Airmail (45 page)

—Robert Bly, from
Silence in the Snowy Fields

—Robert Bly, from
The Light Around the Body

—Tomas Tranströmer, from
Night Vision,
translated by Robert Bly

—Tomas Tranströmer, from
Den halvfärdiga
himlen,
translated by Robert Bly (unpublished)

Endnotes take up twenty-two pages in the original Swedish edition of
Airmail
edited by Torbjörn Schmidt. I had hoped to make do with substantially fewer notes in this American edition, and perhaps proportionately I have achieved that goal. But it soon became clear to me that an American edition would call for numerous clarifications not needed by the Swedish audience. Also, the significant additions to the present edition opened up many more questions and issues to be resolved.

We live in an age of powerful search engines, and my policy has been not to include a note for anything a curious American reader can readily find online. This has spared me many, many elucidations of the obvious. On the other hand, I found it essential to a general comprehension of this book to do everything I could to help the reader understand casual but meaningful allusions to works, published, unpublished, or in progress, of the two poets that form the consistent connective tissue and ostensible subject matter of their conversation. I have also chosen to illuminate what the reader might otherwise assume to be offhanded whimsy on the part of Bly or Tranströmer. For instance, when the latter tosses off, on March 24, 1984, “We could talk about our frog skins!” he is in fact referring to a piece Bly has recently published in the
New York Times Book Review
discussing the Russian fairy tale “The Frog Princess,” though no mention of it by its author has been preserved in the correspondence.

My impulse as editor has consistently been to facilitate the story these letters tell, to fill in gaps where parts of the correspondence are obviously missing, and, frankly, to make
Airmail
the best read possible given the available surviving materials. Even the more trivial bits preserved here help us grasp the spirit of liveliness and fun that kept Bly and Tranströmer, collegial considerations aside, writing back and forth to each other for more than a quarter century.

Of course I had allies in these enhancements of the text. Torbjörn Schmidt did meticulous pioneering work on the original edition, from which I have gratefully drawn. Where the letters frequently venture out beyond the scope of Schmidt’s work, I’ve benefited from the informed consultation of Roland Thorstensson, professor emeritus of Scandinavian studies and Swedish at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. (In December 2010, Professor Thorstensson shared a stage with Robert Bly at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis, where he read the Swedish originals of Bly’s Tranströmer translations.) I indicate where I’ve adopted his wording with the initials “RT.” Bly scholar Mark Gustafson has also given me good help on recondite Bly matters, as has Robert Bly himself. Monica and Tomas Tranströmer have very graciously replied to my queries at a busy time for them indeed. I should note that unless otherwise attributed, all translations of Tranströmer’s (and other Scandinavian poets’) titles are Bly’s. In several cases, Bly has translated a book title for reference though not the book itself. Most of the Tranströmer poems mentioned by Bly can be found in
The Half-Finished Heaven,
in consultation with which this book is best read. Most of Bly’s own poems alluded to in the text are readily available in his own volumes, though I have included a few around which more than the usual amount of discussion revolves in these letters.

—Thomas R. Smith

Halvfärdiga himlen
—Tranströmer’s 1962 poetry collection, translated by RB into English as
The Half-Finished Heaven.

Allen
anthology—
The New American Poetry: 1945–1960,
edited by Donald M. Allen, 1960.

“Snowfall”—“Snowfall in the Afternoon,”
Silence in the Snowy Fields.

Nå, her er vi alle i Paris!—The first two sentences are in Norwegian. RB translates: “Here we all are in Paris! Who could imagine such a strange thing!”

Another man I admire greatly—Georg Groddeck (1866–1934), German physician from whose
The Book of the It
Freud derived the concept of the Id.

That newspaper out in the weather—“Om Historien” translated by RB as “About History.”

I enjoyed
Hemligheter på vägen
—TT’s 1958 collection, title translated by RB as
Secrets on the Road.

