonderful. I'll get you a little later after you've had your first heart attack.

Well, if you watch enough television, I'll sleep with you now. I have a home in the television set. It's nice in there. Students are good to eat now. They're not so sinewy and tough as they used to be. So you must remember, never go in a demonstration. I don't like that.

[APPLAUSE]

I'll give you one more. This is the one that Keith and I bought at the mask shop. The problem with the mask is to find a poem that fits it. In the first case, the Whitman poem, didn't fit it exactly because it was a human being saying he'd like to live with animals.

The second one, Rolf Jacobsen poem, was better, an animal is speaking. But it's odd we don't have many poems about animal speaking because they are sinful. So then this poem is a poem that I wrote some time ago called "The Busy Man Speaks." And it has to do with-- whenever a poet comes, it's obviously someone who's done some work on developing his female side.

In ancient times, they considered a male a man is not the tough one like John Wayne. They say, no, no, he's neurotic. To be a man, it's necessary to have the male side developed and the female. Abraham Lincoln was a man. De Gaulle was also a man. Again, many people you see who work outdoors are men.

And the woman also they said. A woman-- Marilyn Monroe was not a woman because she was so submissive to men who continually tried to project their feminine side onto her that finally she was killed by the radiation of the men refusing to develop anything inside. They projected onto Marilyn Monroe. She dies. It was very dangerous all of that. So they'd say, no, she didn't develop her male side. She wasn't a woman, actually.

So I'll give you a poem in which the male side only speaks. I'll give you a poem in which the person who's developed only the male side speaks. Kind of an anti-poem. But I'll do a commercial for you. Have you seen this commercial? I'll do a commercial for you. Tell me, Mrs. Jones, Do you know the Campbell Soup song? I think I do. Does it go [HUMMING]

(SINGING) Denver Campbell soup song

ROBERT BLY: That's right, Mrs. Jones. You have it. Now, shall we sing it together?

[HUMMING]

(SINGING) Denver Campbell Soup song

Mm good Mm good

Mm good Denver Campbell soup song

Mm good Mm good Oh, mm, good Denver Campbell Soup song

Mm good Mm good Mm good Denver Campbell Soup song

Mm good Mm, good Mm, good Denver Campbell Soup song

[APPLAUSE]

Ms. Jones, I wonder, what's your favorite soup? My favorite soup, see, it's-- let's see-- It's chicken noodle. Oh, yes. What's your husband's favorite soup? Oh, his favorite soup is Scotch broth. We'll send you a case of Scotch broth Mrs. Jones. Thank you very much.

I heard that last one on the radio out of WCCO. We'll send your husband a case of Scotch broth. Send you a scotch broth. Here's a poem. It's called "The Busy Man Speaks." It's a pun on businessmen. But also, every time a male doesn't want to develop the female side, he says, I'm too busy.

I've got too many papers to correct. I've got to go bowling. I've got to watch this serial on television. I've got to watch the game, the Viking game. I can't miss that. Yeah, there's one in Minneapolis who got divorced and she left him. He didn't know for three months.

[LAUGHTER]

"Not to the mother of solitude will I give myself away.

Nor to the mother of art, nor the mother of conversation.

Nor the mother of tears.

Not to the mother of the night full of crickets,

Nor the mother of the open fields, nor the mother of Christ.

But I will give myself to the father of righteousness, who is also the father of cheerfulness,

Who is also the father of perfect gestures.

From the Chase National Bank

An arm of flame has come, and I am drawn

To the desert, to the parched places, to the landscape of zeros.

And I shall give myself to the father of righteousness,

The stones of cheerfulness, the steal of money, the father of rocks.

You want to come with me? Who would like to join my PhD program?"

[LAUGHTER]

You willing to come? [BREATHING HEAVILY] Be sure to vote for me in the primary.

[LAUGHTER]

So in ancient times, especially in Greece, they had three-day poetry readings, which were called the Greek tragedies. Aristotle went to some of them, and he made a remark that after three days of that, the more sensitive people had catharsis, which meant it was a typical word used for taking an awful lot of Ex-Lax.

[LAUGHTER]

That the terror cleaned out the body, cleaned out all the goo that's in your head, and you realize not only what a terrifying place the universe is, how terrifying certain people are. You don't notice the mask underneath, and you deal with them day after day without seeing it. So therefore, when I started to use these masks, I was stunned because I put them on a few minutes, and the audience absolutely silent.

I said, what's the matter? They said, we're scared. I said, what are you scared of? They said, I don't know. Did you feel some terror? A very strange experience. I'd never seen it from your side. But I feel quite mad underneath it, which is enjoyable too.

Now, I understand why the Hopis, for example, did masks two or three times a year because while you're doing the mask, you're able to be a little crazier than you're able to be in daily life. We all need ways to be crazier than we're allowed to be in Minnesota.

