Robert Bly – A Gathering of Men – Interview with Bill Moyers

ROBERT BLY – A GATHERING OF MEN – INTERVIEW WITH BILL MOYERS

Robert Bly is a poet. We are leaving our time now. We’re leaving our time now. There are places where time is slower than here. The four directions are east, west, north and south. Today, we are under the fifth direction, the vertical one.

There was a king and a queen. They lived in a castle. There was a forest near the castle. There is always a forest near the castle. When anyone went into this forest, he didn’t come back. Five hunters went out and didn’t come back. Ten hunters didn’t come back after being sent after them. They didn’t come back after twenty hunters went out. Thirty hunters were sent after them, but they did not return.

No one went to that part of the forest anymore. Occasionally a hawk or eagle flew over it. This is a male story, the hawk and eagle are male birds. That was the situation for a long time.

One day a young man came and said, Anything dangerous to do around here? The king said that he did not recommend it because the return rate was not good. The young man said, That’s the sort of thing I like, I think I’ll go.

He took his dog with him. Maybe the fact that he didn’t go in a group was a factor. He took his dog with him and he walked into the forest and a hand came up from the pond and pulled the dog down. He did not get hysterical. He said, This must be the place.

Bill Moyers is a writer. I am Bill Moyers. A gathering of men is the title of the program. Many men feel confused about their roles in society and their inner lives. Women have a stake in how men address these issues, just as men have been affected by the feminist movement.

It isn’t accurate to describe what’s happening as a men’s movement, but gatherings like this one in Austin, Texas, are taking place more and more frequently, and they’re drawing larger and larger numbers of men. What summons these men, in my experience, is not a desire to separate again from women, or to return to that destructive, aggressive and dominating masculine personality of more chauvinistic days.

To the contrary. Men are drawn to these retreats by a sense of loss, but also by a sense of hope. Sharing their confusion over the problems of life is something that men are willing to learn from one another.

Many of these men have the chance to learn from Robert Bly.

[voiceover] Robert Bly is arguably the most influential American poet living today, whether writing about Silence in the Snow Fields or The Light Around the Body, about the war in Vietnam or the archaeology of private memory, he confers upon even the simplest words a weight and consequence of new things.

After attending a one room school, Bly attended the University of Iowa and Harvard. The experience of his own life and the poems, myths and fairy tales of the world have been his most constant teachers. The realities of pain, hope, and joy are woven into his poems. He won the National Book Award for poetry in 1968, and has since published a growing collection of poems and translations that express what one critic calls a deep marriage between the inner and outer worlds in one man’s life.

Robert Bly’s honesty and strong images of masculine consciousness made him a father figure at gatherings of men all over the country. One of the themes of his book is the grief and loss men often feel, but rarely acknowledge.

BLY. I will start with a poem by Antonio Machado, the Spanish poet. There is a lot of pain and grief around men these days, and he touches on it here.

One brilliant day, the wind called to my soul with a jasmine smell.

The wind said, In return for the smell of my jasmine, I would like all the smell of your roses.

[Machado said,] “I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead … ”

The wind said it would take the withered petals and the yellow leaves.

The wind left. I cried. I asked myself, What have you done with the garden that was given to you?

Good poem, hmm? You don’t feel like the garden is being blown apart until you are 35 or so. What were the models we were given in high school? They last until you are 32 or 33. You notice that something isn’t right in your business, in your private life, and in your relationships; these things don’t last. You have to find another image for what a man is around 35. Is that clear?

It takes courage to come here. There are a lot of men who feel this and won’t act on it. Those in their 20s say they are fine. Fourteen women have left me, and two of them beat me up, but I am doing fine. I am bleeding from my skin, but I am fine.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Why is there a gathering of men? It is rare to have a workshop for men only.

BLY. It would have been rare 20 years ago, but lately the men in various parts of the country have begun to gather. I think it is not a reaction to the women’s movement. The grief that leads to the men’s movement began 140 years ago when the Industrial Revolution sent the father out of the house to work.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is What impact did that have?

BLY. We get something from our father when we stand close to him.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Physically.

BLY. When we are close to our father, something moves over that can’t be described in terms that are1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 He taught you how to do things, he taught you how to farm, and you were always with him. You learned from him. You felt like you were getting a food from him.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Food.

BLY. A meal. From your father’s body. When the father went out of the house in the Industrial Revolution, the average American father now spends ten minutes a day with his son, and half of that time is spent cleaning up. That is a favorite phrase of mine and I know it well.

The Industrial Revolution did not hurt the mother and daughter relationship as much as the father and son relationship did, because the mother and daughter still stand close to each other. Maybe that will change when the mother is sent out to work, but the daughters receive some knowledge of what it is to be a woman, or if you prefer to call it the women’s female mode of feeling. They are aware of the female mode of feeling. It goes all the way down from the mother’s grandmother, who got it from her great grandmother.

After the Industrial Revolution, the male doesn’t receive any knowledge from his father about his mode of feeling, and the old male initiators that used to work are no longer working.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is What do you mean by male initiators?