“Efter Anfall”—Translated by RB as “After the Attack.”

this mole is an old friend—Reference to mole in TT’s “Resans formler” (translated by Robin Fulton as “The Journey’s Formulae”). RB also references his own “Laziness and Silence” and “The Mole” by John Haines.

Ord och Bild
—Swedish cultural and literary journal founded in 1892.

old Heimat! old Bleie—“old home” in Bleie, ancestral home of Blys.

I just wrote Jim Wright—Letter to James Wright, July 8, 1965: “We stopped at a farmhouse—[Tranströmer] asked for some sort of key—we went to this huge red barn and he opened the door with the gigantic old key—it was a Moose Museum! Yes, it had a complete moose skeleton, hundreds of moose teeth for sale, everything in the whole building was moose. It was probably the only building in Sweden completely pervaded by moose and moosiness.”

that calm and grotesque St. George—This sculpture by Bernt Notke became the subject of RB’s poem “St. George, the Dragon, and the Virgin,”
Meditations on the Insatiable Soul,
1994.

Leif Sjöberg—Sjöberg’s article in the
American Swedish Monthly,
1965:5, was titled “Poetry: A Pretty Hopeless Product to Market.”

urgammel Bleie gard—According to RB, “longstanding Bly farm.”
låsa
—“lock.”

Viet-Nam poem about the ghost train—“Asian Peace Offers Rejected without Publication,” in
The Light Around the Body.

Sweden Writes
—Anthology of contemporary Swedish writers, 1965, edited by Lars Bäckström and Göran Palm.

Herr Across-the-River—RB seems to be playing here on an incorrect translation of the name “Tranströmer.” According to RT, “ström” does indeed mean “stream,” but “tran” in Swedish is not related to our English root meaning “across.” Instead it means “fish oil.” “Tranströmer,” says RT, is “one of the many last names in Swedish where two seemingly different objects are combined.”

BLM—
Bonniers litterära magasin,
influential Swedish literary journal.

Klanger och spår
—Translated by RB as
Resonance and Tracks,
1966.

poem about the Oyster—“Opening an Oyster,” in
The Light Around the Body.

“I det fria”—Translated by RB as “Out in the Open.”

“As the Asian War Begins”—Later version published in
The Light Around the Body.

Bonniers—TT’s longtime publisher.

MRA—Moral Re-Armament, a conservative Christian revivalist movement founded by Protestant evangelist Frank Buchman in 1938.

“Lamento”—Translated by RB as “Lamento.”

Ducks
—Tiny chapbook of a three-line poem by RB, hence the playful reference to
Gone with the Wind.

Dagens Nyheter—
(Daily News) Largest morning newspaper in Sweden, founded in 1864.

Hjorth—Daniel Hjorth, chief editor at BLM.

Calvinols resa genom världen
—Novel by Swedish author P. C. Jersild.

Aftonbladet
—A leading Swedish daily tabloid, founded in 1830.

Thursday about 10 of America’s—See Donald Hall’s marvelous account of this event in his interview with Peter Stitt,
Paris Review,
Fall 1991.

Carroll—Donald Carroll, publisher of Rapp & Carroll.

wall-stumbling-along-in-the-street poem—“Preludier” by TT, translated by RB as “Preludes.”

I’m enclosing a poem—“Med älven,” translated by RB as “Going with the Current.”

My own poem—“Andrum juli,” translated by RB as “Breathing Space July.”

Myrdal’s articles—Jan Myrdal, critical commentary on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The Lion’s Tail and Eyes
—Reference to RB’s collection of that title (with James Wright and William Duffy), Sixties Press, 1962, in which Bly posits a poetry of evocative imagery rather than literalistic “pictures.”

Strountes
—Title of Gunnar Ekelöf’s 1955 collection, translated by RB as
Nonsense.

you’re getting two letters at once—The other may be TT’s letter of September 30.

your dispute in
The Sixties
—RB, “The Collapse of James Dickey,”
The Sixties
9, Spring 1967.

