Airmail (7 page)

My face sends his warm greetings to Carol.

One thing we’ve forgotten to talk about in our letters is your book of poems. More than a year ago you wrote that it was finally finished. Since then, silence on the subject. Reasonably the book should have been out months ago, been praised and disparaged already by your friends/enemies in the press. Here one stands in the presence of something mysterious, something almost frightening in American cultural life. That unbelievable d e l a y i n g of everything serious (förhalande = delaying). It’s as if they had all eternity before them. Am I mistaken? My publisher in Kansas who’s supposed to be printing a modest brochure with three poems wrote in October that they were to appear “for Christmas.” After that I got a Christmas letter informing me that they would come out in January. After that total silence. In a famous magazine
(The Sixties)
I read: “We invite poets to send translations of his [Hernandez’s] work. THE DEADLINE IS JUNE 1, 64.” What’s interesting about that last sentence is that the issue of the magazine came out in Spring 1965. Etcetera. Must the business of publishing serious literature be a subsection of archeology? Sucking up the Cubans once with a straw wasn’t enough apparently, a load of MAÑANA had to be taken in as well. In short, I hope your book is published soon and that you become a Guggenheim fellow and come to Europe to see us which would be great, say

Tomas
[in longhand],
Monica, Marie and Paula
[typed]

[in longhand:]
Now I’m going to put Joan Baez on again.

[in longhand at the top of the second page:]
I like Joan Baez, The Presidents, and does Robert really understand Swedish? Monica

4-20-66

Dear Roberto,

congratulations! I assume that the switch from Wesleyan Univ. Press to Harper’s implies a great triumph—a sort of Oscar for poets. Your check for 50 dollars was as welcome as it was unexpected. There was a certain amount of discussion before I could get the bank to give me the money, but they did and I immediately bought a little bottle of Seagram’s VO—the rest of the money goes to the family: paper dolls, oranges, socks etc.—It’s hard to get hold of a Chicago newspaper here in Västerås. How did the read-in go? I eagerly await a report. Greetings to the family!

Tomas

29 April, 66

Dear Tomas,

The Three Presidents translation looks wonderful! A note on your questions: Roosevelt wants to run around at night, with totally senseless energy, rushing all over the grounds, like a murdered chicken.

The descriptions of the air are really a description of Kennedy: he was “invisible” in the sense that he loved to act in secret, even act nobly in secret, and then announce it later with delight like a boy. The air around Johnson is not invisible—it is full of soot, hurricane clouds, and ordinary Texas mud. “Resilient”: you might shift a little to a meaning of “resilient” that applied to Kennedy: he was mentally agile and
flexible
—he had not only one rabbit in his bag, but a number of rabbits of various colors. He was rarely at a loss for an act: he could usually think of
something
(at a press conference as well as in foreign relations). For the “skapet” choose any form of furniture or even closet that suggests something aristocratic or at least wealthy. You are right: a middle class suggestion must be avoided. What do they call those huge pieces of oak furniture in castles? I see them sitting around in European castles, dark, lowering, with ornate doors, holding God knows what.

The reading in Chicago and Milwaukee went well! Paul Carroll read a fifteen minute poem, called “Ode to the American Indian.” He had typed it all on one long sheet of paper, which lay in curls and heaps at his feet. Everyone turned pale. I’ll send you some clippings of them when I get home from this next group. The reporters, who were political reporters, seemed to be astounded that poetry was read all night. They couldn’t understand that.

Tomorrow I go to the East for ten days of read-ins. Tuesday at Harvard, Wednesday, Columbia, Thursday three different schools in upstate New York—Jim Wright, and Galway and I go by airplane, hopping about like World War I aviators—Friday, Queens College, Saturday, Oberlin, Sunday, a big one in Philadelphia; Ginsberg will be there too with his long Indian beard and saffron Buddhist robe.

I’m glad you like Joan Baez! I love her voice, so dark and well-like. And wonderful passion in the songs! She has refused for years you know to pay her income tax out of protest against the war.