Now, does anyone-- as well crazy inside actually. It's a secret we keep from each other, especially from our mother and father. Turns out they're crazy too. Now, does anyone want to ask me any questions, or do you want me to read a few more poems of Kabir? What would you like? What would you like?

AUDIENCE: Could you read an "Extra Joyful Chorus For Those Who Have Read This Far"?

ROBERT BLY: Really? Hi, how are you. I remember her from somewhere. "An Extra Joyful Chorus," Yes, he's talking about a poem I worked on, a book. I worked on a long poem for about five years. And I wrote about 10,000 lines, and then I threw away 9,600 and ended up with about 450. And it was all right. I should have thrown away a couple more.

Anyway, in the last part of it what the poem is about is in general, is about what is called the whole shadow idea. Now, Keith is here and he just likes me to mention the great mother. At one point, he paid me $17 every reading I didn't mention the great mother. And another thing he doesn't like is the shadow idea.

And the idea of the shadow is that each of us are born with a 360-degree circle in our personality. Then, we look at our parents' faces, and it turns out they don't like some parts of us. So we take out the segment right here, and we put it into a bag. Then we go to the first grade. We notice our teachers say, my, you're nice. And we say, wow, that I'm nice part, I better take that out. And you put it into a bag. Do you understand what I'm talking about?

By the time you get to high school, there's about this much left. And then the woman has done the same thing. There's about this much left. And then the two of them get married. Together they don't even make 360 degrees. So you must wait to get married. Wait for your circle to fill back out again. Do you understand what I'm saying? And that whole process is called eating the shadow. That bag is called the shadow.

And the process of realizing I'm not a nice person actually. People were wrong about me. And what's more, they were wrong when they said I wasn't a sexual person. Actually, I'm very horny. [LAUGHTER] And if you're able to say that confidently and truly, some of your shadow comes back. That's one thing. Women's liberation has said, look, we're horny. Don't you get it? Men said, oh, no. Oh, no. I have the orgasm. You have the kitchen. Ah!

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

So trying to follow my own idea that the imagination must mix with everything that happens to us, I've been working on a poem about being horny that is overly horny. And it's strange I can't find any models. Evidently, nobody's ever been horny for two or three days. I don't know. So I have to make up my own images for it.

And so I vetted a couple of women. And they said, wow, is that what it's like when a man's horny? And I said, yeah. And they said, wow, strange. Wow. And I said, I'm going home and write one myself. [LAUGHTER] I said, read it to me, will you? I'd like to know. I said, yeah.

So anyway, so I wrote this poem. And it's called "The Shadow Goes Away." In high school, when the shadow goes away for the first time.

AUDIENCE: "Shadow Goes Away."

ROBERT BLY: "Shadow Goes Away."

"We are left alone in the father's house.

I knew that. I sent my brother away.

I saw him turn and leave. It was a schoolyard.

I gave him to the dark people passing.

He learned to sleep on the high buttes.

I heard he was near the Missouri, taken in by traveling Sioux.

They taught him to wear his hair long, to glide about naked, drinking from his hands,

To tether horses, follow the wind through bend grass.

Men bound my shadow. That was in high school.

They tied it to a tree. I saw it being led away.

I dreamed that I sat in the big chair, and every other second I disappeared.

That was a dream I had.

I saw myself sitting in an easy chair,

And then I go boom, I'd be gone. Boom, I'd return. Scary boy. Phew. [VOCALIZES]

But I understood it also had something to say about my shadow.

You're only half here, it was saying.

About half of you is here, the other half is not there.

So since the dreamer can't use words,

He just puts you in a chair and has you disappear and come back,

Disappear and come back."

Boy, I think that's the best line I've put down in the poem. So I did. And then it goes on to two or three more. And finally, at the end, there's a thing called "An Extra Joyful Chorus For Those Who Have Read This Far."

[LAUGHTER]

And this is the one that she'd like me to read, so I'll read for you. "An Extra Joyful Chorus For Those Who Have Read This Far." Mhm, I was going to be something else. The question is when you understand that half of your shadow is gone, half of your body and your personality is gone, who are you? Are you the part that's gone, or are you the one that everyone thinks is so nice?

Mhm, wow. And it's a serious issue because you'll answer one question, the dark part of you that's vanished will answer some of the questions. And somebody said, you're kind of inconsistent. And then Whitman said, yeah, I'm inconsistent. That's right. That's good. The most dangerous thing is to ignore everything that the horny side of you says.

I met a woman at a party-- no, I met a woman one time. And what she did-- she was living alone. And she'd get horny sometimes, so she'd go to a party to pick up men, which is kind of dangerous thing because half the men are crazy and take you home, beat you up.

