Latest / The Elsa Kurt Show / From Vietnam to Poetry: Robert Bliss's Journey of Survival and Self-Expression

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From Vietnam to Poetry: Robert Bliss's Journey of Survival and Self-Expression · The Elsa Kurt Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 2: She's the voice behind the viral comedy bold commentary and truth-packed interviews that cut through the chaos.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Author.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Brand creator.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Proud conservative Christian.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: This is Elsa Kurt.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the show that always brings bold faith, real truth and no apologies.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Well, hello everyone.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: It's Elsa Kurt and I have a wonderful guest today.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: This is Robert Bliss, sitting next to me.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: He is a Marine Vietnam veteran, so that automatically I have to stop right there and say thank you for your service.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I am the wife of a Marine, so you are already near and dear to my heart.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: And not only that, you are a pretty illustrious guy.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: You're a decorated US Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, as well as a poet, an editor, a photographer and my other favorite thing a patriot.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: So I think you and I are going to get along famously over here.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: So today we're going to be talking about your poetry and, of course, your books.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: So, first and foremost, thank you for joining me.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: How are you?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: today I'm very well and to your husband I say semper fidelis, as all Marines do.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: This is my current book.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I have a new one coming out.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: It is absolutely gorgeous.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I love that cover yeah.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I designed it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: You designed it yourself.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: That's so beautiful.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Is that the Catskills I know?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: we're going to be talking a little bit about that, but is it?
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I love it up in the Catskills.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Beautiful country.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I've always liked the country.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I'm a nature geek.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I think you're a nature lover as well.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Obviously right, since half of our interview is outside.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: So I'm a little bit envious.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: If I go outside to do the interview, I can guarantee my neighbor will start mowing his lawn.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Of course it's a guarantee.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So I'm stuck in the studio.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's no okay.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: So all enjoyed for both of us.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Thank you, I appreciate that.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: So I want to kind of go through.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: You're going to take me back if you won't mind and we're going to work our way through the book process and everything.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: But I know my viewers and listeners, we're going to want some background here.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: So one thing that you said as part of your bio kind of struck me, and it says that you are a riches to rags story.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: So tell me a little bit about that, because that's obviously the switch around of what we're used to hearing.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, my mother was in show business.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: She was a piano player, a singer, a dancer with the Bubsby Berkeley Review in the 1930s.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Then she went into Ringling Brothers' Barnum Bailey Circus.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: My brothers and I got to meet Emmett Kelly, the famous clown, but nonetheless my mother remarried after Bliss our father, to Bachelor who was an airline pilot, and we moved from California to the East Coast because he had to fly out of the East Coast, out of New York, and we had a beautiful home there in Douglaston, queens, in the woods.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: But my mother and stepfather were drinking quite a lot and they got into fights and arguments.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: One day he just got in the car and took off in the car and took off from there.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: It was a steady uh decline from being well off to becoming at the at the bottom of it all in long beach, long island, very, very poor, no supervision.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: My brothers and I lived under the boardwalk.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: We had to steal from grocery stores.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I hate to say this, but we stole from the poor box of church for money.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: We devised a way to do it.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: We stuffed the phones with lollipop wrappers and went by every three days on the boardwalk and with a wire hanger, pulled the paper down and all the change would come down.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: We were surviving and it's amazing when I look back on that how we survived.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: And it was a very difficult time in our lives.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of abuse by older not physical abuse, but older men were very aggressive towards us.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: We were just children, rags, or rather a richest to rags story, uh, until social services finally captured us because we hid from them and got us into a foster home.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: And then from the foster home we were there for a year, which was very bad.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Uh, donald and I, my older, my twin brother, my fraternal twin and I were transferred to the most beautiful place I've ever lived in my life called the Johnny Andrus Children's Home in 1961.