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| A still from "Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy" |
I fell in love with Robert Bly’s poetry when I was in
college and read his book “Silence in the Snowy Fields.” I’ve been an
admirer ever since, following him through his various books and collections,
carrying around a battered copy of his Kabir translations, attending his
readings (and once reading with him, as part of a large group of poets in Morris, Minnesota, hardly
believing my luck), and wishing I could write like him, which I never could.
California-based filmmaker Haydn Reiss has made a
documentary about Bly’s life, poetry and importance to literature and the men’s
movement (which began with his best-selling, often parodied book “Iron John”).
I first heard about the film in 2014 and have pestered Reiss about it ever since.
This week, “Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy” comes to
the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF) for screenings on
April 14 and 17. I spoke with Reiss for MinnPost last week. Here’s more (much
more!) from that interview, including Reiss’ story of how he settled on the
film’s perfect title. I could use only a small part of the interview on MinnPost, but
the rest was too interesting to leave unsaid. So here’s a deep dive for those who want to know more about
Bly, the film and the filmmaker.
Haydn Reiss on how a 10-minute short became a feature-length documentary:
HR: When Robert was turning 85, I said to myself, “I have a lot of footage from over the years. I’ve had him in three other documentaries. Maybe I’ll put together a little 10-minute piece for his birthday and send it on to the family and they can look at it.”
There’s no biography on Robert, so there was nothing for me
to draw from. I had to do a lot of my own research and readings and interviews
to piece together what we thought we could tell. And of course it’s a film;
what can we illustrate it with?
I’m very good at stretching a dollar. I’ve become too good at begging. I’m ready to retire
that. But I often need money. I wound up doing 25 interviews in five states and
two countries, working streamlined. … Why so many people? Because Robert
crossed paths with a lot of people and I wanted a reflection on that.
I love Robert, and love can lead you astray, but it can also
lead you on. There’s a little 8-line poem of Robert’s which I’m shocked didn’t
make it into the film. It’s on the DVD as one of the extras, and it’s called
“Gratitude to Old Teachers.” That 8-line poem was going to be my framing
device. [The 10-minute film Reiss first planned to make] was going to be called
“Gratitude to Old Teachers,” and it was going to have poems written by the
teachers who inspired Robert, and then we realized that we are inspired by Robert; he is our teacher. So that poem – that theme – to me is still the heart
of it.
On meeting Bly:
In 1990 or 1991 – “Iron John” came out in 1990 – I’m living in L.A., working on feature films as a small cog in a big wheel, and somehow I learned there was going to be this men’s event up in Ojai with Robert Bly. ... I get there and there are 300 men including Martin Sheen and his boys. I was still a naive, immature man. My immaturity about where I was in my life was revealed to me. I projected
all of my father wishes onto Robert. I had lost my father fairly young in life. … I wish I could have made a time machine to send everybody back 20 years to one of those events, where Robert is in full power and form and brilliance, and have you taste that, because it’s life-changing.
In the years of working on the film and talking to all these different people,
I repeatedly was stunned by how many of them Robert had touched in a
significant way. Nobody I interviewed had a mediocre response. One after
another, I thought, “When did this man have the time to create the depths of
relationships where he could be that impactful?” It’s something about him; it’s
something about his generosity; it’s something about being a great teacher, and
all those aspects.
Robert’s got a shadow side. He is a human being. Regardless,
I feel that Robert, in his own search in working on his own life, has always
found things, and if he valued them he shared them with others. At his events
and readings and conferences, he brought you into what he was pondering and
thinking and reading and questioning. … He’d be in these events and the conversation
would get to a certain pitch, and rather than more conversation, Robert would
reach into his bag, pull out some beaten-up book of poetry and read you [poems
by] Antonio Machado or Rumi, or he’d know them by heart and he’d just say them.
He’d be able to pick just the poem you needed to hear. ... The magic of poems is alchemical. Suddenly your soul, your heart, everything is dragged out of you into this gift of language that can help us. ... Robert showed me what poetry could be."
When asked “Are you a
poet yourself?”
If the question is “Do I write poetry?” I would say no. Have
I written some poems? Yes. But to me, a poet is someone who writes poems with real
commitment and craft. I think a poet is more than output. That’s not enough.
But I read a lot of poetry. I go to public poetry readings. I
love to read poems out loud. I learned that from Robert and others – the
pleasure of reading poetry out loud.