Stanza 2—RB’s poem “Melancholy” in
The Light Around the Body.

Also a copy of my play—
The Satisfaction of Vietnam: A Play in Eight Scenes,
unpublished.

“Direktörens död,” etc.—RB’s poems “The Executive’s Death,” “Those Being Eaten by America,” and “Smothered by the World,” from
The Light Around the Body.

Sinyavsky trial—Andrei Sinyavsky, Russian dissident.

Ord om Vietnam
—Anthology edited by Benny Andersen, 1967.

the enclosed poem—“Trafik,” translated by RB as “Traffic.”

golden wings—Reference to RB poem “Laziness and Silence” in
Silence in the Snowy Fields.

Mamma in the hospital—TT’s mother, Helmy Tranströmer, was being treated for cancer.

Mr. Hall—Donald Hall.

Unicorn
—American literary journal featuring RB’s translations of Martinson.

Miami Beach—Site of the Republican convention at which Nixon was nominated.

George—George Hitchcock, editor of
Kayak.

Harry Smith—Editor of the literary magazine
The Smith
(not the Beat Harry Smith), writing in
The Sixties
10, 1968: “I don’t even doubt that lovely poems are written in China, but I am unaware of any Chinaman who has done as well as John Donne.”

the two lovely poems—“The Open Window” and “Outskirts” (RB translation).

cement piping poem—“Outskirts.”

Misan—Emma Tranströmer.

“sitting on some rocks”—“Sitting on Some Rocks in Shaw Cove, California,” in RB,
The Morning Glory,
1969.

first drafts of two translations—“Outskirts” and “The Open Window.”

Issa
—
Issa: Ten Poems,
self-published pamphlet of RB translations of Japanese haiku poet Issa, given away at poetry readings: “This booklet is a gift, and is not to be sold.”

Bly magazine from Tennessee—Special RB issue of the
Tennessee Poetry Journal
, 1969.

Comrade Zhdanov—Andrei Zhdanov, chairman of the Soviet of the Union, infamous for his purges of musicians and stance toward “incorrect art” as ideological diversion.

very strong poem of yours—“The Teeth-Mother Naked at Last.”

politrucs—“Politically appointed civil servant” with connotations of “bureaucrat” (RT).

exiled Hungarian poet—Géza Thinsz.

The Shadow Brother
—Early title of
Sleepers Joining Hands,
1973.

Doing Nothing for a Thousand Years
—Published in 1979 as
This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years.

a new poem—“Upprätt,” translated by RB as “Standing Up.”

the Barn in Devon—“Walking on the Sussex Coast.”

the rocket-shaver poem—“The Open Window.” See RB’s letter to Torbjörn Schmidt, p. 418.

your Hen Poem—“Standing Up.”

The reconstruction of this long letter is something of an educated guess. The Swedish draft, as translated by Judith Moffett and Lars-Håkan Svensson, is incomplete, ending with the sentence “Or I can stand anything except not to...” Weighing date and context, I’ve taken the risk of combining this with the partial letter in
Ironwood
(see end note for RB November 12, 1978), originally written mostly in English, dealing with poems from
Night Vision,
and which begins “And there is a boat trying to put in.” (JM and L-HS have also translated the part of the first paragraph of the last section beginning “The boathook is something totally foreign.”)

Would you check this translation—TT’s “Balakirevs dröm (1905),” translated by RB as “Balakirev’s Dream (1905).”

Crunk—RB’s pseudonym for critical essays in
The Fifties
and
The Sixties.

“walking in spring ditches”—Published as “Walking in the Ditch Grass” in
Jumping Out of Bed,
Barre Publishers, 1973.

2 poems “Telpas”—“Open and Closed Space” and “About History.” “våra istidsateljéers röda djur”—translated by RB as “red beasts of the ice-age studios.”