Airmail (31 page)

I have come close to Frida, our dog, this summer. She is absolutely 100% mammal brain, there is not a single atom of other brains in her. The rest of the family is a mixture, as before.

You ask about the photo for the Beacon Press book. I think
there is a stamp on the back of the photo
with the name and address of the woman who took the picture—I don’t remember her name but she is nice and married to the poet Walter Höllerer in Berlin. She is definitely not Hungarian.

Love to everybody in Odin House!

Tomas

3 Sept, ’74

Dear Tomas,

OK, let’s agree on October of 75!! Betty Kray wants us to read together in N.Y. and then you can read in So Carolina for that strange person called GUS SUCCUP. I will avoid the telephone, and pass along to you—by fish express—any hints I hear of places looking for a Nixon sympathizer. I love your idea that everyone who voted for him should go to prison for 3 minutes. The prison would be full of feeling types and sensation types—the intuitive types would be standing around outside smiling.

We’re all well here. Carol is working hard on her project to get buses for old people. Ruth is about to get a job, she hopes, as a planner in a nearby town. Sam and Noah come home from school, and leap immediately on their aged ponies, who had hoped for a calm old age, and gallop off in several directions. The ponies usually get a revenge by running them through an apple tree on the way home—last night it was a plum tree. Noah arrived at the supper table all scratched up.

Love to you and Monica

and the girls,

Robert

P.S. I like the Danton poem. I expect it is about your father. Please help me with the waiting room at the end—is it a waiting room in a railway station? or a doctor’s office? In what sense do the alleys
bend down
towards it? Is this a slum, or some sort of “gamle by”? It’s a wonderful, strong poem.

16 Oct, ’74

Dear Tomas,

I’m on the bus to Mpls, off on my first reading this year, to Texas. Last week I got a letter from a student, who said someone there in the physics dept wanted “to photograph my aura.” That sounds wonderful, though I have the same fear as the native when the first white man wants to photograph his face. Also the man’s name (the physicist) is not Dr. Dostrorski, or Dr. Jonathan Adamson, but JOE PIZZO. I must proceed carefully.

I sympathize with your problem vis-à-vis the Swedish Academy. Nothing is nicer than to be a cricket, living in the laundry chute. We don’t have such a severe problem with these official positions in the U.S., because somehow, we produce a constantly hatching supply of Mark Strands, who fill all these positions with alacrity and satisfaction.

Anne Sexton committed suicide last week. She sat in her idling car in her garage, after having been divorced a few weeks before. Menninger in
Man Against Himself
mentions that many people find suicide too unconventional in its naked state, and so they embezzle money or get divorced in order to provide an acceptable excuse for the suicide.

The DEPRESSION mood continues in the U.S.—yesterday Macmillan fired 100 people; today the NFO farmers are shooting calves—the photograph shows a pure muscle type just about to push a calf into a grave-trench.

All the children are well. Your god-child has immense wings. Carol just got back from her two weeks in England. Ruth has a job for a greenhouse, laying sod (rolled up grass) along a freeway, for $5.25 an hour. She lives in a tent, and is gone all week. Before that, she worked for a greenhouse in Montevideo, doing similar physical work, very hard work, for $1.85 an hour, and found the men and boys were getting $2.45 an hour for the same work. So she told the boss off, much to the satisfaction of his wife, and quit. In her new job men and women are paid the same.

Thank you for the notes on “Citoyens.” I must get some poems of yours ready, to satisfy the Tranströmer-freaks.

Now I’m in the airplane on my way to Houston—the stewardesses are awful.

Your friend,

Robert

4 Nov, ’74

Dear Tomas,

Emergency! Disaster! HELP!

Ingegerd Friberg, the sweet maternal Swedish lady who offered to read the proofs of the Swedish text of
Martinson, Ekelöf and Tranströmer
has found a matter in the “African Diary” poem that needs ATTENTION.

My line reads:

“Those who are ahead have a long way to go.”

She says it should read:

“Those who have arrived have a long way to go.”

“Arrived” makes the line a little tinny in English, but if it is truly accurate, and the other not accurate to the Swedish, we must do something. So tell me, Wolfgang, shall we change it or leave it?

ZER ISS NO TIME TO VASTE!

Pressed by Father Time

On the train Västerås-Göteborg 13-11-74.

Dear Robert,

I have never been so busy in my life—I am transported from my office to a reading and then back, and then for a meeting, and then to a patient, and then to a reading etc....I will tell you the whole story as soon as this rush is over.

