This scholar mentioned the book A Poetry Reading
Against the Vietnam War, which is
a collection of poems written about this war
by contemporaries.
And then of poems that could bear
on the war written at any time.
The book was collected by Robert Bly.
And I want to read a poem of his about the war.
It's quite extraordinary how in the last few years
American poetry has become political for the first time
and how there's almost no American poet, no matter
how much of an esthete he used to be,
who isn't writing political poetry.
And it isn't that kind of political poetry
that was written in the '30s.
Up until a few years ago I used to think
you had to be a socialist to write political poetry.
Because it was all a kind of ranting of political opinions.
But this new poetry is political in another sense.
It seeks to find some kind of image which
reveals the state of the soul rather than states and opinion
about political matters.
And this little poem of Robert Bly is an example.
It's called "Counting Small boned Bodies."
Let's count the bodies over again.
If we could only make the bodies smaller, the size of skulls,
we could make a whole plain white
with skulls in the moonlight.
If we could only make the bodies smaller,
maybe we could get a whole year's kill in front of us
on a desk.
If we could only make the bodies smaller,
we could fit a body into a finger ring for a keepsake
forever.