So you know how she did that? She would talk to the men and ignore all that because her head didn't know anything. And she would pick up their odor. The old shadow part of herself, the animal part knows that men have many different odors. And she said, if he smelled good to me, I would trust him. And I was never wrong.

Understand how she's using her shadow side? Smell a man before you marry him, boy. Forget about if he's got a degree or all that other stuff, just smell them. "An Extra Joyful Chorus For Those Who Have Read This Far."

"I sit alone late at night. I sit with eyes closed, thoughts shoot through me,

I am not floating, but fighting.

In the marshes, the mysterious mother calls to her moribund chicks.

I love the mother.

I hate the mother.

I'm the enemy of the mother.

Give me my sword.

I leap into her mouth full of seaweed.

I am the single splinter that shoots through the stratosphere, leaving fire trails.

I walk upright, robes flapping at my heels.

I am fleeing along the ground like a frightened beast.

I am the ball of fire that the woodman cuts out of the wolf's stomach.

I am the horse that's sitting in the chestnut tree singing.

I am the sun that floats over the witch's house.

I am the man locked inside the oak womb, waiting for lightning only let out in stormy nights.

I am the steelhead trout that hurries to his mountain mother to gobble up again the new water,

Going to the stream where he was born.

Sometimes when I read my own poems late at night,

I feel myself on a long road.

I feel the naked thing alone in the universe,

The hairy body padding in the fields at dusk.

I have floated in the eternity of the cod heaven,

I have felt the silver of infinite numbers brush my side--

I am the crocodile unrolling and slashing through the muddy water,

I am the baboon crying out as her baby falls from the tree,

I am the flax that blossoms at midnight!

I am an angel breaking into three parts over the Ural Mountains!

I am no one at all.

I am the thorn enduring in the dark sky,

I am the one whom I have never met,

I am a swift fish shooting through the troubled waters.

I am the last inheritor crying out in deserted houses.

I am the salmon hidden in the pool on the temple floor.

I am what remains of the beloved.

I am an insect with black enamel knees hugging the curve of insanity."

Here's a line I didn't put in.

"I am your grandmother crying out from a gopher hole.

I am the evening light rising from the ocean plains.

I am an eternal happiness fighting in the long weeds.

Our faces shine with the darkness reflected from the Tigris,

We ourselves made by honey bees that go on growing after death.

We ourselves darkened with curtains made of human hair.

The Panther rejoices in the gathering dark.

Hands rushed toward each other through miles of space.

All the sleepers in the world join hands."

You can clap. That's the end of it.

[APPLAUSE]

Now, if you don't think that one was fun to write, you're wrong. That was great fun. So as you get older, one of the wonderful things about coming in your 30s is that you begin to realize what a narrow concept you had of yourself in your 20s. Accepted all those other people's opinion about you, all of whom were wrong.

Then in your 40s, you feel, wow, I was crazy in my 30s. I didn't understand at all who I was. And every time that you reach out and bring in more of your shadow, of your ignored part, your energy increases. Do you understand that idea?

So in the Orient, for example, where they worship old men, they do that because those men are men who have done a lot of meditation. You want to bring in your shadow side. One good thing is to make love to women. I mean, love them.

Another good way, ignore all that stuff about remaining chaste. Another way to do it is be outdoors. Be out in the woods. You're inside way too much. You start to write a poem, almost all your senses are dead. I see poems coming in from high school. They're all abstractions. Everybody writes beauty this and humanity. Hell, I never met humanity in my whole life.

In Madison, Minnesota, they write essays about humanity. The one thing they don't mention is the guy next door who got drunk and felt bad and went out and blew a hole in his stomach with a shotgun on the lawn of his own house. So his children found him. Why don't they write essays about that? Do you understand what I'm saying? It's a horrible thing in high school and college. Everything general, never any details.

So therefore, it's a good thing to go out and have one tree that you love. Find one tree that's your tree. Don't tell anybody about it. Just go out and kiss a tree once in a while. You don't like kissing trees? Find a rock that you love that's your rock. You understand me what I'm saying?

So a thing goes out like this. And all of those things we all can do. Another good thing that I do is I take one day a week, and I don't do anything on that day. I don't care what's happening. I don't care. I go out, and that's I don't do anything. And then maybe one little book with me. I got a funny little shack I bought for $75. I go there. There's no-- I just stay there. Sometimes I work, sometimes I don't.

Before that, I used to ask people if I could borrow their house if they're going to be gone to work for a day. And I just go in there and sit down. You understand that idea? It's simple to do Ranger classes or skip them or whatever. That you will be alone for one day without this pressure of parents and school and all of that. You'll find it you'll be terribly lonely the first two or three hours. Then after that, wow, woo! You'll come back at 6:00 o'clock, call up your friends, and tell them off.