But the emergency...Well, strictly linguistically both you and the Lady are right. “Framme” could mean both “Framme-vid-måle” and “Framme-i-täten.” But 90% of the Swedish readers would choose the first version. So she has her point. I think I meant that too—the one who has arrived at the goal (independence etc.) still has a long way to go. But your version has more of the
character
of the Swedish line. So I don’t know what to say. HELP! Is there a 3rd possibility? “The one who has got there”—It should be clear that the one who has arrived is not the tourist...Many problems. If you decide to keep your version I will not blame you but remain always your true friend, supporter, parasite.

Tomas

24 Nov, ’74

Dear Tomas,

I trust that you and Monica and the girls are well. Here everything is slanting down toward the waiting-room of THE DEPRESSION—Macmillan fired 150 people the other day, the mayor of N.Y. laid off 1500. I was just in New York, and saw Jim Wright. He has been off the booze since June, and he seems frail, and with such a low energy level, as if he had turned into his own father. I understand that in a couple of years, his energy level will go back up again, and he’ll become the son of that father again—but now it is hard for him. He’d enjoy a note from you, I know (in case you have nothing to do), his address is now 529 East 85th St., N.Y. 10028. My father and mother are well, though both frail.

I’ve been reading your “Allegro” and “Scattered Congregation” on my (last) week of N.Y. readings with great success. I decided to leave “those who are ahead” as it was. Why rock a verbal boat? I wonder if nouns are on the left side of the body, and verbs on the right—or is it the other way around? Who is more like a verb, a man or a woman?

Let me know if Swedish literature improves as a result of my Jung essay in “The Poet’s Friend”—or is it “The Poem’s Friend”?

This missive from your friend,

Robert

Västerås Christmas Day -74

Dear Robert,

I have not been writing for a long time, involved in too many robot-like activities and longing for peace and time to write poems, letters, decent things. It looks dark. I am almost broke (financially) because of the threatening unpaid TAXES. As soon as you have read this, forget it. I am ashamed of talking about it. When we meet in the autumn I hope all this is over and I will be “In the clear” (May Swenson).

The book
Ostersjöar
was well-received by most critics
²
—I send you a page from a Göteborg paper where they were generous enough to let 2 students review it. One of them is extremely enthusiastic. I met him afterwards, when reading in Göteborg and he—Torsten Rönnerstrand—turned out to be a real JUNGIAN and he loves you too!! (He will probably write to you sooner or later.) He was (mis)quoting you many times.

Your Jungian piece in
Lyrikvännen
has already got off-shoots here—I heard that the magazine has received a Swedish version where we are all nailed in different Jungian directions—can you imagine, Forssell, ME, Ekelöf etc. worked over again in this fashion. I hope they will publish it.

I will make a pause in this nice letter-writing now, must go home and have lunch with the girls and my mother-in-law who has prepared her famous LUTEFISK-GRATIN—an almost Norwegian dish.

xxxxx pause for food xxxxxx

The lutefisk was great. We eat it only at Christmas here in Sweden, but in Norway it is eaten around the year. (Maybe here too when the Norwegians take over Scandinavia—and the other oil sheiks the rest of Western Europe.)

[------]

The meaning of this letter is simply: Have a good 1975! Bless my godson and his family.

From your friend

Tomas

1. Jag gillar Jung, tvivla inte på det.
   

   back
   

2. There has been a wide range. One fellow in BLM thinks I am all worthless. Another—in
   Gefle Dagblad
   —shouts “GIVE HIM THE NOBEL PRIZE...And you [who have] not yet read this book, I envy you, the book will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.” So far the sales have been 2,800 copies.
   

   back
   

Västerås 4-2-75

Dear Robert,

very nice to have a message from you! We live here in a period of waiting. I am working a lot at the office—many of my fellow psychologists have become pregnant (not because of my working here) and there are many gaps to fill, my half-time job covers most of the week. I am also busy with readings (see e.g. a clip from a local paper, full of misunderstandings). I am simply trying to pay my delayed taxes and the waiting is for the Västerås Grant which can save us all (15,000 Sw. crowns)—Lars Gustafsson, who is a member of the Cultural Advisory Board of Västerås has given a speech in favor of me (he is really a friend), describing me as an international figure—after hearing him another member, choked up, phoned me immediately begging me to read poems at an exhibition of his wife’s probably bad paintings which I refused, arrogant as I am, and Monica is working in the Child Psychiatry department of the hospital where she is attacked by small meter-high 10-year-old experts in karate, I repeat, Monica has an interesting time but I see too little of her so if we get the 15,000 I will kidnap her for a week or so and fly to the South with her, with all taxes paid and a good conscience.

