Acclaimed poet Robert Bly's home is a farm near the Southwest Minnesota town of Madison, and he reads at nearby Southwest State University in Marshall. This appearance includes occasional dulcimer accompaniment as Bly performs and dissect his own works as well as the works of others.

This is an edited excerpt from his Marshall appearance.

Minnesota poet Robert Bly won the National Book Award in 1967 and was a leading literary figure during the '60s writing anti-Vietnam poetry. Bly's readings are filled with his poetry and prose, as well as his philosophy and wit.

Transcript:

(00:00:14) One more I could be response. I know the sound of the ecstatic flute. But I don't know whose food it is. There's a lily pad that blossoms. And does not attach to the bottom.
(00:00:47) There's a lamp that burned and his neither week. No oil. ordinarily when one flower
(00:00:56) opens dozens open And the moon bird's head is filled with nothing, but thoughts of the Moon. And when the next train will
(00:01:15) come is All That the Rain Bird
(00:01:19) thinks up. Who is it that we spend our entire life loving?
(00:01:37) Sometimes sometimes strange things happen.
(00:01:45) There are certain times
(00:01:46) when your client would
(00:01:47) yourself
(00:01:50) when you haven't seen anybody or jabbered for a while jabbering and talking is fine. Except that you you lie most of the time. You know when I talk I lie 30% of the time of silver. I most of the time I don't know I'm doing it but I just do it. So people were like me and that eventually gets in and so therefore being alone just means that you haven't lied for a while. And then you unconscious comes down and says wow. This guy hasn't told a lie now for six hours nice. It feels So and you know, you can't write a poem unless that part of you is willing to help with the pain. So that's why it's very important to calm down and be by yourself before you right. So I had that experience sometimes I have to be alone for a day or two days before my unconscious will calm down enough to help him and here's a case in which it agreed to help me. What had happened is that I've been working. I don't know. Maybe I'd been
(00:02:50) working. I've been working
(00:02:55) as I guess I'm a working on translation. I was working on Jakob a more. I was working on something. Anyway, we're working hard for three or four hours and then I went upstairs to the little study. I had which had a big window Facing East and I walked into the room and Bam the whole thing was full of moonlight while I've been working the moon had come up and I ain't even noticed it because I was in the inside of the house you follow. Here's the shock of going into a room and suddenly realizing the moon is out there. So that's that deep shock to the psyche and then something took place and you didn't even notice it. And so therefore these are meaningful after it's called after working after many strange thoughts. Thoughts of distant Harbors in New Life. I came in and found the Moonlight lying in the
(00:03:39) room.
(00:03:42) Outside it covers the trees. like pure sound like the sound of tower bounds or water moving under the ice the sound of the deaf hearing through the bones of their heads. We know the road. As the Moonlight lifts everything so in a night like this the road goes on ahead. It is all
(00:04:12) clear. And do it for you once more
(00:04:18) by the gist of it is that it certain times in your life. Thank you very much at certain times in your life. You know, once every two years you will have one of these things in which everything will be clear to you in your life and you'll see exactly what you should do. You see your friends more clearly. You don't know what I'm talking about Maslow calls, he's Peak experiences and when they come up like a peak like that and you don't forget him and you don't have any knowledge of when they're going to come you can Him for them and they don't come and all of a sudden you're driving home from a funeral plume or you get completely exhausted. Mmm. Suddenly it appears and you see exactly the course that your life is going to take if it's going to be fruitful. And then it's important to write them down because otherwise another part of you will rub it out. Right away. So that's one of the reasons for writing poems is to write down your Peak experiences you have so you can remember them. Hmm. That's the simplest reason for writing poems. So I'll read it to you once more.
(00:05:21) After many strange
(00:05:22) thoughts. That's not very good line. Strange thoughts is very vague. We're talking to class today Dopey adjectives. My friend. Don Hall said, you know, you use strange 22 times in this book and dark like 29
(00:05:35) times.
(00:05:39) When you use strange, it's means that you're so lazy. You don't want to figure out exactly how it's changed. So you just put down strange, you know, my friends. Let me get away with it kill. I published a book after many strange thoughts thoughts of distant harbors and new life. I came in and found the Moonlight lying in the room. Then I decide to describe the moonlight. Outside it covers the trees like pure
(00:06:03) sound that's okay. Not terrific