On poetry today:
When I was a kid, at some point everybody wanted to be in a
rock band. I’ve seen for the last 15 years the rise of everybody wanting to be
a filmmaker. There’s a certain amount of people who want to say, “I’m a poet.”
The barrier for entry has lowered, and people, in my view, want the superficial
sense of it. …
Even though Robert in a sense did a lot of teaching, he was
very critical of the university writing program for a number of reasons. First
and foremost, because you have to have something to write about. You have to
live and have experiences, and then you might
come up with some stuff that’ll be food for your poetry. … And he was extremely
hard-working. How hard-working are kids today, and people writing today? Do they really know their craft? Poet is not just some hip name you give yourself and you write some boring, self-centered, trite stuff and call it a poem. Back then, you
had to be willing to do translation. That was part of your poetic development.
You had to be willing to write criticism meant to help fellow writers.
Today … we could go on, but you get my point.
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| Robert Bly and Haydn Reisd |
On how he got started
making films about poets and poetry (“Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy” is
his fourth):
When I saw Bly in ’91, I had a moment there. I realized I
wasn’t meant to be a studio executive. It wasn’t going to happen for me. I was
just too … whatever. And I had been smitten by Robert, and I wanted more.
I went to another conference up near Seattle, and at some
point in that three- or four-day retreat, Robert said, “I’m going to bring out
a poet now who’s a dear friend of mine, and we’re going to do some reading
together,” and he brought out William Stafford.
Stafford was about a dozen years older than Robert, and
outwardly a different kind of man. He was quieter and contained. Robert is loud
– big and boisterous. And they sat side-by-side and for about 40 minutes they
traded stories and poems and jokes, and it was brilliance. It was
heartbreakingly beautiful, too, to see older men who had such wisdom, kinship,
care. I remember feeling less afraid of getting old because I saw what you
could become.
I had been working for a film director and I thought, “Why
can’t I make a film?” This is still
back in the day. This is before Avid and Final Cut Pro. You still had to have a
little bit of chutzpah to try to be a documentary filmmaker. But I said, “Why
not?” and I went up to Robert at some anti-war gathering and said, “I’d like to
make a film about you and poetry.”
He said, “The only person I want to do anything with right
now is William Stafford.” Then he said, “Do you have any money?” At this time,
Robert was in full “Iron John” bloom – magazines and Bill Moyers. I sort of
exaggerated that I had some money, which I didn’t, but I thought I could try to
get some nominal amount. Anyway, he said, “Okay if Bill says okay,” and William
Stafford – gracious, lovely man – said yes. So in the next couple years, I made
my first documentary. It was “William Stafford and Robert Bly: A Literary
Friendship.”
In the course of a year or so I went up to Minnesota, when
Stafford was going to be there with Robert, and got them together. Then I went
up to Portland, Oregon, where Stafford lived, when Robert was coming to
Portland, and [filmed] readings in cabins and had the two of them wandering the
bookshelves or Powell’s Books. They’re it. There are no more moving parts.
They’re the only people in the film. But if you like William Stafford and
Robert Bly you’ll love the film, because they’re great guides, and they had
such a wonderful friendship.
I was editing in August ’93 and got the call that Bill,
at 79, had dropped dead of a heart attack. We were stunned. We were getting the
film done for his 80th birthday tribute celebration in January, which we still
all went ahead with, and they brought the film there. I thought – this is the
first film I’ve done, and the first time I’m showing it to the public, under
these conditions, to Robert and Ruth Bly and the Stafford extended family. Stafford
was very loved in Portland. He had taught at Luther Clark College for, like, 20
years. I thought – I hope this is going to be okay, because people are in
serious mourning.
The film was embraced and loved, and for years later I’d see
Robert at events, and Robert would thank me, and for at least a year or two
after Bill passed, Robert started every reading he gave with a Stafford poem.
He loved Bill Stafford. He loved me for making the film that brought them
together and left this document.
I did my second film around Bill Stafford in 2009, “Every
War Has Two Losers,” because Stafford was a conscientious objector in the
Second World War. I made a short film about that. Robert’s in that, too. So were
Alice Walker and Maxine Hong Kingston and others.
And [before] then [Rumi translator] Coleman Barks had seen the
Stafford/Bly film, and the Rumi thing was starting to really heat up in
America. In 1998 or so, I saw Coleman at an event and he said, “I really loved
that film on Robert and Bill Stafford and you should do something on Rumi.”
Naively, I said “Sure!” And so in ’98 I made “Rumi, Code of the Heart,” which
centers around Coleman, but Robert plays a significant role because it was
Robert who got Coleman translating Rumi. Robert knew Rumi before Coleman and
thought Coleman could be the translator of record. And so that film was very
well received and much loved
[By 2009] I felt, “I’ve done Robert. I’m done.” But I wasn’t,
because it was still not this film
that showed all these chapters of his life. I discovered so many things about
him that I went back to the well.
On what he left on
the cutting-room floor:
It’s ridiculous. If you have a strong appetite for something,
you want more. I had to make a film that was not just for the hardcore. I had
to make a film that hopefully, even if you didn’t know who Robert Bly was, you
could follow his story and be drawn into it. I wanted a film that would have a
chance to be seen. So going deep down into one corner of his world would’ve
been too much. There had to be a balance to how deep we could go into any one
thing.
I left out a lot of things. I could’ve made a 4-hour film,
but being a filmmaker means you have to eventually self-edit, and you have
to leave things out. On the DVD there’s a half-hour of extra little bits and
bobs that are all, I think, delicious. There’s a poem from the ’70s called
“Going Out Over Pastures.” It’s so incredible – a wonderful poem.
For poetry writers, there was a whole lot of stuff on the
craft of poetry. If I just strung together everything Robert gave in terms of
craft lectures, it would be brilliant for anybody trying to write.
On the surprise of
seeing black poets and spoken-word artists – Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K.
Smith, Cave Canem co-founder Cornelius Eady and Roger Bonair-Agard – sing the
praises of an aging white poet:
I’ve heard Robert say, “I’m not white; I’m pink.” He’s got a
pink face. He was born into a homogenous community – a Norwegian-American farm
community – but he traveled and he continued to travel. In fact, Robert
probably traveled earlier and farther than a lot of the writers and people of the
time. He was digging into Indian poetry and Persian poetry in the 1970s, when not
a lot of people were looking out there to these different cultures. Then he went
to great effort – translating is a tremendous task – to bring it back into our
culture.
This is what I was saying earlier: If Robert finds something
that he thinks might be helpful, he shares it. His discovery of Pablo Neruda in
an Oslo library in the 1950s leads him to realize that [the writings of] Neruda
and others have something that we don’t have in America, and we need, so he
comes back and starts to translate that stuff, self-publish that stuff, because
he’s trying to contribute to American culture. His range and where he will look
is so remarkable. He goes far afield.
On the final film:
I don’t think it’s a story about the past. I don’t think
it’s about a man’s past, even though there is a man’s story of 90 years in it.
I think it’s a story of today. The great real artists – how I define the word “artist”
– are people who can see a little bit further, think a little bit clearer, and
the form in which they bring it back is in the arts.
That’s what an artist is, and in [Bly’s] case, an artist of
language. You read what he’s written. It’s as fresh today as when he first
wrote it or said it. He’s touching into very deep waters.
This is the difference from the confessional poets … as
Robert once said about the confessional poets, “A lot of their writing is very
good, but after you hear the poem you feel like you should send them $10.” He’s
a community guy. You don’t feel his “I” hammering away at you. He’s right in his poems, but somehow you find your way in. You resonate with [his
words], and the next thing you know you’re taken somewhere. …
I love his later poetry more than his early poetry now. I’m
shocked by that. There are a lot of early poems I love, but he’s gotten richer
and deeper, wiser and more musical and powerful.
On arriving at the title of the film:
In 2013, Robert gets the Robert Frost medal from the Poetry
Society of America, a venerable organization in New York City. To get the medal,
you have to show up and you have to do a little reading. So Robert’s in his
mid-’80s, but he goes, and I hear about this thing and say, “I’m going.” There’s
still footage [to shoot] and hopefully there’ll be something there, and on a
wing and prayer I get there with my buddy and camera.
It’s an evening event in this great old building, but no air
conditioning, and it’s summer and it’s hot. A bunch of other little awards will
be given out, and then the biggest award, the Frost medal, will end the evening
and Robert will read a little, too. So [the event] is packed.
I set my camera up in the back of the room. There’s no house
technician. There’s nobody there to run the PA system from Poetry Society of
America, so we run a cable under all these chairs and up to the lectern and
plug in the mic. And then we wait, because we have to wait through all these
other poets getting awards for this and that.