BLY. There was too much tension between you and your father, so you were not initiated by your father. You are initiated by older, unrelated men. They might be friends with your father. They could be related to someone. They used to do it. Then they disappear. The father has to do it. The father leaves the office. Do you see the picture?

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Yeah. Some of the traditional cultures have a night when a group of men show up at a boy’s house and take him away from his home for several days. He has ashes on his face when he comes back.

BLY. Yeah. The men come in with spears to get the boys. The boys have no idea about the men’s world. They live with their mother. They want you to save them from these men. The women and the men accept the same thing. The older men have to intervene to make a boy into a man.

The women’s job is to be in this drama when they all accept that. The men come and take the boys away, and the boys are saying, Save me, Mom, you know. The men built a tent on the island and built a house for the boys to live in. Three or four of the women whose boys these are, get their spears and meet them on the bridge after they take them across the bridge. The old men have spears. The boys are saying, Save me, Mama, save me, these are horrible men, they’re taking me away, and they fight and everything. The women are driven back. The women all go back and have coffee. How would I look?

He will stay with the men for a year, as you said, because the women are not doing the initiate, they are participating, and then, as you said, he will stay with the men for a year, maybe. They will tell him that something has to die in order for a boy to be born. This is not happening to the men in this culture.

BLY. When I gave a reading in Minnesota this year, I asked the audience how many they remembered. After the party, a young man came up to me and said: I didn’t dare say anything at that time, but this is what happened to me. My parents wanted me to stop growing my hair out. I didn’t want to cut it off. They tied me up and then cut it off. I started to cry and hit the floor. My grandfather walked in and saw what had happened when I stopped hitting the floor. I asked, What did your grandfather do? They lived on Long Island. He asked the boy if he could see the ocean. This is for you. Whether you have long hair or short hair, the ocean is going to be here.

Only the grandfather could say that. The man said, You know, he was right? He said that he came back six years later and looked at the ocean. It was amazing, like my grandfather had given it to me.

I said it was unbelievable. Older men do things that your father can’t do.

BLY. My father didn’t teach me much about the male mode of feeling because he was an alcoholic. He taught me something. Many men have no father at all, the father doesn’t say anything, or the father doesn’t talk about feelings natural, it seems to be natural in the American male, it comes from the frontier.

How does he learn the male mode of feeling? He doesn’t. I think it came to a crisis in the 1960s.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Vietnam?

BLY. Yes. In the Vietnam War, many of the women offered to start the young men. The older men betrayed the young men because they hadn’t been helped by their fathers. The women would offer to start them with wonderful things like respect for the earth, respect for life, and so on. No one has helped them with the male mode of feeling.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is What is the main difference between male and female feelings?

BLY. Pain is a strong part of the women’s mode of feeling. It is necessary to remove pain and also the pain of being devalued. Women feel a strong pain in the culture that has rejected their values for 2,000 years or more. Men don’t feel like they’re worth much. It is more of a area of grief for the men. And.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is You use that word, grief, in regards to men.

BLY. Yeah. I began as a poet, writing poetry and dealing with feeling, but until I realized that grief is a door to male feeling, I stopped writing poetry. I didn’t feel like I had access to the feeling until I tried to go into some of the grief around my father.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Tell me about it.

BLY. As children, we are taught not to feel pain and grief. One of my boys was about nine years old. He was hit in a basketball game and I saw him bend down and get over his pain before he stood up again. When he was small, that boy would be wonderful in being open to wounds and crying. The culture said to him, You cannot give way to that, you must turn around and when you must turn around, you must have a face without pain or grief in it.

As a son of an alcoholic, I received that. You are hired to be cheerful in an alcoholic family. That is one of your jobs. You are appointed that way. When anyone asked me about the family, I was hired to be a trickster and a cheerful one. I would have to say, Oh, it’s wonderful, yes, indeed, we have sheep, you know, and we have chickens, and everything’s wonderful.

You can deny anything if you can deny the deep grief in the whole family. If you are involved in that denial, how can you write poetry? The word denial was helpful to me.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Did you dislike your father? Did you feel that way?

BLY. I think that it was the appointment to be the cheerful one in the family that caused me to follow this upward. More and more achievements, hmm? That is what you would do. You could redeem the family’s name by doing this.

I didn’t mention my father in my poems until I was 46, because I realized how shaky I was. Not once. There is something missing in my poems, so I would look at them. Before you are really a man that descent has to take place, the movement for the man was downward, a descent into grief. It is referred to as the time of ashes and the time of descent in fairy tales.

It was the first poem I had written in which there was some sort of grief, and it was written when I was 46 or 47 years old. I will read it to you. Do you want to hear it?

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Mm hmm.

BLY. It is called Snowbanks North of the House. Maybe you are familiar with the poem. The snow from Alaska stops suddenly. There is a place where something stops and doesn’t go further. I wrote this line.

The snow stops six feet from the house.

The rest of the poem came after I left it in the drawer for two or three months.

The snow stops suddenly six feet from the house.

There are thoughts that go so far.

The son stops calling home when the boy gets out of high school. The mother makes no more bread. One night at a party, the wife looks at her husband and no longer loves him. The minister fell out of the church as the energy left the wine. The one inside moves back and the hands are safe. The father grieves for his son.