I have half a dozen unfinished poems and only two “finished.” The first is embarrassingly small and goes like this:

And the other one is on the next page. The Swedish word “torp” is loaded with old associations, means “a crofter’s cottage” (or is it simply “croft”?).

I, and Harding, and Forssell and Lars G. are invited to the Cambridge Poetry Festival in April. Do you have any big brotherly advice to give? I will write soon.

Your friend     Tomas

18 Feb, 75

Dear Tomas,

This is just a note to say hello! I’ve been using your poems in an astrology class—I can see the flickers of horror running up and down your spine—as examples of the well-developed Aries, who has overcome the fear of the unconscious that plagued that other Aries, Frost.

It’s time too for your regular fan letter from hysterical American poetry readers, this one aggressive with flowers, and pugnacious ferns—

Martin Booth sent me your “Citoyens” in Fulton’s translation, which is not bad. Mine will be a little more Magritte-like.

I’m in the north woods, looking out at a Norway Pine, and a frozen lake—spending a couple of days circling slowly around a rowboat I found pulled up on the shore...This is not the roof of the world, however, only the attic floor—snow drifted in through the window...

Don Hall sent me a poem—a dithyramb—celebrating in 8 stanzas the virtues of 22 different sorts of cheese—some compared to small dogs, others to cathedrals. I said it was light verse, and a deplorable occupation for a man 44 years old. He is furious, and says it is a deep poem, and that “for you to dismiss it as light verse about cheese is simply nasty, insensitive, ridiculous, grumpy, pig-headed, thoughtless, wicked, and wholly dismissive.”

I should have listened to Sheldon!

Your friend (I was fasting

the day I wrote him)

444 Robert

12 March, 75

Dear Tomas,

This is the first review of our book—a pre-publication review. I don’t know why these people always assume Ekelöf is a Russian, and you are a sea pilot—but so it goes!

Your check for the book should be arriving any day—Beacon is sending them to Svensson.

At the Cambridge Poetry Festival, ignore the poets and go to see Joseph Needham, who has written the great book on the history of science in China. It
is
a great book. He also belongs to the eccentric Episcopal Church in Thaxted (about 30 miles so. of Cambridge) which Carol loves so much. I’ve never met him, but I want to.

Here is a clumsy version of the short poem, just for you to look at and exclaim over the stupidity of the educated classes, now that it’s starting to...

Toward Home?

Questions: Toward Home?

Jim Wright has stopped drinking, at last. He is exhausted, but well. Betty Kray is expecting both of us (you and me) at the Donnell in the Fall.

Copies of
Friends
should be on their way to you by ship from Beacon.

I love that “skalbagge”!!!!!

All’s well here. We think of you often. Don’t work so hard. After we’re dead, the world will get on well without us.

Fondly,

        Robert with his family

Västerås 31-3-75

Dear Maestro,

the family is now recovering from a 5-day shock. Paula, who is now 10 and has long legs, got (I must look in the dictionary) she got THE MUMPS, which does not sound too frightening, but following that she had (must look in the dictionary) she had MENINGITIS, violently, and I think she was in the neighborhood of the Västerås record for high temperature. She had 40.6 (Cel) when she was not too ill and must have had 41 when she was really bad. The turning point was last evening when she suddenly returned to life again and today she has started to eat small pieces of fruit etc. and draw very large pictures—but now she is sleeping calmly...So I am in a state of stupid euphoria and talking, eating, reading and driving the car at the same time.

Very nice of you to take care of my 3-line poem! I will give the background. I am away from home (but in Sweden), probably in Värmland, and making a telephone call home to Monica. It is about 10 o’clock in the evening. It is a good telephone call, and I suddenly feel how our communication is leaking out into the surroundings, like a glittering river or something—it is not in the air but more on the ground so to say, like glittering ditches here and there. Or like a Milky Way stretched out in the landscape...I say
på
landsbygden and
i
förstäderna—the reason for having two different prepositions is the Swedish language which is the real kingdom, or bureaucracy, of prepositions, it is so complicated...You have to say
på
about landsbygd but
i
about förstäderna. I suppose in English you have
in
for both. So you could say “in the countryside and the suburbs,” or maybe villages (or country fields) is better, I leave it to you. (But not “over.”) The cross-country runner is OK, he is not on skies. What do you mean with “on ahead,” that is something extra. It is good if it means “on his way” or something, it is wrong if it means that the fellow is leading the running—the competition aspect should not be stressed. This rather romantic, solitary sport is very popular in Sweden. I should add something about the word “landsbygden.” The dictionary translation is “countryside”—if the content is the same in both languages I don’t know. “Landsbygden” is mostly used as a contrast to “städerna.” “Vi på landsbygden har inte samma stress som ni i städerna” etc. It includes both the populated places, the houses etc. and the area around, so you see fields, hills, even woods together with houses when you hear the word. It is a calm word.