(00:06:08) the sound of tower Bells. I don't really like that anymore. It's not accurate. It's the sound of delicate Bells. I think high in the spindly Tower. Maybe Tower Bells is too vague. You'd have to really hear the sound and see what you know, some some some big tower. Bells wouldn't be connected Moonlight at all and others work and your job is to find out which one Really connected probably have to listen to a lot of bells to do that. Does anyone have any bells in Madison so I just made a guess? Outside it covers the trees like pure sound the sound of tower bells or water moving under the ice. That's
(00:06:44) not too bad. Next one is good
(00:06:47) for the sound of the deaf hearing through the bones of their
(00:06:49) heads. That's the best
(00:06:51) line. We know the road we know the road. As the Moonlight lifts everything so in a night like this road
(00:07:02) goes on ahead. It's all clear. So
(00:07:08) it's clear for 3540 seconds time enough for you to write the poem and Joe asked me to read another one. Which was a little of poem that I wrote.
(00:07:22) I didn't write many love poems in my twenties. I don't think many men do. Unless you're Forester, you know a girl likes you and you have tried one back.
(00:07:32) But and the whole men in their 20s are trying to decide what they want to do
(00:07:37) in the world. And you know dead slow and said than
(00:07:41) until a man finds his
(00:07:42) task in the world how he wants to help.
(00:07:46) It isn't true that men. Just want to make a lot of money. Men understand and women to understand very well and it's an enormous high of
(00:07:53) human human nature and human humanity and
(00:07:56) some help is required from each one of it. And I can't speak for women, but I know that unless until a man finds out how he wants to help this enormous Hive he doesn't really
(00:08:06) love. So that means if you put off deciding until you get your PhD probably won't love until you're 38 39. long time to wait well anyway,
(00:08:21) so I think that's true and I notice I go to love poems in my 20s both of them four lines long. not in excess of Heroes It's all right, you just forgive yourself for that slowness. So I one time I was in love with a woman and I was driving past a little
(00:08:43) Minnesota town really dumb little one might have been Cosmos. I don't remember it may be is Cosmos
(00:08:50) and or New York meals in one of those are the liquor store and that's it. And and it you know in the daytime it look really dumb. But I was in love with a woman and look marvelous when we are in love. We love the grass and the Barnes and the light poles
(00:09:09) and the small main streets abandoned all night. I don't know why those mean streets in the end came in there. So suddenly, I don't understand the poem.
(00:09:23) If I could understand it wouldn't be a good poem because when you writing the last line, the last line has to be written by you unconscious or some part of you. So what's the surprise to you? You understand that idea far says no surprise in the writer. No surprise in the reader. He has a most marvelous face. He says a poem begins in Delight when you absolutely delighted with something. You see like Moonlight in the room and then it moves. What does he say like a piece of hot ice on the stove. It moves on its own
(00:09:52) melting.
(00:09:57) So the poem should be a long way from the first place that you put that drop of ice down on the stove by the end of the poem. And you have to be crossed said I'll summarize this astonished in the last stanza whole scene came up. I don't know where it came from. I was astounded to find myself in the last stanza. So therefore if you plan out the poem all the way beforehand forget it it's not going to be a poem has been reelected.
(00:10:23) I mean, where does that little poem
(00:10:25) when we are in love? We love the
(00:10:26) grass. And the Barns and the light poles and the small main streets abandoned all night.
(00:10:39) Give me another tiny little the only other love poem for my 20s. Next four lines taking the hands of someone you love. You know, that's a wonderful experience to take the hands of someone you love and it occurred to me that that that too is a big shock to the
(00:10:56) psyche, you know, usually shaking hands Huntington Ingalls moving from I
(00:11:01) mean, it's like is used to that right? Hi, Dad. Let's suppose you take hold of a hands of someone you love him. He must be terrific shock of the psychic has all sorts of things are flowing through those
(00:11:12) hands, but they
(00:11:15) and and the unconscious picking them all up. The EGO is
(00:11:18) missing them all. But yeah, I'm kind of picking them all up.
(00:11:21) So I wrote a little poem taking the hands of someone you love you. See they are delicate cages. Tiny birds are singing in the secluded prairies and in the
(00:11:35) deep valleys of the hand. Give it to you once again.
(00:11:59) Taking the hands of someone you
(00:12:00) love. you see they are delicate cages. Tiny
(00:12:13) birds are
(00:12:14) singing. in the secluded prairies and in the deep valleys of of the hand
(00:12:37) That's sort of like a Chinese poem to in a way in which you and with this a single image and you let it alone. Hmm Chinese do a lot of work in that you have a single image and instead of saying you see what I mean. So I related to Freud now you don't do any of that stuff. You just let the image alone there and if you don't get the image a whole poem display.