[This is Lincoln]

The father grieves for his son and will not leave the room where the coffin stands.

The moon goes on through the heavens alone, as the sea lifts and falls all night. The man in the black coat is walking down the hill. No one knows why he came or why he turned away from the hill.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is What did that do for you?

BLY. It was the first time that I had felt my words being involved not in the new age of sense, not in higher consciousness, but a movement down, when you break off the arcs, and you go down towards your own. It had to do with the idea that my life isn’t going to be a series of victories, but rather a descent.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is How about in relation?

BLY. I had to pay attention to my father.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Here.

BLY. There. In other words.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is He was here. He wasn’t out there.

BLY. He was also out there. My parents were living on a farm a mile from where I was when I was a child. I would go and look at them. My father had lost part of his lung and was lying in the bed next to the living room. I would sit and talk with my mother for an hour, because I was probably involved in the conspiracy with her early on. I would say goodbye to my father before I left if I remembered it.

My father is lying down. What do you think about my conversation with my mother? What can he do? He thinks that they have a good relationship. How about him? I realized that I had been in a conspiracy with my mother to push my father out. I wrote a poem and decided it was time for this to end. I don’t want to be a part of this conspiracy anymore. I went in and sat with my father. My mother was waiting for me to enter the living room. I did not. I would sit next to him. He is not a great speaker, but we would talk a little bit. My mother would have to sit on the bed. We all knew that there had been a change.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is It seems that you and your mother did not push your father out. Like so many fathers do, your father removed himself through alcoholism, obsession with the world, or both.

BLY. It is possible.

BLY. You only get your father’s temperament when he only comes home from work at five o’clock. You used to get his teaching and temperament. You would be helped by the teaching. Those teachings are sweet when someone says, Well, the way you make it is, you put your board, nail over here, you put your board over here, and you do that.

Men who are mean are often sweet. We have a lot of gratitude when someone has taught us something. We used to get that from our fathers. When he gets home at five, he is tired and all we get is his temperament. He has been humiliated by older men at work. He has been competing with other men. He knows that he won’t be able to see the end of his work. It is not like making a chest of drawers. He knows that his company is bad for Alaska. How do you think he feels when he gets home? You are going to get that.

Many people that we call angry feminists are women who have only experienced the temperament of their fathers. They have never been in a classroom. Their attacks on the patriarchy have turned into an attack on the fact that they don’t believe that there is an older male with this temperament. Is that clear? That has to be understood as well. The father is usually angry and irritable, and the women only get his temperament. I want the men to know that your father believes that he is an inadequate human being. For 30 to 40 years, women have been telling him that.

He doesn’t know how to talk, he can’t express himself, and people hear what he says. When he is with a hammer, your father is okay, but in other ways he is not.

When you get your father, he says, Oh, John, this is just your father, here’s your mother. There are only two types of men. One kind of man is willing to go along with that, and the other kind of man says, Wait a minute, I didn’t call here to talk to my mother, I want to talk to you. Here is your mother. I want to talk with you. What about that? You want to borrow money? That is not it. Huh?

I met a wonderful man in Atcheson, Kansas, who was an economics teacher, the other day. There is a small catholic school in Atcheson, and this man came up to me. His father was a car mechanic who worked very hard and knew what he was doing. The father’s leg was cut off when he got ill. He was trying to deal with the phantom pain. Rick called him up and asked how he was doing. Dad asks, what do you want? Rick wants to say something to you. I want to let you know how much I appreciated everything you did to get me to college. I want to tell you how much I love you, and how much I appreciate being a college teacher. The father asked if he had been drinking.

I thought that was wonderful. I told him that he had lived through the history of the last 80 years. The father can not imagine. Right? There are two points. Men don’t talk about feelings. You must be drunk if you are talking about feelings. You have to get over that. You have to say, No, I haven’t been drinking, I’m not on drugs, and I love you. You get it?

BLY. I will read you a poem. I did a poem for the first time with my father. I used the word father for the first time in this one. It is not my father, but a poem called Finding the Father.

The body is willing to carry us for nothing. As the ocean carries logs, this body offers to carry us for nothing. On days when the body wails with its great energy, it smashes up the boulders, lifting small crabs that flow around the sides.

Someone knocks on the door. Someone knocks on the door. We don’t have time to dress. He wants us to go with him to the dark house. The body says that we will go there and find the father we have never met, who lost his memory after wandering out in a snowstorm the night we were born, and has been longing for his child ever since. He worked as a shoemaker, as a cattle herder, as a restaurant cook, and as a painter.

You will see him when you light the lamp. He sits behind the door and waits for you.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Are you looking for a father?

BLY. It is called Finding the Father.

There is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is a person who says that there is Did you find your father?

BLY. To some extent, I did. He died a few months ago and one of the things that happened is this. I lived in Moose Lake for five hours. I get a call. My parents are in the old people’s home. My father was in the hospital when I got the call. When I went to see him, there was a change in me, so I picked up a book and wrote a poem in his presence, for the first time. I had written many poems in the presence of trees, but never in the presence of my father. I wrote this poem. It is called sitting. It is called My Father at 85.