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And it was a campus of four what they called cottages, but they were big stone buildings, little boys, little girls, big boys.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And then down the hill by the dairy barn, the big boys where we went, and there were 20 of us in that building and it was just beautiful acreage peacocks walking around, cows, pigs, sheep, chickens.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: God, I still think about that.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: I still think about that In those days.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Johnny Andrus, who was a billionaire who built it for children, dictated that in those days.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Well, he started it in the 20s but you had to be white and you had to be Protestant to get in.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: We fit the bill and we were very honestly fortunate to get in there, stayed there until I graduated from high school when I joined the Marines.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Wow, wow.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So you went into the Marines right after high school.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was just a continuation of I played a lot of football, I was a gymnast, I was on a swimming team and it just seemed like a natural progression.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I wanted to see if I could cut the mustard with the Marines, and I found out I did.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Not only did I cut the mustard down there at Parris Island, I was promoted out of boot camp and there was only 10 of us out of 90 recruits who were promoted.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: So I guess I cut the mustard.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, so, geez.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: I guess I cut the mustard.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess, so, geez.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: I'm so struck by the contrast of occurring in your life from you know, from like you started off with the riches and one particular lifestyle that you started your life in, and then the drastic changes to something so much less than that, and then another drastic switch into this incredible home with all of these beautiful things, and then the Marines, which is another stark contrast.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, the polar opposites that you experienced in such a young age obviously had to shape so much of your perspective, and then, of course, later in life, in your writing.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Now I'm curious at what point.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I would imagine you've been writing for a long time.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: When did you start writing?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I started in high school.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I just picked up this flair.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: It was a substitute English teacher from Hastings on Hudson Hastings High School still a really well-known school who had us all write a short story and I wrote a Hemingway-esque story and he liked it so much he said you know?
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: He said, robert, you ought to consider writing.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: You're good, you're good at it and I.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: It stayed with me and I started writing poetry.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Um, but I wanted to say quickly, uh, regarding the, the, the difficulties in our early youth growing up, and those tragic moments.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: My mother was alcoholic, she was never around.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I like to say that Oliver Twist had nothing on me and it was, I mean, my favorite poems even today Lighthouse and Dreamwind, which are in the Poetry of Bliss book I wrote in high school was it always poetry for you, or did you do any fiction like what pulled you towards poetry?
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: over, say, novels and things like that.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: What I found with poetry is that, um, as I discussed with another poet at one point, poetry comes from the soul and you're born with it and it begins to manifest itself as you become older and it's a very emotional process.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: If you're not speaking from your soul and from your heart, you're not writing good poetry.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And I had that capacity and I don't mind, and I didn't mind uh, expressing emotional, uh discourse through my writing.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: It suited me.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And another thing I always thought at first I thought writing poetry would be easier than writing stories or books or what have you.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I found out later on, especially lately, it's not that easy, because now I spend a lot of time editing my poetry to make sure I'm getting the message out that I want to get out.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It's a difficult process, but I love it and I do it every day.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: I have to confess that I go to.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Now I'm an author as well and I write novels and some non-fictions things like that, and I write novels and some non-fictions things like that.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: However, I go into what I'm going to now call poetry paralysis.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: I cannot get myself to write poetry and I, you know, it's so interesting what you're saying because I think you may have, like I think you just gave me therapy here, I think, because I think you're so right, poetry is so different because there's so much emotional release in poetry that it's so raw and it's so personal and so real.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Right, like you can't slip into, I mean I guess you could.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Like you can't slip in, I mean I guess you could, but you're.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: You're really putting yourself onto paper and I commend you for being able to do that, because I would imagine it had to be some form of therapy for you, giving those challenging you know and that's probably the understatement right to call it challenging circumstances that you were growing up under and there had to be so much confusion.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: You know you're just a child really and going through things that you know most kids don't have to go through, don't experience.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: So did you put a lot of that on paper?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Is that in your poetry as well?
