Free Airmail by Robert Bly Page A

you thinking of clear air? “Resilient” really means “spänstig,” but the latter word sounds so athletic in Swedish. Then there’s that damned sideboard, actually a petit bourgeois thing in Sweden. I shall consult a furniture expert.
    My reading in Lund turned out not to be a success since too few people came. The ones who did come were however all young, except for one gray-haired person who was head of prisons for the southern district and had come to honor an old jailer at his reading. [-----] Afterwards we went to the home of a young poet who played Bach on the clavichord. The young people buzzed like bees, had plans to print pamphlets and magazines. Great fun to meet so much spiritual activity in this POP-Sweden! I provided the address for The Sixties, some of them wanted to subscribe.
    I too have appeared in a political context, less heroic than the ones where you appear unfortunately. See the enclosed clipping. According to another paper the confusion following the reading was great. The leading Social Democrat in the town council thought it was a Temperance lecture.
    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