Collected Poems by Bly, Robert -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Title Page Contents Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962)

Eleven Poems of Solitude

Three Kinds of Pleasures Return to Solitude Waking from Sleep Hunting Pheasants in a Cornfield Surprised by Evening Thinking of Wallace Stevens on the First Snowy Day in December Sunset at a Lake Fall Approaching Winter Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River Poem in Three Parts

Awakening

Unrest Awakening Poem against the Rich Poem against the British Where We Must Look for Help Remembering in Oslo the Old Picture of the Magna Carta Summer, 1960, Minnesota With Pale Women in Maryland Driving through Ohio At the Funeral of Great-Aunt Mary On the Ferry across Chesapeake Bay A Man Writes to a Part of Himself Depression Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter Getting Up Early A Late Spring Day in My Life Love Poem “Taking the Hands” Afternoon Sleep Images Suggested by Medieval Music Solitude Late at Night in the Woods Watering the Horse In a Train

Silence on the Roads

After Working The Clear Air of October Laziness and Silence September Night with an Old Horse Night After Drinking All Night with a Friend, We Go Out in a Boat at Dawn to See Who Can Write the Best Poem Old Boards Late at Night during a Visit of Friends Silence Snowfall in the Afternoon

The Light Around the Body (1967)

I. The Two Worlds

The Executive’s Death The Busy Man Speaks Johnson’s Cabinet Watched by Ants Watching Television Smothered by the World A Dream of Suffocation Romans Angry about the Inner World

II. The Various Arts of Poverty and Cruelty

Come with Me Those Being Eaten by America Written in Dejection near Rome Listening to President Kennedy Lie about the Cuban Invasion The Great Society Suddenly Turning Away Three Presidents Hearing Men Shout at Night on MacDougal Street The Current Administration Andrew Jackson’s Speech Sleet Storm on the Merritt Parkway

III. The Vietnam War

After the Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen at Once Asian Peace Offers Rejected without Publication War and Silence Counting Small-Boned Bodies As the Asian War Begins At a March against the Vietnam War Hatred of Men with Black Hair Driving through Minnesota during the Hanoi Bombings

IV. In Praise of Grief

Melancholia Turning Away from Lies A Home in Dark Grass Looking at New-Fallen Snow from a Train In Danger from the Outer World The Fire of Despair Has Been Our Saviour Looking at Some Flowers

V. A Body Not Yet Born

Looking into a Face Hurrying Away from the Earth The Hermit Max Ernst and the Tortoise’s Beak Moving Inward at Last Riderless Horses Evolution from the Fish Wanting to Experience All Things Opening an Oyster When the Dumb Speak

Sleepers Joining Hands (1973)

Six Winter Privacy Poems The Turtle Chinese Tomb Guardians Shack Poem In a Mountain Cabin in Norway A Conversation Tao Te Ching Running Condition of the Working Classes: 1970 Calling to the Badger Pilgrim Fish Heads The Teeth Mother Naked at Last

II. Sleepers Joining Hands: A Long Poem

The Shadow Goes Away Meeting the Man Who Warns Me The Night Journey in the Cooking Pot Water Drawn Up into the Head An Extra Joyful Chorus for Those Who Have Read This Far

Jumping out of Bed (1973)

Turtle Climbing from a Rock Thinking of “The Autumn Fields” Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life Some November Privacy Poems On a Moonlit Road in the North Woods The Walnut Tree Orchards The Hill of Hua-Tzu Chrysanthemums After Long Busyness Some Images for Death A Night in December Sleeping Faces The Creek by the Luan House The Magnolia Grove Another Doing Nothing Poem Walking in the Ditch Grass Tongues Whirling A Doing Nothing Poem Jumping Out of Bed The Poem Looking at Cloud Banks below the Plane Window

The Morning Glory (1975)

A Bird’s Nest Made of White Reed Fiber Leonardo’s Secret Looking at a Dead Wren in My Hand Sitting on Some Rocks in Shaw Cove At a Fish Hatchery in Story, Wyoming An Octopus A Hollow Tree Looking into a Tide Pool Seeing Creeley for the First Time The Hockey Poem Walking on the Sussex Coast A Turtle Frost on the Windowpane My Three-Year-Old Daughter Brings Me a Gift Looking at a Dry Tumbleweed Brought In from the Snow Watching Andrei Voznesensky Read in Vancouver Standing under a Cherry Tree at Night Two Prose Poems on Locked-In Animals