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I don't write so much about my childhood.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I have written some things.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I agree with you.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Poetry to me is very therapeutic.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I'm divorced now three years.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: My wife, well, I won't get into that, she was in the hospital, she bipolar, um and and and and.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: These days, especially now living alone to me, I have to get outdoors.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I can't sit in my in my apartment, although I have a lovely cat that I found outdoors here and brought in.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: But I mean, it's, it's therapy, it is and and and and.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I always and and and.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: If you have an impasse, if you write anything and you're a poet, especially if you're in a block or an impasse, again I really love being outdoors.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: It just does something to me.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know what.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I know I'm rambling on here.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: No, you're not.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: No, you're speaking to my heart, really, because we started off with.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I feel the same way about being outdoors.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: It's when I'm my most at peace, my most inspired.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Just right, like it.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Just it is almost for us writers, it's even for us writers.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: It's almost intangible what the effect nature has, and and just just even just looking at your background right now, it just brings me peace, you know.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: So I I fully.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: That's not rambling at all, that's just it's.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: It's just what it's just what it is.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not a big fan of that phrase, but it is what it is.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: True, it is.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: It's very true.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Right Now talk to me a little bit.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: So I kind of I started to touch on it and I veered off on us your, your military experience, your experience in Vietnam.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Were you able to I mean, I guess there obviously is some sense of downtime there Were you able to write then?
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Did you feel like writing during that time period, and how different do you feel if you did with your writing then?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: story.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I write about that, though I I was keeping a journal, a daily journal I tried to keep in the evening when we would set in in the night, dig our, fuck our fighting holes, and dig in and try to relax in the night.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: For the night somewhere I would write this journal of the day's activities, and I did that for six months, and one afternoon we were fording a stream and it fell out of my.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I used to keep it under my helmet when I'd go across a stream and I dropped the helmet, hitting a rock, and it fell into the water and I was using a magic felt-type pen and all the writing ran and I lost six months of that journal.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: It was just devastating to me.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I couldn't believe that happened.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: My heart just stopped for you with that, because I know the pain of that when you pour so much into it, and then you know, then you have that thought process of do I try and recapture all of that and how can I possibly, you know, recapture?
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: the exact moments Right.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Oh that's so awful, that's you know.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Today's equivalent of that is if your computer crashes while you're running and you can't recover the files and I have had that happen Now, continuing that, if you don't mind, you volunteered for combat, is that correct?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: For combat.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Is that correct?
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I was writing for yeah, I was writing for commanding officer when I was with the 27th Marines out in California in Camp Pendleton, and I did that for almost a year and I was getting so bored with it.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: I used to run the hills in the evening just to stay in shape after duty out there along the beach, just to stay in shape after duty out there along the beach.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And then one morning the top sergeant had us all out there on the company street and he said he said, marines, we need 10 volunteers for Vietnam.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So Mr Stupid raised his hand.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I was 18 years old, naive, no idea of what I was getting into, I thought initially.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: My thought thought was this will be a really incredible adventure.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I neglected to consider the fact that there were people over there trying to kill us, and so that changed the whole perspective.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: And of course, I was there seven and a half months and we ran into a North Vietnamese regiment.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: We were outnumbered three to one.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Our commander behind us said fix bayonets.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And when you hear that you know, oh, this is, this is bad news.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: They don't ever tell you to fix bayonets.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So we went in at them.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Bullets were snapping by my head, snap, snap.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Friends of mine were falling in front of me and there were people up in front of me and I opened fire on them and brought them down.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And after this went on for maybe a half an hour, a mortar round landed at my left foot, blew me up in the air and knocked me down and when it did I was on my back and knocked the wind out of me.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I remember I knew I was in trouble because I tried to get up and I could see my left foot was dangling so I was bleeding.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So I grabbed the earth with both hands, holding as if to hold onto the earth.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I would stay with it, I'd stay alive, and I held on.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And then I saw a white, like a light above my head, a white light.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And as long as I focused on that light I continued to stay conscious and alive.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Eventually they got us out.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a nurse told me at the Oakland Naval Hospital months later when I explained that to her and she said to me she said what's that white light?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: She said what you saw was faith.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: She said it was faith.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Wow, you know, wow, yeah.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Anyway, the doctor told me at the Naval Hospital.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, when I got onto the hospital he said, corporal Bliss, I don't think we're going to be able to save you.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: He said, but I'll try.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: And I said, doc, do your best.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Well, I fooled them all, because here I am talking to Miss Edna at the moment.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: And here you are.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: You know it's incredible, and even more so as you think about the fact that, like you said, you were an 18-year-old kid.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: What did you know?