Write soon,    our best to Monica and

the little across the rivers!

Robert   

4-6-66

Dear Robert,

I’ve forgotten whose turn it is to write, yours or mine. Thanks for your last letter in any case! I’m terribly curious about your experiences on those propaganda tours (saw something in the
Times Lit. Supplement
about them—the lead story). Among other things I’ve been uneasy at the thought of those airplanes you travel in “like World War I aviators.” Eric Sellin sent the program for Philadelphia—a splendid collection of names. Are there any poets or other cultural figures who take the other side, who do readings to express their support for an aggressive policy in Southeast Asia?—In spite of everything I have a feeling that a slight climate change has taken place in the U.S.; one can’t look upon developments so totally pessimistically anymore. Maybe it’s just that summer’s coming, I don’t know. It could also be McNamara’s speech on China. Naturally the Oregon primary was a bad blow; I was unhappy as a wet dog all the next day. When the Viet Nam anthology comes out (remember it
should
have appeared the 3rd of May) you ought to send me some copies that I can send on to some reviewers in the press here—we give all too little publicity to the American opposition to the war. There’s nothing to be done about the professionally anti-American intellectuals (of the Artur Lundkvist type) but the shy and shamefaced friends of the U.S. (me, for example) ought to have a little encouragement.—I also hope that you pull back now and then into idleness and silence, so that the YOGI gets a chance to blossom and not just the COMMISSAR.

For the moment I’m developing a big activity, or at least that’s how it feels. The job here in Västerås is going fine; I’ve also taken on some probation work (I am on a small scale a probation officer), in order to reconnect with the old criminal psychology, and am writing the last two poems in my fall book, which will be called
Klanger och spår
and come out on October 13. I sent you that long poem about Grieg, didn’t I?—I’d been thinking all along that I’d write it in the third person: “he” did this and that etc., but while working on the translation of the three presidents I discovered that it would be more natural to say “I.”

Thanks for your influences.

From time to time I make a road trip up through the forest, which is completely different from forests down in Östergötland. A poem follows.

“drake” = “kite.”

Best wishes in every way to you and the family. And write for God’s sake!

Your friend,

Tomas T.

11 July, ’66

Dear Tomas,

Thank you for your letter! Yes, I have dropped back into my old solitary habits now with great joy, brooding by reedy lakes, and reading unreliable psychoanalysts in the grass. The poem you sent, “Oppna och Slutna Rum,” was lovely. I had a note from Printz-Påhlson the other day asking for some of my translations of your poems, which I’ll send soon. (I heard that small pamphlet of your poems had been printed in Kansas—a friend of mine saw one—but the pigheaded Frankensteinian three legged printer did not send me one.) Göran Sonnevi wrote in a letter recently that your “impact upon younger poets has been great and maybe a bit dangerous.” I love that word “dangerous”—they’re afraid they might be drawn too close to
poetry
—as to the oven door! Sonnevi said he thought your new book would be very good, judging from your reading at Lund.

How did you like the new
Sixties
? Jim Wright grumbled a little over my joke that in his nature poems even the ants are well-read, but I think he’s forgiven me now. He is staying here with us now, and Louis Simpson is arriving tomorrow. We haven’t entirely finished the roof yet on the little shack in the woods where Louis will sleep. He just wanted to come and talk about poetry for a week, so I’ll have to go back to talk for a week! Jim is fine as a guest—he just broods silently, and wanders about like a rock with hair.

The mood on Vietnam darkens. Galway wrote me an anguished letter today. We had said a lot of harsh and wildly insulting things about Johnson during the read-ins, and Galway mentioned that he had always had some reservations about that, maybe Johnson
did
have a streak of honor. But now, he said, I see that all that we said was flattery.

Johnson is going to try to win this summer. But the disgust for him is so deep now in the country that he may be the first president in Am. history not to be reelected while in office.

Do write! My best to Monica.

