Seeing The Eclipse in Maine
by Robert Bly
It started about noon. On top of Mount Batte,
We were all exclaiming. Someone had a cardboard
And a pin, and we all cried out when the sun
Appeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.
It was hard to believe. The high school teacher
We’d met called it a pinhole camera,
People in the Renaissance loved to do that.
And when the moon had passed partly through
We saw on a rock underneath a fir tree,
Dozens of crescents—made the same way—
Thousands! Even our straw hats produced
A few as we moved them over the bare granite.
We shared chocolate, and one man from Maine
Told a joke. Suns were everywhere—at our feet.
Is poetry a monologue or a dialogue? An old question, easily answered from my perspective; it is a dialogue, poetry is a conversation, its up to you to figure out the response.
Robert Bly was born in Madison, Minnesota and continues to live and work in Western Minnesota to the present day. Robert Bly and James Arlington Wright were friends, and helped put Midwestern poetry on the map in the 1950’s. Bly’s life work as a poet is vast, expanding the wealth of English literature by translating a diverse range of poets across many languages with a focus on the spiritual in addition to his many collections of his own poetry.
I worked in Lac Qui Parle County, the landscape of much of Bly’s poetry, for 7 years in the 1990’s. Bly may travel the world within his writing, but it is all grounded in the rich clay silt loam of the prairie. I find it reassuring to see a glimpse of the land I have traveled as an Agronomist for 30 plus years within the poetry of both Bly and Wright.
Bly and Wright traveled very different personal paths in using poetry to wrestle with their demons. Bly being older by one year and yet outliving Wright by 38 years and counting. Wright’s depression is palpable within his poetry, but rather than lessen the experience it heightens it. Both Bly and Wright poetry invite a discussion on the wonderment of this planet and the human condition.
A Blessing Poem
by James Arlington Wright (1927 – 1980)
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
Fourteen Lines 