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This scholar mentioned
the book A Poetry Reading

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Against the Vietnam
War, which is

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a collection of poems
written about this war

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by contemporaries.

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And then of poems
that could bear

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on the war written at any time.

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The book was collected
by Robert Bly.

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And I want to read a poem
of his about the war.

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It's quite extraordinary
how in the last few years

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American poetry has become
political for the first time

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and how there's almost no
American poet, no matter

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how much of an
esthete he used to be,

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who isn't writing
political poetry.

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And it isn't that kind
of political poetry

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that was written in the '30s.

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Up until a few years
ago I used to think

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you had to be a socialist
to write political poetry.

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Because it was all a kind of
ranting of political opinions.

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But this new poetry is
political in another sense.

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It seeks to find some
kind of image which

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reveals the state of the soul
rather than states and opinion

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about political matters.

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And this little poem of
Robert Bly is an example.

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It's called "Counting
Small boned Bodies."

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Let's count the
bodies over again.

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If we could only make the bodies
smaller, the size of skulls,

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we could make a
whole plain white

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with skulls in the moonlight.

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If we could only make
the bodies smaller,

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maybe we could get a whole
year's kill in front of us

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on a desk.

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If we could only make
the bodies smaller,

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we could fit a body into a
finger ring for a keepsake

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forever.

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