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: And, of course, and all of the young men like you, specifically with that war, which was, of course, unlike any other, uh, since then, and, of course, when you came home, collectively, as as veterans, uh, the treatment of vietnam veterans is just uh, it makes me want to cry anytime.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: you know my husband, of course, you know we'll talk about this because he, you know loves the history and and all of that and and I almost have to stop I'm like I can't, I can't even hear it because it just breaks my heart to to know?
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: If we weren't abused.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Most of us were abused, but if we weren't, if it wasn't that, if that weren't the situation, we were greeted with apathy.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I came home to Hastings and Hudson and even my own friends just didn't bother with me.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: The townspeople that knew me, you know because of my sport, playing sports and everything for the town.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: They were just apathetic and it was very, very difficult to deal with.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I remember years later, in 1975, the New York City decided to throw a parade for the Vietnam veterans and a friend of mine said to me come on, bob, they're to throw a parade for the Vietnam veterans.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And a friend of mine said to me come on, bob, they're throwing us a parade.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I said you go?
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I said I'm not going, it was too late you know, too late.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that it left a lot of bitterness and hurt.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: A friend of mine came home and killed himself.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: He shot himself.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: It was the most we were.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: All we were doing.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Enough was what our fathers had done before us serving our country with honor, like my dad did in germany, and and we came home to that to the uh, it was horrible.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I don't want to dwell on that no, I, I, I, you know I understand it as much as my capacity for understanding that and of course I didn't experience it, so I could never understand it on that level.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: But my heart goes out to you and every Vietnam veteran who experienced that.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: It's just unforgivable and such a black mark and disgrace on our history really.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, but our honor was intact.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: We kept.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Our honor was intact and we survived it.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I mean honor is a very important thing, as you would know, and I'm sure your husband knows, and mine's intact.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely and rightly, so, deservedly, so definitely.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Now I have in my notes here that there was a pivotal day, september 21st 1960, 1967.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Um what?
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: what is it that happened on that day that that affected you?
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: That affected your?
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: life.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: That was the day I was nearly killed in Vietnam.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: That was the date it resonates.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I suspected that it was.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously that was such a life-changing moment for you and again, at 18 years old, to you know, to one face your mortality.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, you grow up almost instantly, right?
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and I'm sure your previous life experiences, you were probably an adult at a very young age, right?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, I grew up as a child, basically, but I mean, like I say to friends of mine, in fact I wrote a poem about it.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't go to Vietnam to die, I went there to live.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: And you do, you live.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: That's where you live, more in combat than any other situation in life, because life is so close and so real and so desperate and elusive sometimes.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: So I was very fortunate to have survived.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Pardon me, absolutely.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: No no no, I cut you off.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Do you think?
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Your experience as a Vietnam veteran and, of course, a decorated Marine, your service, all of that, the challenges, all of these things, how would you say that they shaped the themes and the tone of your poetry?
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Well, all of that, my early life and the Marines, especially Vietnam, just it gave me a fine-tuned perception of what life is, what life can be and what it can't be.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: And from that perspective, um and years afterwards, I was able to turn it into words and emotional, the emotional impact as well, those emotions, turning those emotions into words too.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And you know, I like to say that I survived Vietnam because it was fate and I believe in fate, and I think I was fated to become an American poet and that's what I try to do every day.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would imagine you give voice to so many other veterans who aren't able to articulate that deep well of emotions and they can't put the words to it, whether they don't know how or it's just too much for them to speak on, but they feel the need to be understood and I would imagine that reading your words and seeing their feelings and their thoughts because it's got to be, you know, quite universal in some ways for all veterans who experience what you've experienced, it just must be so helpful to them.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: So just bless you for writing the things that other people feel really right, I mean that's what a gift.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I mean I send some of my poems, especially my Vietnam poems.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I wrote a poem called Were you there that addresses the subject of Vietnam, not so much to veterans but to the country and the world, and I sent that to several of my Vietnam buddies who survived.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And they write back with you know these comments that says, bob, you really hit it.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: You know this is what I've thought about.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: But they, you know these comments that says, bob, you really hit it.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: You know this is this, this is what I've thought about.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: But they, you know they're, they're just grateful and I I appreciate, I appreciate that, especially from my Vietnam brothers.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet, I bet.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: What a powerful gift to to be able to give to, you know, to anyone who's experienced.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I feel blessed.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I really do.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: I think I survived Vietnam to be where I am today and to be an American poet.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: I really do.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I like to call myself an American poet.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I don't have that wide of an audience yet, but maybe someday.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Listen, you are a published American poet.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: That makes you an American poet.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: You are exactly who you say.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: You are right, I think it's wonderful and again, and I bring back that, that contrast of you know being in kind of immersed in something that is, you know, just filled with a lot of ugliness and darkness and pain and all of those things, and then, to balance it out with the beauty of the Catskill Mountains, and often written while with your dog Maude, is that right?
