Robert Bly might as well be my neighbor's grandpa

"I don't understand the meaning of that last line."
"That was deep." 

These types of words usually come out of the mouth of a teen skimming through poems for homework, not a poet laureate reading his own work. However, tonight, Robert Bly poked fun at himself while maintaining the air of an experienced artist. 

The crowd at Wiley Hall consisted of many gray hairs and balding heads, so I (and the other SPA poetry students there) stood out a little. Across from me sat another young face, who, before the reading began, slowly strummed a guitar made of more duct tape than wood. I usually come to Wiley Hall for lectures on the shape of the universe and mathematical cryptography, so the contrast between STEM geeks and poet geeks definitely hit me the moment I walked in. 

Introductions for Bly lasted almost twenty minutes, as I wondered if the guy had actually managed to show up at his own poetry reading.

Finally: 

If the auditorium shrank down to Bly and his friend holding his mic next to him, it would just need a furry rug and a fireplace to feel like a living room. Bly looked a lot older than I expected, and the depth, tone, and age of his voice matched that of a Robert Burns poem. His Norwegian heritage surprised me, since his voice had tricked me into thinking of him as Scottish.

"That's enough wisdom for tonight," he said quickly after reading several poems, before his friend holding the mic reminded him that he had planned more poems to read. Moments like this sent trembles of laughter through the audience. 

Here's a clip from my iPhone of him reading (to the audience, and more surprisingly, also to himself):

Bly ended the evening with the namesake of his latest poetry collection, "Stealing Sugar from the Castle." 

We are poor students who stay after school to study joy.

We are like those birds in the India mountains.
I am a widow whose child is her only joy.

The only thing I hold in my ant-like head
Is the builder's plan of the castle of sugar.
Just to steal one grain of sugar is a joy!

Like a bird, we fly out of darkness into the hall,
Which is lit with singing, then fly out again.
Being shut out of the warm hall is also a joy.

I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot. But I love
To read about those who caught one glimpse
Of the Face, and died twenty years later in joy.

I don't mind your 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.

When Bly read the beginning of the third stanza, he stated that "Like a bird, we fly out of darkness into the hall, / Which is lit with singing, then fly out again" represented the brevity of life. In this poem, the narrator explains that little things, such as a single grain of sugar, a single word, or a glimpse, can cause happiness. "We are poor students who stay after school to study joy" means that the narrator does not have a constant source of joy that he/she may take for granted, and so happiness must spring from unexpected places, such as "being shut out of the warm hall." The narrator diminishes him/herself to the size of an ant, so that the "grain of sugar" that he/she obtains can seem bigger. This figurative idea could transfer to reality by advising people to focus more on the positive and less on the negative, so that positives take up more mental space. I love the breaking of alliteration and rhythm in the line "I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot," because it lets the word "idiot" really sink in. 

Bly has the whimsical wink of a purposely grumpy grandfather. As he read this last poem, I considered his age and hoped that he would continue a "sentence" of "a thousand years of joy."

Later, he signed books during the reception: