I Wish I'd Written This

What to Do with Objects
By Robert Bly

A little snow. Coffee. The bowled-over branches.
The wind, it is cold outdoors, but in the bed
It's warm, in the early lamp-light, reading poems.

These fingers, so rosy, so alive, move
About this book. Here is my wide-traveling palm,
The thumb that looks like my father's, the wedding ring.

It's time to prepare myself—as a friend said—
"Not to be here." It will happen. One day
The dish will be empty on the brown table.

Towards dusk, someone will say, "Today
Some rooms were busy, but this room was not.
The gold knob shone alone in the dark."

No breath, no poems, no dish. And the small change
Will go unnoticed by the snow, the squirrels
Searching for old acorns. What to do with

All these joys? Someone says, "You take them."


From "A Week of Poems at Bennington", published in Best American Poetry 1998. New York, Scribner, © 1998.

The recent deaths of poets I've known have me reflecting on my own mortality – as Bly was when he wrote this, for whatever reason. 

I like the simple directness of the poem (what Wikipedia calls his 'plain, imagistic style') and the ease with which he dwells on various small things that are important in the moment. In the end, despite the title, it is not the physical objects he dwells on so much as the joys they inspire – and not, I think, the dish and the small change so much as the squirrels, the snow, the warm bed, the book of poems, his own hand, the wedding ring.... 

And how can one 'take them'? And who should do that? It's open to interpretation, but I think he means that he himself must take them with him when he dies. If so, it seems to me the only way to do that is to fully experience them while he is alive to do so. And then it becomes not just a message to himself, but to each of us – live fully, don't waste what time you have, savour the joys. The recently deceased poets I am thinking of did that!

Bly himself is still with us, at nearly 90 years old. He has been an important and influential American poet, widely known also in other countries. He has been involved in numerous translations into English from the literatures of other cultures; he has created a specific activism of poets and writers, e.g. during the Vietnam War; he became deeply interested in the Goddess, the Divine Feminine, and this in turn led to the formation of the Men's Movement; both these explorations have included delving into myths and fairytales, as well as Jungian archetypes. 

He has also produced many volumes of poetry and several non-fiction books, as well as editing a number of poetry anthologies. You can find pages of books by and about him at Amazon.

He was born in Minnesota of Norwegian ancestry, has lived most of his life there, and became its first Poet Laureate in 2008. He has received various awards, including the Robert Frost Medal in 2013.

The most comprehensive source of information about his life, work and aesthetics is probably his website. In addition to his bio, details of his books etc., this includes both an extensive interview and details of a film about him, A Thousand Years of Joy. The film, we are told, is available on DVD and can be ordered online.

You can also consult the Wikipedia link above, and similar material (plus poems) at The Poetry Foundation, PoemHunter and Academy of American Poets. The latter includes audio presentations of some poems. There are also readings and lectures on YouTube.

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.

Photo SpangleJ, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Parents, Guardians, Significant Adults in the Lives of Children

Children give carnations to parents on Parents' Day in South Korea

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, 
my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. 
You will always find people who are helping.” 
― Fred Rogers

“Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise 
healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. ” 
― bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody

“I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man.” 
― Barack Obama

The International Day for Protection of Children, Children's Day,
is celebrated in many countries on June 1st, though the date varies.

Midweek Motif ~ Parenthood

Parents, Guardians, Significant Adults 

According to Wikipedia:  

Parents' Day is a holiday combining the concepts of a Fathers' Day and Mothers' Day.  The United Nations proclaimed June 1 to be the Global Day of Parents "to appreciate all parents in all parts of the world for their selfless commitment to children and their lifelong sacrifice towards nurturing this relationship.".^[1] It is the same day as International Children's Day.

When I taught high school English, it was easy to tell which students suffered from a lack of nurturing adult presence in their lives.  At times these children needed my attention more than they needed an English lesson. I wondered if spending an hour a day with children in classes of more than 30 students was anything like parenting.  Could parents see 170 children a day, even if only for an hour?  My own parents struggled financially early on and were too angry and scared to be consistently loving until I was a pre-teen.  I feel love and gratitude for them now. 

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem, in which you take on the voice of a child with real or ideal adults parenting them.  

