literary school in Sweden, shows that it’s not easy to be an expert in the literature of foreign countries.
On another subject, I’m longing like a madman to see a new issue of The Sixties. You promised that the issues would come rolling out at high speed this year. Failing that, I could probably console myself with some collections of American poetry. The ones I’d like to have from your list are:
Lowell: For the Union Dead
Wilbur: Advice to a Prophet
James Dickey: Into the Stone and Buckdancer’s Choice
Simpson: Selected Poems
Creeley: For Love
Göran Printz-Påhlson—with whom I will collaborate on the anthology—lives in England and is going to put together a Swedish anthology for a magazine called Stand. He may write to you and ask to use some translations.
With hopes of a speedy reply and the warmest greetings from Monica
Yours
Tomas T.
Aug [March] 18, 66
Dear Tomas,
Thanks for your letter! I’m sorry I’m so slow in answering—I’ve been on a reading tour out West. I’m enclosing a clipping from the NY Times —you’ll see what we’ve been up to.
Herewith a few notes on the Three Presidents: When he says “I ate the Cubans with a straw” he implies that they are so spineless, so weak, so soft that he could suck them all up inside a straw—he wouldn’t even need teeth to eat them. Typical American superiority complex toward the South Americans or Spanish-Americans.
With “able to flow past rocks” I wanted to suggest this: other presidents, faced with the rocks of national habit, for example American anti-intellectualism, could not move. They put the rock of their program in front of this other immovable rock, and the two rocks just sat looking at each other all during the Administration and nothing got done. The strange thing about Kennedy was that he was able to evade American anti-intellectualism, American anti-communism, and he did it by being curiously fluid—he didn’t fight with the rocks, he just flowed around them and reformed on the other side. Before they knew it, half the intellectuals in the country were in his Administration.
As for the boulders, the heavy right-wingism, really serious obstacles, he just waited until his flow of water had sufficient momentum, and then he just carried the boulders with him to the valley. He did that at the time of Cuba, and prevented the right wing people from declaring war on Russia or some such stupidity.
By the crystals in sideboards, I was thinking of the fine crystal glasses that wealthy families in Boston will have in oak cupboards, standing in their dining rooms. Kennedy really loved the life of money: he thought himself a part of old wealthy aristocracy, and he thought he glittered like expensive glass. I think he considered the Catholic Church as being in the end an enemy of that sort of life, and that is one reason his interest in the Church was strictly minimal. He didn’t care beans for the Church.
Tell me what happened in Lund, when you read poems. [------]
Thank you for your mocking words on my Ekelöf introduction: that is exactly what I wanted! I had some doubts about that aristocrat-proletariat split—I don’t know how that idea got into my head—and that’s why I sent it to you. I’ll have to think up another division now—maybe that between long-headed writers, and round-headed writers. We’re always willing to believe the worst of another country.
I write this hastily. Carol sends her very best to you. We’ve been reading Sweden Writes, and Carol says you are the only Swedish writer photographed in it with any strength in the face.
How could that have happened?
I’m sending on a stamp outside for Monica—
Yours,
Robert
P.S. New Sixties are coming! Yes! Yes! In fact I’ve scheduled 5 poems of yours for Sixties #9. Payment coming soon.
Thoughts in a Redwood Grove
An old man took me to see a redwood grove.
Fifty redwoods rise in the winter sunset.
The floor is bare; far, far up boughs in the
On another subject, I’m longing like a madman to see a new issue of The Sixties. You promised that the issues would come rolling out at high speed this year. Failing that, I could probably console myself with some collections of American poetry. The ones I’d like to have from your list are:
Lowell: For the Union Dead
Wilbur: Advice to a Prophet
James Dickey: Into the Stone and Buckdancer’s Choice
Simpson: Selected Poems
Creeley: For Love
Göran Printz-Påhlson—with whom I will collaborate on the anthology—lives in England and is going to put together a Swedish anthology for a magazine called Stand. He may write to you and ask to use some translations.
With hopes of a speedy reply and the warmest greetings from Monica
Yours
Tomas T.
Aug [March] 18, 66
Dear Tomas,
Thanks for your letter! I’m sorry I’m so slow in answering—I’ve been on a reading tour out West. I’m enclosing a clipping from the NY Times —you’ll see what we’ve been up to.
Herewith a few notes on the Three Presidents: When he says “I ate the Cubans with a straw” he implies that they are so spineless, so weak, so soft that he could suck them all up inside a straw—he wouldn’t even need teeth to eat them. Typical American superiority complex toward the South Americans or Spanish-Americans.
With “able to flow past rocks” I wanted to suggest this: other presidents, faced with the rocks of national habit, for example American anti-intellectualism, could not move. They put the rock of their program in front of this other immovable rock, and the two rocks just sat looking at each other all during the Administration and nothing got done. The strange thing about Kennedy was that he was able to evade American anti-intellectualism, American anti-communism, and he did it by being curiously fluid—he didn’t fight with the rocks, he just flowed around them and reformed on the other side. Before they knew it, half the intellectuals in the country were in his Administration.
As for the boulders, the heavy right-wingism, really serious obstacles, he just waited until his flow of water had sufficient momentum, and then he just carried the boulders with him to the valley. He did that at the time of Cuba, and prevented the right wing people from declaring war on Russia or some such stupidity.
By the crystals in sideboards, I was thinking of the fine crystal glasses that wealthy families in Boston will have in oak cupboards, standing in their dining rooms. Kennedy really loved the life of money: he thought himself a part of old wealthy aristocracy, and he thought he glittered like expensive glass. I think he considered the Catholic Church as being in the end an enemy of that sort of life, and that is one reason his interest in the Church was strictly minimal. He didn’t care beans for the Church.
Tell me what happened in Lund, when you read poems. [------]
Thank you for your mocking words on my Ekelöf introduction: that is exactly what I wanted! I had some doubts about that aristocrat-proletariat split—I don’t know how that idea got into my head—and that’s why I sent it to you. I’ll have to think up another division now—maybe that between long-headed writers, and round-headed writers. We’re always willing to believe the worst of another country.
I write this hastily. Carol sends her very best to you. We’ve been reading Sweden Writes, and Carol says you are the only Swedish writer photographed in it with any strength in the face.
How could that have happened?
I’m sending on a stamp outside for Monica—
Yours,
Robert
P.S. New Sixties are coming! Yes! Yes! In fact I’ve scheduled 5 poems of yours for Sixties #9. Payment coming soon.
Thoughts in a Redwood Grove
An old man took me to see a redwood grove.
Fifty redwoods rise in the winter sunset.
The floor is bare; far, far up boughs in the
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