[LAUGHTER]

And then you'll realize which one you really love. That's so strange. All of that things sort out in solitude, so it's impossible to grow, as I said, in ancient times without solitude. And another good thing is to keep a diary. Keep it always so you can know what you look like. Which Marie-Louise Von Franz says that women are unable to grow without a diary.

She said the reason for that is there's thousands of things go past the woman's mind all the time. That guy's a creep. [MUMBLES] I don't like him. [MUMBLES] But they can't tell which of it they really believe, which they don't because there's some stream that goes through. So therefore, she says, if you put it down in the diary, you'll write down everything you think.

And then, two days later you read it and say, half of this is nonsense. I don't think this about him at all or her. I don't believe that about her. So then you'll be able to distinguish what's yours and what's being-- many of us, many of the thoughts we have are invasions from outside. They come from other people near us. Well, enough generalizations.

I don't know-- I'll read you a poem then of Juan Ramón. He made it, the Spanish poet, who talks to this very subject. He says, the beginning of spiritual life is the realization that there are many beings inside of you, and actually, you're not yourself. It's a Spanish poem [SPEAKING SPANISH] "I am not I."

"I am this one

Walking beside me whom I do not see,

whom at times I manage to visit,

and at other times I forget;

the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,

the one who remains silent when I talk,

the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,

the one who will remain standing when I die."

Want me to run it again? I didn't read it very well. Do you want it again? It's a sensation. Walk out in the woods for three to four hours. You will feel strange. The leaves will look different to you. You have a sensation that someone else is there. Then you go back to your room. It all fades, and you say, I was wrong, but you were right out there.

You're not the person that your parents think you are. It isn't their fault, not at all. Your parents are not the one you think they are either.

"I am not I. I am not I.

I am this one

walking beside me whom I do not see,

whom at times I manage to visit,

and at other times I forget.

The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate."

You ever hated someone and screamed at them? There's another one standing right next to you saying, the whole thing is absurd.

"The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,

the one who remains silent when I talk,

the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,

the one who will remain standing when I die."

So oftentimes, when you meet a great writer, it has nothing to do with great intelligence at all. Thoreau is the one who realized that if he went out in and stayed there and stayed out of the hardware store, that he would meet this other person. And he did. And he wrote this great book of Walden, which is nothing but meetings with the one who took a walk. Do you understand the idea? Yeah, I guess you understand it probably better than I do. If I understood it, I wouldn't be here.

[LAUGHTER]

All right. Does anyone else have any question? But it's really true. When I go home, I can't write for two to three days. I've been talking too much. You don't think that I'm the one who writes that stuff, do you? I couldn't write a poem right now. I'm too excited, and I'm too egotistical. I'm mad and crazy. Hoo!

I have to calm down first. Anyone else want to ask any questions now before we end? I suppose we should stop soon. We're half an hour late already. Shall we stop soon? What would you like to do.

AUDIENCE: Hey.

ROBERT BLY: Yes.

AUDIENCE: Can I ask something?

ROBERT BLY: Certainly.

AUDIENCE: I was wondering about how you say this other self. Does that deal with what Eastern Mystics have considered their occult existence, so to speak?

ROBERT BLY: Yes. Yes.

AUDIENCE: Now, do you think that other self can overtake a person to bring them to a state of madness?

ROBERT BLY: No. I mean, I don't know how to say that. The way they describe it is something like this. The other being is there, and it's the one who does your dreams. You lock him out during the daytime. At night, he's allowed to speak, but he does not have control of the speech centers. So therefore, he has to talk to you in pictures, in images. Do you understand me?

AUDIENCE: I was wondering, isn't that just your unconscious self? And if you include that as being yourself, there is no schizophrenic division there.

ROBERT BLY: OK, so what the Oriental would say is that the problem is the word unconscious self. Now, what Freud meant by that was not the unconscious. He said there was an unknown part of ourselves. And unfortunately, they translated that as unconscious. But he says there is a known part and an unknown part.

Now, the Oriental would say, in that unknown part, there is a self that we are talking about, plus an animal being, plus an old man who can guide you. In the unknown part of yourself there are three or four. The question is, do you want to get in touch with them? Go on.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

ROBERT BLY: Yes. Did you have anything else? I mean, can I-- I mean, it's so difficult to talk about these things in public or in a brief way, but I know you have a feeling of it already. So it's so strange since we don't want to deal with those unknown parts of ourselves, we don't write down our dreams.

what You were speaking on the order of peoples personality being whittled away in order to be one with society.

ROBERT BLY: Yes, exactly.

AUDIENCE: Would that be retrievable?

ROBERT BLY: Would that be what?

AUDIENCE: Would that be retrievable?

ROBERT BLY: Yes, it's entirely retrievable. Shall we go then? Are you ready to quit? If you want to come back at 2:20 this afternoon, we will have a discussion period. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. Get that out of your pocket.

[SIDE CONVERSATION]