I will say that there were a couple [of poems] I liked a
lot, but there were a whole lot that were like … I’m scratching my head. It’s
negative poetry, it’s self-centered poetry. For me, it’s like … yikes.
And we’re waiting through this and the evening is going longer
and it’s hot, and finally Robert gets up and he gets to the lectern, but he
doesn’t want to stand. So they pull over a chair and then somebody in the front
of the room rips the microphone from the lectern to move it over to where he’s
sitting, and in the course of that, clips my audio cable.
I lose my audio. And in order to regain my audio, I would have to stop the evening, which has already gone long. Everybody’s hot,
impatient, Robert wants to go, and I can’t get my audio. So there I am. I’ve
come all the way to New York, and in a moment of whatever, the audio gets
clipped, and I can’t stop [everything] to rethread it, and I sit back there
feeling pretty defeated.
And his daughter sits next to him and holds the microphone
for him, and Robert reads about 10 poems, and his voice isn’t booming as in the
old days, but it’s clear. And the selection is spot on. Each poem is just
right, and it’s as if the ceiling opens up and after all these very small poems
and very small ideas. the sky opens up and the universe can come into the room.
Robert’s language and poetry and ideas are so big, and suddenly you feel
something bigger come into the room, and I’m being moved along by this.
I’m not getting it for the film, so that’s sort of
heartbreaking. And finally he gets to the last poem, and it’s “Stealing Sugar from
the Castle,” and two-thirds of the way through he stops and looks up and out into
the room and says, “Do you think it’s going to be over soon?” And I look around
and see these New Yorkers looking at their watches. It’s a long evening. [But]
he’s not talking about the evening. He’s talking about eternity. And he says,
“I don’t think so. I think it’s just getting started.”
And then he reads the final stanzas, which begin with the
line “I don’t mind your saying I will die soon.” If a 20-year-old says that
line, or a 30-year-old or even a 50-year-old, it’s not a big deal. You know
they don’t quite mean it. But he’s an 85-year-old who says:
I don’t mind you saying I will die
soon.
Even in the sound of the word soon,
I hear
the word you, which begins every
sentence of joy.
“You’re a thief!” the judge said.
“Let’s see
Your hands!” I showed my callused hands in court.
My sentence was a thousand years of joy.
And that was it. It stunned me because here’s this old man
who’s not saying that when I die, it’s all going with me. Most people [think], “I
don’t want it to go on without me.” But he’s saying a couple of things. First, “It’s
just getting started.” There’s that. And secondly, when he reviews his life,
the hands are calloused. That means he’s lived a life. The sentence he gets is
1,000 years of joy. Through it all, this is having this life. And it hit me: This
is what’s great about Robert. This is why he matters. This is the guidance he
offers: How to value your life.
I’m post-irony. I’m not for that outlook. I could have
hedged my bets, but I didn’t. That’s a poem where he’s sort of summarizing his
life, and when he adds it all up – and he had a lot of losses that I didn’t
even put in the film – he still says it was 1,000 years of joy. And I say, stay
with that.
More importantly, it’s what I want to hear. When I struggle
to make these little films, part of it is because I want to be in that
material, and I’m hoping it’s going to feed me. I hope it feeds you, but I’m
also hoping it feeds me. And I look at what I want to be fed. Do I need to be
told one more time about how screwed up we are? No. There are plenty of other
people doing that.
[I also] realized that to enter festivals, I needed an
upbeat, over-the-top title. How can you top 1,000 years of joy? That’s a lot of
joy.
On why people should
see this film:
I’ve screened it now a number of times. People feel good
afterwards. My hope is that you see the film and you leave thinking not just
what a wonderful fellow [Robert Bly] is, but you actually start thinking more
about your own life. My hope is that his example – a man who struggled to be
engaged with his times, to care for his inner life, to make a way in himself to
try to live some authentic life – is an example that inspires us to do that in
our lives. That’s my real hope.
***
To learn more about “Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy,”
watch the trailer and order the DVD from the filmmaker, visit
robertblyfilm.com.
Early in the interview, Reiss mentions Bly’s poem “Gratitude
to Old Teachers,” which was going to frame the short film he originally planned
to make for Bly’s 85th birthday. Here’s the poem:
Gratitude to Old Teachers
When we stride or stroll across the
frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have
never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we
are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old
teachers?
Water that once could take no human
weight –
We were students then – holds up
our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around
us the stillness.
—Robert Bly