I Go Back to May 1937

Related Poem Content Details

BY SHARON OLDS

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, 

I see my father strolling out 

under the ochre sandstone arch, the   

red tiles glinting like bent 

plates of blood behind his head, I 

see my mother with a few light books at her hip 

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, 

the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its 

sword-tips aglow in the May air, 

they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,   

they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are   

innocent, they would never hurt anybody.   

. . . . 

Read the rest HERE.

Lullaby in Fracktown

Related Poem Content Details

BY LILACE MELLIN GUIGNARD

Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes.

You know that Mama loves you lollipops

and Daddy still has a job to lose.

So put on a party hat. We’ll play the kazoos

loud and louder from the mountaintop.

Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes

and dance the polka with pink kangaroos,

dolphin choirs singing “flip-flop, flip-flop.”

Hey, Daddy still has a job to lose — 

. . . . 

Read the Rest HERE.

Driving My Parents Home at  Christmas

BY ROBERT BLY

As I drive my parents home through the snow

their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.

I call over the cliff

only snow answers.

They talk quietly

of hauling water of eating an orange

of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.

When they open the door of their house they disappear.

And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears it 

through miles and miles of silence?

They sit so close to each other; ­

as if pressed together by the snow.

***

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 

visit others in the spirit of the community.

                       

 (Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be - Commitment)

The Living Dead

Honouring our poetic ancestors

I Said To The Wanting-Creature Inside Me

— Kabir (c.1440 — c. 1518)

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are. 

This poet, various online sources tell me, is regarded as an Indian saint. He seems to be regarded so by adherents of various Indian religions, in particular the Sikhs. He himself founded his own religion, or perhaps his followers did, based on his beliefs. It is one of the Sant Mar sects, which is to say it emphasises inner, personal union with the Divine, and is known as Kabir panth, a path of personal devotion or Bhakti. (I hope I have understood correctly and conveyed this accurately, but you may check the links for yourself.)

I didn't know all that when I decide to choose this poem for today's post; I thought he was a Sufi because of the ecstatic way he sometimes writes of that inner union with God. In fact, I learn that he did indeed relate to the Sufi teachings — but he also accepted much of the Hindu and Muslim faiths. It's worth noting that one piece of Hinduism he was opposed to was the caste system. The Wikipedia article (at the link on his name, above) says he tried to reconcile Muslim and Hindu teachings.

I too like the notion of a personal relationship with God, and I like the way it is expressed here. Some of his other poems I find a bit confronting because of religious views that are foreign to me. Kabir's God seems to be firmly and unquestionably male — a widespread viewpoint in many religions, but one I'm not quite comfortable with (a. I think God transcends gender; b. I like to focus on the female aspect). So it is a little odd to me when he writes of God's immanence in Nature with the male pronoun. I'm basically with him on the immanence thing, but I'm used to looking at it from a different (Pagan) perspective. 

Also, in the Western world we perhaps don't think of loving God in quite the same ecstatic terms, where sexual ecstasy becomes the metaphor. (Less often in Kabir, perhaps, than the works of some others, such as Rumi.) It's at odds with the Puritannical background which is part of the heritage many of us come from, whether we are personally religious or not.

This poem, though, is more general and abstract than that, even while being grounded in the physical world. I particularly love that ending! And after all, I am posting to an international community. For some he will be a cultural ancestor, as well as being a spiritual ancestor to all poets. Many readers may feel perfectly at home with Kabir's views. 

They may be his views but are they really his poems? Of course if we are reading them in English they are translations, but even the originals were written down by others, not by Kabir himself. There is some uncertainty as to whether all those ascribed to him actually originated with him. We can't know, but the style and content seem close enough. If some imitations have crept in, they seem to be good imitations, and he was at least the inspiration. (We can't assume this piece was not his. It was not unusual, in some Eastern poetic traditions, to address oneself in the third person in a poem.)

I'm sad to see I no longer have my copy of the little book, Songs of Kabir (translated by Tagore) which my father gave me in my teens. Perhaps it disappeared in one of my many house moves since then. But, how wonderful, I have discovered it available online as a free pdf download! It's on Amazon too, if you prefer reading it in paperback form. And there is also the collection of poems at PoemHunter.

The picture I've used is the commemorative stamp made in India in 1952.

Post Script. Sherry informs us in the comments below that there is a translation by Robert Bly. So there is! And on Goodreads people's opinions are very divided as to the merits of it! But evaluation of art is always subjective, I think. Check it for yourself at the Amazon link.