1. Lobsters Waiting to Be Eaten in a Restaurant Window 2. Bored Elephants in the Circus Stable

Waterfall Coming over a Cliff In the Courtyard of the Isleta Mission A Poem about Tennessee The Black Crab Demon A Rock Islet on the Pacific

II. The Point Reyes Poems

November Day at McClure’s Beach Welcoming a Child in the Limantour Dunes Trespassing on the Pierce Ranch Climbing Up Mount Vision with My Little Boy An Excursion on Tomales Bay Calm Morning at Drake’s Bay Finding a Salamander on Inverness Ridge Seawater Pouring Back over Stones The Dead Seal near McClure’s Beach The Large Starfish

III.

Going in a Helicopter from Riverside to the L.A. Airport The Porcupine in the Wind Visiting Thomas Hart Benton and His Wife in Kansas City Walking in the Hardangervidda Rendezvous at an Abandoned Farm A Caterpillar Morning by the Lake August Rain Grass from Two Years Christmas Eve Service at Midnight at St. Michael’s Opening the Door of a Barn I Thought Was Empty on New Year’s Eve

This Body is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood (1977)

Walking Swiftly A Day Alone The Sleeper Finding the Father The Owlets at Nightfall Going Out to Check the Ewes Galloping Horses A Dream of What Is Missing The Old Man with Missing Fingers Walking to the Next Farm The Lover’s Body as a Community of Protozoa Coming In for Supper How the Ant Takes Part When the Wheel Does Not Move Two Days on the Farm The Orchard Keeper We Love This Body Wings Folding Up Snowed In Again The Cry Going Out over Pastures

This Tree will be here for a Thousand Years (1979)

October Frost Writing Again The Yearly Failure Sitting in Fall Grass Night Farmyard Dawn in Threshing Time Reading in Fall Rain Ocean Insects To Live or Not Cornpicker Poem Prophets Listening to a Cricket in the Wainscoting Thinking of Tu Fu’s Poem Digging Worms Walking and Sitting A Long Walk before the Snows Began A Dream on the Night of First Snow A Walk For My Brother, a Year after His Death Passing a Spanish Orchard by Train

II.

Women We Never See Again Fear for the Bridal Pair Ant Heaps by the Path The Artist Pulling a Rowboat Up among Lake Reeds Moving Books to a New Study Driving My Parents Home at Christmas After a Day of Work Walking Where the Plows Have Been Turning July Morning An Empty Place Prayer Service at an English Church Fishing on a Lake at Night Night of First Snow Moses’ Basket The Crow’s Head Frost Still on the Ground Late Moon A Dream of Retarded Children The Seven Stars of the Great Bear The Tree Knocked Down by Lightning Dream of an Afternoon with a Woman I Did Not Know Nailing a Dock Together An Evening When the Full Moon Rose as the Sun Set Out Picking Up Corn

The Man in the Black Coat Turns (1981)

Snowbanks North of the House For My Son Noah, Ten Years Old The Prodigal Son The Sense of Decline The Convict and His Radio Mourning Pablo Neruda

II.

Eleven O’Clock at Night The Winemaker and the Captain The Dried Sturgeon A Bouquet of Ten Roses Visiting Emily Dickinson’s Grave with Robert Francis Finding an Old Ant Mansion

III.

The Grief of Men Kennedy’s Inauguration Written at Mule Hollow, Utah The Bear’s Tail Words Rising A Sacrifice in the Orchard My Wife’s Painting My Father’s Wedding Four Ways of Knowledge Fifty Men Sitting Together Crazy Carlson’s Meadow Kneeling Down to Look into a Culvert

Loving A Woman in Two Worlds (1985)

The Indigo Bunting “Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd . . .” The Whole Moisty Night Secrets Letter to Her Two People at Dawn Winter Poem In Rainy September The Third Body Two Middle-Aged Lovers Finding Sharks’ Teeth in a Rock

II.

