Robert Bly: An Appreciation Poem by Daniel Brick

There are no limits to grief. The loving man
Simmers his porcupine stew. Among the tim-
ber growing on earth grief finds roots
from 'Limits'

Robert, I still attend your sessions
with words and masks, shapes and
sounds and even invisible things,
that sometimes threaten to bring down
the house we're in. Not that anything
really collapses. You're not Samson,
you're a man among men and women,
whose baritone voice and telling gestures
separate us from our usual comforts,
make us squirm and wonder, 'Is he still
talking about that same subject
from last year, and the year before,
and the time, remember it? when we watched
the last glacier passing through our
surprised neighborhoods.' Well, that was really
something to write about, so how much longer
will you speak of grief as the flip side of joy,
like a precious coin, newly minted, reproduced
a thousandfold? Where do you find the resources
of this grief/joy? At your other home, on the far side
of the River? Where you live with badgers, deer,
a great horned owl, unfettered horses, stray dogs,
even a lone wolf, and what is that dark creature
sunning itself on your porch? I can't make out
its shape, my eyes won't focus, but it surely
looks at home despite its wild array. Robert,
when will you stop surprising us? When will you
settle into a routine and write a Poem of
Total Realization, one with steady light, no less?
Does that entice you? I saw your writing tools
on a table in the Great Hall of the Poetry Building.
A pen was spilling blue ink profusely over a pile
of pure white pages, a PC was furiously revising
new poems, even an old typewtiter was busy
devising rhyme schemes. Robert, rhyme schemes!
That's a young man's gambit, isn't it?
I'm really confused now, because there's no way
to close the book. It keeps expanding, some readers
think it has burst into spontaneous life, a life
of its own. Imagine that. I can't but I can remember,
with my chronicler's vivid memory, first meeting
you fifty years ago when you hosted the Poets against the War
at St. Cloud State University. A young exchange student
from South Vietnam was in the audience, and when you finished reciting, he came to the podium and recited one of his poems,
imitating your vocal inflections with pitch-perfect
intonation. It was very moving... I don't remember
what his poem said, but that doesn't matter, because
even five decades later that memory brings tears
to my eyes. And I know nothing I say say or do
can convey my THANK YOU, ROBERT! with the eloquence of his
voice echoing yours. Is that finally my experience of grief?
Can I flip this coin over and handy-dandy feel joy?
Oh, yes, and I will toss the coin into the air.
When it lands and I see which side faces me,
I will know you have been right since forever.