Affectionately, Robert

Runmarö 20 July ’66

Dear Robert,

How happy I was to hear from you, to hear that you hadn’t been cast down by all the hellishness that’s been going on. It seems from your letter as if people in general in the U.S. were against the policy of aggression against Vietnam. It seems that way in Eric’s letters too. But then these damned polls, as soon as Johnson announces some new escalation there’s actually a big jump in his popularity. I had so set my hopes on the Buddhist uprisings, that they would indicate to the American people how hollow the talk is about South Vietnam’s being
a little country that is asking for the protection of the USA.
But no. Then came the primary in Oregon. New cold shower. Then the bombs rained over Hanoi-Haiphong. Strong popular support. Now the reporters are saying that 90% of the American people are going to insist that North Vietnam be turned into a moonscape if the poor aviators are put on trial. You can understand that it feels good in many ways to get a letter from you when one lives in this atmosphere.

I’m on vacation and have retreated to the island in the Archipelago where I spent all my childhood summers and where my forebears have their roots. (I’m descended from pilots and other sea-folk.) The family’s doing fantastically well. They all swim, fight mosquitoes, get lost among tall trees or lie babbling in the sun.

I have now turned in the whole manuscript of my fall book and am sending you the last two poems. There’s a section in the first of the poems that touches on my transatlantic relations in a very personal way.

[-----] On another topic, I’m waiting impatiently for
The Sixties,
which you apparently think I’ve received. No. I really hope the pigheaded etc. printer has sent it. But if it’s been sent by surface mail it’ll be awhile longer before it gets here. I have in fact discovered that the boats bringing the mail from the States obviously ply their way with the help of oars. Not only is it heavy and laborious to row straight across the Atlantic, besides that the oarsmen are badly paid and go on strike from time to time en route.

I read with surprise that Prinz-Påhlson has contacted you. Truly energetic! I only hope it doesn’t mean that I’m now appearing in the English magazine
instead of
in
The Sixties.
I mean that to be published in
The Sixties
now seems to me to be a significantly greater honor, fully comparable to arriving at Valhalla and drinking beer with the great heroes.

I’m working on Lowell’s poem about the mouth of the Hudson. What is the Negro sitting toasting? Is it some sort of popcorn? What kind of atmosphere is there around this special food?

Stafford is great, Simpson is good.

Stafford is giving me a lot of trouble. He has a sort of genuine poetic spark even when the poems are a little bit bad. Hideously difficult to translate. Entirely too close to their own language to really be translatable. The word “swerving” for example in “Traveling through the Dark.” Simpson on the other hand would be rather easy to translate. I often think his poems are “better” than Stafford’s but they lack that mysterious quality, unfortunately. Perhaps he’s too much of an extrovert to suit me. I have only one of his books:
The End of the Open Road.
What do you like best in that?

What’s become of John Haines? He might be something for Swedish readers—the nearness to the North Pole. Also your poem about the Oyster must have something to tell us. What a wonderful MAD-poem!

In a few days the family and I are going to Gotland to visit some good friends. We’ll stay with a family with the prosaic name of Svensson. Svensson himself is Gotland’s only psychologist, but he is really less interested in psychology than in such subjects as music (he plays the organ, French horn, cello, oboe and trumpet flawlessly), birds (he instantly identifies by song every bird in this country), fossils (a rather useless knowledge) and the ornamentation of the Viking era. He was at one time very interested in Indians (particularly Rorschach-testing of Indians) and corresponded with a professor in Kansas. He is very modest and quiet. Monica sends her warmest.

your

   Tomas T.

8 August, 66

Dear Tomas,

Be sure to get the
Life
magazine from a couple of weeks ago (the date must be around middle July) with the article on James Dickey! He brags that he made $25,000 on poetry last year! The truth is
Life
could only find one poet in the U.S. who was in favor of the Vietnam war, so they wrote an article on him, instead of reviewing
A Poetry Reading against the Vietnam War,
which I know they were also debating doing.