The Roots What Frightened Us Seeing You Carry Plants In The Two Rivers Come with Me At Midocean In the Time of Peony Blossoming Night Frogs The March Buds The Turtle Such Different Wants Ferns The Hummingbird Valley Love Poem in Twos and Threes Returning Poem The Ram Night Winds Alone a Few Hours The Moose Mountain Grass What We Provide Poem on Sleep The Artist at Fifty Words Barely Heard The Conditions A Man and a Woman and a Blackbird

III.

The Minnow Turning Firmness Conversation Shame The Horse of Desire Listening to the Köln Concert Conversation with a Holy Woman Not Seen for Many Years What Moves and Doesn’t Move The Heron Drinking The Good Silence The Hawk In the Month of May

Meditations on the Insatiable Soul (1994)

Men and Women Waiting for the Stars The Man Who Walks toward Us The Chinese Peaks Letter to James Wright Wallace Stevens and Florence On the Oregon Coast When William Stafford Died Thomas and the Codfish’s Psalm Honoring Sand Gratitude to Old Teachers Thoughts in the Cabin

II.

Visiting My Father

1. 2. My Father at Eighty-Six 3. The Hard Breathing 4. Something Has Come 5. The Komodo Dragon 6. The Pharaoh’s Servant 7. Prayer for My Father

Dream of Myself at Twelve In the Funeral Home A Dream of the Blacksmith’s Room

III.

Meditations on the Insatiable Soul Anger against Children

IV.

St. George, the Dragon, and the Virgin Ivar Oakeson’s Fiddle Question in the Los Gatos Hills How David Did Not Care How the Saint Did Not Care How Jonah Did Not Care The Dark Egg How Mirabai Did Not Care Time Runs Backward after Death

Morning Poems (1997)

Early Morning in Your Room The Shocks We Put Our Pitchforks Into Why We Don’t Die Hawthorne and the Elephant The Old Woman Frying Perch Conversation with the Soul He Wanted to Live His Life Over The Glimpse of Something in the Oven Bad People Things to Think Two Ways to Write Poems The Barn at Elabuga The Russian

II.

Some Men Find It Hard to Finish Sentences Visiting the Eighty-Five-Year-Old Poet All These Stories The Resemblance between Your Life and a Dog Reading in a Boat Waking on the Farm When Threshing Time Ends A Family Photograph, Sunday Morning, 1940 A Farm in Western Minnesota For a Childhood Friend, Marie What the Animals Paid The Bear and the Man When My Dead Father Called

III.

The Green Cookstove The Playful Deeds of the Wind It’s So Easy to Give In Wanting More Applause at a Conference Calling Your Father Thinking about Old Jobs Conversation with a Monster The Black Figure below the Boat The Man Who Didn’t Know What Was His The Mouse The Storm The Yellow Dot

IV.

It’s As If Someone Else Is with Me A Week of Poems at Bennington

The Dog’s Ears When the Cat Stole the Milk Being Happy All Night The Widowed Friend We Only Say That Wounding Others What the Buttocks Think

What Bill Stafford Was Like A Poem Is Some Remembering Rethinking Wallace Stevens Tasting Heaven Wallace Stevens in the Fourth Grade The Waltz

The Neurons Who Watch Birds A Question the Bundle Had Seeing the Eclipse in Maine Clothespins The Face in the Toyota The Scandal Looking at the Stars After a Friend’s Death The Parcel My Doubts on Going to Visit a New Friend One Source of Bad Information Thoughts The Grandparent and the Granddaughter The Ocean Rising and Falling Ocean Rain and Music

VI.

Looking at Aging Faces November Three-Day Fall Rain Winter Afternoon by the Lake Isaac Bashevis and Pasternak People Like Us A Christmas Poem Reading Silence in the Snowy Fields Words the Dreamer Spoke to My Father in Maine Visiting Sand Island A Poem for Giambattista Vico Written by the Pacific For Ruth A Conversation with a Mouse

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars (2001)

The Night Abraham Called to the Stars The Wildebeest Jerez at Easter Giordano Bruno and the Muddy Footprint Moses’ Cradle The Dead of Shiloh When We Became Lovers Monet’s Haystacks What Kept Horace Alive The Love from Far Away

II.

