by Bruce Schneider

"You have two choices," he said. "You can cry in your soup for the rest of your life or you can be a writer. If you want to be a writer, then write."

The great Robert Bly then went on to tell me about his friend, the Poet Laureate, William Stafford, who despite his success felt compelled to write a poem every morning before allowing himself to get out of bed. “Ninety percent of what Bill wrote,” Bly told me, “ended up in the trash. But he read poetry and wrote every day.” 

I don’t remember how Robert Bly and I parted that afternoon. I’m sure it was heartfelt and deeply respectful. What I remember is that Bly seemed to vanish in a swirl of dust and vapor. It was as if he breathed new life into me and rooted me in the solid ground of the timelessness of bards and wordsmiths, a rite that was both an initiation and an exhortation. I’ve been writing every day since.

Although the outspoken and brilliant bard has moved on from this life we will be connected always by the words written to each other and that brief and life-changing exchange on a blustery afternoon in the parlor of a grand hotel. In a lifetime we can have many fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers, each reflecting something essential to us and bestowing a blessing that would change the course of our lives. In the brief time we spent together, he reignited a flame with his blessings for fatherhood. Now, some twenty-seven years later, the love between my adult son and his almost-Elder father is as strong as ever, for which I am grateful and fulfilled.