Airmail (36 page)

on the train...

Dear Robert,

Lasse Söderberg is now entering the game so I think there will be a rather FAT book of prose poems at last. They say it will be published by August. Rolf Aggestam knows. I don’t know anything anymore, because I am on my way to Europe. If you have some unpublished (and approved!) translations of my poems I think you should let
Ironwood
have a look at them first. I know that the editor (what’s-his-name?) is surprised that I never send anything for him. But don’t give him too much! Arizona is so far away. Write soon! I will be back on March 11th. I will change trains in Norköping and then in Copenhagen and then sleep and then wake up in Köln.

Have a good time.

Your old friend

    Idi Amin DADA

20 March, ’77

Just a note to say...

Dear Tomas,

Just a note to say hello! Did you receive all my light-headed but faithful comments on your translations of my poems? I worked with astounding speed. (I have a whole cardboard box of mail from 1974 not yet answered.)

I will send a couple translations to
Ironwood,
but not too much. I only half like the man.

I will set up 10 readings for you this fall at $300 each if you will give me a time span, in say OCT, or NOV!

The Swedes may not ask you to read, but your readers over here are faithful, getting more so, positively ravenous. The Swedish book, primarily because of your poems, is one of the best selling books Beacon has had for several years. They are delighted, and watching
Scenes from a Marriage
religiously (it’s on TV here now). They probably think it’s about you. (“We got ready and showed our home.”)

The word is
TRIPLING
—providing 3 times the energy—and so overwhelming the dead eyes
that
way—

Love, Robert    

  CARD BY NOAH BLY

[Editor’s note: RB wrote the following on a copy of
Two Hands News
with an account of this reading:]

Yes the readings are getting more exciting. At this one, as I was about to begin, six surrealists shoved an enormous cream pie in my face. Then four “street poets” leaped to their feet and decided to beat hell out of the decadent intruders. So it goes!

[Editor’s note: RB commented on a copy of the essay “Politics, Poetry and Prophets” by Peter Bates:]

Dear Tomas, You see they are
demanding
I write more political poems! They think seals and billfolds are not enough!

Västerås May 19-77

Dear Robert,

a large part of this province is underwater. I just returned from a drive through the Strömsholm area where the fields are flooded, the trees standing in a lake, the waves coming closer and closer to the castle—the snow melted too quickly this year, partly because of the ruthless clean-cutting of the woods in the northern part of Västmanland...(see my poem for Mats and Laila!)...well, spring is here and I have decided to start writing letters again. I have thought it over many times, if I should go to the U.S.A. this autumn and I have found that I should. My poetic ego needs it, my poor poetic ego has shrunk so much that I have to use a magnifying-glass every morning to find it...

You never told me about what has happened to Östen Sjöstrand in California. You sent me a letter telling me the sensational news that you were going to some place to hear Sjöstrand lecture or read or whatever it was. What was it like?

(turn the page softly)

Here are two pieces. The headache piece was not seriously meant, I sent it to Géza Thínsz, who is a fellow sufferer of migraine, as a private message. He translated it into Hungarian, I protested, but he tells me that it is so damned good in Hungarian and many Hungarians have congratulated me. So maybe I should add a note: “written in Swedish but should be read in Hungarian.”

In the other piece (I don’t know if I should call it “julpsalm” or “minusgrader”) is the word “solkatt” (sun cat) which in Swedish means a reflection of the sun...If I have a small mirror in the sun I can throw a reflection on a wall, or in your face (you will get dazzled), this bright spot is called “solkatt” in Swedish and it is not in my dictionary but now you know what it means.

On Saturday my old friend the composer Glaser in Västerås will have a “salong” for a couple of friends. He brings people together and then plays his own compositions for them. This time he wants me to read something in the pause between his piano sonata and his symphony nr 1, so I will read prose poems by us. Maybe the hockey poem and some more. Maybe I should also tell them some stories about you.

Love to you all. I have come out from my winter hole, so please send me a letter and say hello!

Tömas

28 June 77

Dear Tomas,

How good to hear from you! Since yesterday I am an inhabitant of my new eight-sided house on my new land on the shore of Kabekona Lake!!!!! Loons all night, harsh crows, woodpeckers, thrushes, weird unidentified chortlings, the unconscious scattered out among a thousand small creatures in the brush! Please write me here: c/o Cry of the Loon Lodge, Laporte, Minn, 56461. The people at the Lodge are friends, and we get our mail there. Carol is here, also Noah and Micah. Mary and Biddy are at a language camp nearby, learning French.

About the lies—in late May I decided I couldn’t stand the deceit and unclearness any more and I told Carol what I feel about Ruth and what was happening there. Carol knew with some part of herself, and with some part not. So there has been much grief here. And many old griefs in the marriage, also involving lies—in which, as you say, I live evidently as a fish in muddy water—came to the surface. But for all of us, there is a relief and even a lightness in the clarity at last. It looks as if Ruth will go to the Jung Institute in Zurich this winter, while we all figure out what to do. Don’t grieve for us—I tell you this from a similar desire for clarity toward and among the men and women I love—that we love—so I include my love to you and Monica. You should probably not tell Monica yet. Carol may want to do that when she feels the time is right.