Eudalia and Plato The Trap-Door Hannibal and Robespierre Walking Backward Wanting to Steal Time Calderón The Wagon and the Cliff Forgiving the Mailman The Way the Parrot Learns Rembrandt’s Portrait of Titus with a Red Hat

III.

Nikos and His Donkey Pitzeem and the Mare The Country Roads Iseult and the Badger In Praise of Scholars The Fish in the Window Montserrat The French Generals The Battle at Ypres, 1915 The Raft of Green Logs

IV.

The Five Inns The Baal Shem and Francis Bacon Natchez Inns The Cabbages of Chekhov The Eel in the Cave Rembrandt’s Etchings The Cardinal’s Cry The Old St. Peter by Rembrandt Why Is It the Spark’s Fault? Augustine on His Ship

The Difficult Word Testifying to the Night The Storyteller’s Way How This Wealth Came to Be Noah Watching the Rain Listening So Be It. Amen. Dawn

My Sentence was A Thousand Years of Joy (2005)

The Dark Autumn Nights A Poem for Andrew Marvell Listening to the Sitar before Dawn Loafing with Friends at Ojo Caliente When I Am with You There Are So Many Platos Bach’s B Minor Mass The Blind Tobit The Greek Ships Visiting the Teacher

II.

Growing Wings Tightening the Cinch Call and Answer Advice from the Geese The Blinding of Samson The Nest in Which We Were Born Rembrandt’s Brown Ink The Pelicans at White Horse Key Flamenco Singers in Granada The Horses Coming Up Behind

III.

Brahms Jacob and Rachel What to Do with the Garden The Shoehorn Singing the Same Throaty Note The Pistachio Nut Listening to Old Music Hiding in a Drop of Water For Robert Motherwell Listening to Shahram Nazeri

IV.

Mailing Evidence to the Prosecutors Waking in the Middle of the Night A Week in Florence Rameau’s Music Losing the House in a Card Game A History of Mourning A Week on the Oregon Coast Sand Heaps The Dingy Playing Cards The Fat Old Couple Whirling Around

Shabistari and The Secret Garden The Night the Cities Burned The Bridegroom The Head of Barley Adam’s Understanding Eating Blackberry Jam The Buff-Chested Grouse Stealing Sugar from the Castle

Talking into the Ear of a Donkey (2011)

Ravens Hiding in a Shoe Courting Forgetfulness Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat Paying Attention to the Melody Longing for the Acrobat Nirmala’s Music The Frogs after Dark The Sympathies of the Long-Married The Blind Old Man Father and Son

II.

Rains The Roof Nail A Day in Late June Dealing with Parents The Sense of Getting Older The Old Fishing Lines Walking Out in the Morning A Poetry Reading in Maryland The Lost Trapper Starting a Poem I Have Daughters and I Have Sons The Mourning Dove’s Call Talking into the Ear of a Donkey Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

III.

A Family Thing The Water Tank The Box of Chocolates Keeping Quiet The Day the Dock Comes In Morning Pajamas That Problem in the Family

IV.

Heard Whispers The Slim Fir Seeds The Big-Nostrilled Moose Turkish Pears Thoreau as a Lover In a Time of Losses So Much Time The Grackles For the Old Gnostics The Pheasant Chicks Orion and the Farmstead Silent in the Moonlight A Ramage for the Mountain What Is Sorrow For? Lovers in the River The Camels

Sunday Afternoon The Teapot Ready to Sleep The Housefly My Father at Forty My Mother It’s Morning Again Something to Do for Aunt Clara The Man at the Door The Hermit A Poetry Reading at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas

VI.

Uncertainty The Threshers The Longing What Did We See Today? The Long-Leggéd Birds Hearing Music at Dawn The Hawk in His Nest My Mournful Room About My Father Smoke-Stained Fingers What the Old Poets Failed to Say

Acknowledgments Index of Titles and First Lines About the Author Also by Robert Bly Copyright

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