It must be refreshing for you to translate a poem of mine with no stones in it.

The Cambridge people have sent me a huge program and the address of a tutor at Christ’s College who will keep me “in his spare room.” His name is Mr BUTT. Forssell, I, Harding and Lars G. are reading together in a Swedish corner. The program is full of for me unknown names (Englishmen) and also your name, Ginsberg’s, Creeley’s. But you are not there in person, only on a film. So they are repeating a previous poetry festival when you were filmed. In the next poetry festival they don’t need the poets at all, they can just show the films. Very rational.

I hope to meet our enthusiastic publisher Martin Booth. Do you really mean that there are no interesting English poets at all? What a decline since the days of John Donne! What a comfort to know that man does not live of art only, also food is necessary, so I will stick to the Indian restaurants. Couldn’t you ask Don Hall about some good addresses? In return I could try to write some subtle poems about cheese. Like this:

Love to you all

    Tomas

Runmarö 1-7-75

Dear Robert,

marvellous gifts dropping from the mailbox yesterday...
Old Man Rubbing
(with the I forgive you, please forgive me—poem at the end, I have been longing to see it since the reading in 1974), Kabir, Ignatow and APReview—your poem there immediately called me back to the old translation desk. I hear the translation trumpet blow again, it is a long time since...Thanks, thanks from us and the island.

I have been busy with writing a speech. It is completed now. I will deliver the speech at Verner von Heidenstam’s grave on July 6th (his birthday). For a moment the idea crossed your mind that a fundamental personality change has happened to your old friend T.T. admit that! But that is not true. What happened was that I got the so called Övralid-prize for 1975. Övralid is the place where Heidenstam lived for the last 20 years of his life. He died in 1940. Every year a writer, or scholar, is given 6,000 Sw. crowns. The prize winner has to show up at Övralid (in Östergötland) on Heidenstam’s birthday, is met by a brass ensemble from a nearby Health resort, marches together with the 15 old ladies and gentlemen of the Övralid Foundation Board to the poet’s tomb, where he (the prize winner) has to give a speech for 20 minutes about Verner von H. Then march to the memorial dinner—the dishes are decided by the corpse himself (salmon, chicken and strawberries).

I wrote to the Swedish Institute and asked for financial support—for the ticket from Sweden–N.Y. this autumn. Yesterday I got the answer: “For bureaucratic reasons I
¹
cannot confirm, but act
as if
I had.” ?? He wants to have some more details. I have made myself free from all obligations after Oct 15. When is our N.Y. reading? At the end of Oct. would be fine for me. What is the name and address of that place in North (or South?) Carolina you were planning for me the other year? Can I write to them myself? Don’t use your telephone anymore! Don’t darken my path with guilt feelings! Give the ladies and the little boys in the Bly human farm my love instead!

Tomas

(I have run out of ink!...)

6 Sept. 75

Dear Tomas,

Well, everyone around the U.S. read yesterday that you were a genius... The
NY Times Book Review
finally reviewed
Friends
—Helen Vendler reviewed about 12 books, massacring most of them, and saved you for the very end, telling American poets they should write like you. So organizing some more readings for you will be easy as duck soup, as of today!! I’ll send you a copy of the review in the next letter.

Meanwhile, I need to know what dates you have accepted and what time you have free. I know you are reading for Frannie Quinn in Boston shortly after you arrive. Then we read together in N.Y. Oct 21st, and again on Oct 24th (a Friday) in Bucks County Pa. which is near New York.

Would you like to come out to Minnesota then, to be with us that weekend? or the next weekend? We won’t let you get away without a visit to our fireplace and your godson!

I think you’d enjoy reading in Denver—and Peter Martin, who stopped by here the other day, can pay you $250 or $300 plus your air fare from Mpls—

How much more time do you have?

Did Davidson College in North Carolina write you?

It is time to settle all this!!

We are all awaiting your arrival, except of course for the other poets mentioned in the review that praised you, who will probably picket the Donnell Library and burn down the Volvo dealership...

Your friend,

    Robert

P.S. I like the translation of the Snowbank poem—

“unattached” is a word which is used this way:

“Margaret is not married, she is unattached at the moment.”

“Buddhism believes that we should live as far as possible unattached to ambition or society roles.”

So the word carries the mood of Meister Eckhart—his “detachment” is close in meaning to “unattachment.”

“It” is purposely left vague. You are right in leaving it so.

Fondly, R

8 Sept. 75

Dear Tomas,

A couple of questions on “Båten, Byn.”