Your friend,

    Robert

7 July, ’77

Dear Tomas,

I’m thinking of you on your island with nothing to read, and so I’m sending you my longest prose poem of recent times! It’s all about a piece of wood I picked up in a pasture—thank God there aren’t a lot of poets walking around in pastures up here, who knows how many more such ob

It looks roughly like this

I am in good shape, only about $10,000 in debt, but I hope to raid the universities this fall to make up some of that.

The order of prose poems planned for the Swedish book is fine. I’m sending the editor a photograph today if I can find one.

I’ll write soon about your AMERICAN TOUR this fall, which I’m looking forward to very much! I’ll get Mark Strand to introduce you at every reading, with a forty minute talk about “Nothing,” then Allen Ginsberg will play several Indian instruments during the reading to provide authentic Swedish flavor, and finally a concrete poet will close with his new poem “Tractor Sounds.” As soon as that is finished, he is immediately given a university position, and your books are confiscated by the library, along with your sweater, which you unwisely took off during the reading: that is sold to Texas, and becomes a permanent part of the “Lars Gustafsson Collection.”

Do write. Love, Robert

[undated, 1977?]

Dear Tomas,

A few notes on “August Rain.” The towels are from swimming—ones the children left outdoors near the cars when I brought them home the day before from the swimming pool. The “stoop” which you’ve translated as “pall” is the small wooden platform just outside the screen-door entrance to my study (the schoolhouse). I don’t know what you call it. I could have watched the rain from inside the screenporch, but I would have missed some, so I sat outdoors (dragging a chair out with me). (Just an ordinary wooden chair.) “Become crowded” should give the feeling of lots of people on a sidewalk. “Farstu” and “verandan” are in the English both “porch,” the little screenporch alongside the schoolhouse. “Livere numarna” I don’t recognize. The belts are the simple leather belts a workman might wear—he left for the hospital so quick he didn’t get a chance to change it from his “everyday” pants to his “Sunday” pants—“the bachelor” would be a 65 year old farm worker who never had money enough to marry. “Wainscoting” is the old wood boards that used to be put along the bottom of walls. It implies an old farmhouse, never remodeled. The “trunks” are the ships’ trunks that get heavier in-between our trips to Europe every four or five years, or even the “suitcases” that get heavier in-between my poetry reading trips. I guess it must be “trunks” because they rub against the side of some old steamer’s hold, and somewhere make a hole in the wooden side of the ship. The last sentence is the most important in sound. It should sound triumphant and joyful—water coming in after a long drought!—and only after the reader has taken that in, and is glad, does he notice that it is also an image for the death of the speaker.

If you have one more to do, try “November Day at McClure’s” or “Grass from Two Years” or “Windy Day at the Shack.”

Love, Robert

Västerås Oct 7 -77

Dear Robert,

strange how encouraging it is to hear your voice on the telephone, even when you have nothing encouraging to say! A good gift. Life is rather calm now. I have returned from a trip to Norway. That small country in the west has received some Swedish culture: from Västerås a boys’ choir and the famous writer Lars Gustafsson. I followed in the steps of the boys’ choir to Kristiansand—Lars went to Ålesund. I also visited Bergen (together with Jersild and 2 nice ladies who wrote children’s books). And alone I went to Stavanger where my offering to give a reading was rejected by the Norwegians but accepted by Robin Fulton, who teaches English there: he gave me one of his lecture hours—we discussed (in English) translation problems and so on with his students. But Kristiansand was very warm and Oslo too. I gave a lecture for the Scandinavian language students. One of them wants to write a thesis about me but the teacher said that he would probably not be allowed to—everything later than Hamsun is regarded as improper there.
¹
Anyway, I am more pro-Norwegian than ever. A country without city culture. “Lutefisk” with bacon. In “Teatercafeét” the waiters are
Indians
nowadays—how exotic to hear an Indian speak Norwegian! In Stavanger there were a few buildings as ugly as the new ones in Sweden. (Oil boom disease.) But the rest is completely Norwegian.

I will publish a new book next year. Two poems are needed still. They are underway. But some of my colleagues seem to be able to finish a whole book more quickly. I will die as a still-promising poet at 80...

You mentioned Boston. Where in Boston, and who? Our dear sad-voiced Hamburger? Is Boston a good landing place for the Swedish Nightingale? Or should I leave the U.S. from Boston? Maybe I should land in Oberlin—or Minnesota—to get some good and bad advice about what translations to use during the trip. The
Field
people have no hesitations about giving advice. I sent them some translations and they came back with a letter saying that they had 43 proposals for changes in the translation. It would be easier for them to give these proposals face to face.

Maybe this is a good air trip: Stockholm-Minneapolis-Cleveland-LaredoBoston-Stockholm. Instead of Laredo you could propose other places very far south. The University of Galveston? The Pensacola Poetry Center? (I am looking at my map.) But let us not forget Atlanta. I was moved because they had me so recently and yet want me back.

It is good to know that we have some time to think about that before I rush to the airport. But who knows? You might disappear again, not returning until April 15. In that case I will be in America already, sitting on my suitcase at the Miami airport crying for Betty Kray.

Everybody in your house is warmly hailed

by

Tomas      

1. “Especially when written in non-Norwegian dialect.”
   

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