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: That's what I have here, is that?
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: right, she was 14 years old.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I rescued her.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: They were going to put her down as a puppy.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I rescued her and, yeah, we went swimming together in Cooper Lake in Woodstock when she was a puppy and she stayed with me all those years and the most beautiful dog I've ever had.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: She was lovely.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, she sounds amazing.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they put her photograph in the book back here.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know I had photographs back here, but she was, you know, mostly beagle and, you know, the most beautiful dog I ever had.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, she sounds amazing and it's 14 years.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: You gave her an incredible life.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: There she is.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, she's so sweet.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, what a beauty.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, I am so sorry for the loss of Ma the winter out here in the woods.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I brought her in and now she's my, my companion.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: She's beautiful.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: She adopted you yes she did.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Literally.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Yep, she taught me.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: She's what I'm sorry that, yep, she taught me, she taught me she's what I'm sorry.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: No, I was gonna say she, she adopted you, she's like oh, this is my person now.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: She taught me how to play fetch.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: She sits on my knee in the evening and watches television.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: She sleeps right next to me in bed, bats me in the nose in the morning when it's time for her to eat the most incredible cat, yeah, I love, I love it I like the things, I like to think of things.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Like you know, I I like maude sent you this cat.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Maude was like oh, we don't want him to be lonely like here.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Here's this cat there you go keep you busy, right that's that's the way I like to look at things just to keep that connection going.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: But I would love to know, like, what was it that drew you to the CAT skills?
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Why there specifically, and why does that area call to you so much and influence your writing so much?
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Well, my former wife and I, um, when we first married, we'd run to the house in Tarrytown, new York.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: But one day she said why don't we move up to Woodstock?
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't know.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'd heard of Woodstock but I wasn't.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I never went to the 1969 gathering.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I was working, I wanted to but I couldn't.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: But so we went up there, found a house we got a realtor.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: We bought a house in Woodstock.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: A house, we got a realtor.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: We bought a house in Woodstock.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: And I just realized, in the setting in, in the larger area, it was in the Catskill Park and the mountains and the fresh air and and the the quiet of the whole area.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: It was so beautiful and I just fell in love with it.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: And I've been up here ever since.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: And now I'm even further north, uh, in Highland, new York, where but it's still where, as you can see behind me oh, this is beautiful, here we have meadows and oh, I love it.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I just love the Catskills.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I've just, I, just I just learned to appreciate it and when I was was a kid, we lived in the woods there in Douglas and Queens back then, and you know, besides, there's animals out here and I'm a wildlife nut and I support several wildlife causes and we've had deer walk right up to the and look in the, the window here, uh, in the lounge area, when people are having uh uh, their wine in the evening, or what have you.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: And I looked there one day and there's a deer staring in the window at us.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I said, look, look, nobody gets excited except me that's cool, I listen.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: if I was there, I would get I get excited over every little creature that comes around.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I would be like I would be right there with you and I'm always amazed when people aren't amazed.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: I don't get it.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I don't either I don't either.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say I like animals more than I like people to some degree Of course, depending on the people, but I mean the chipmunks.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I feed the chipmunks in the winter I feed the birds out here.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I had a crow come down land on this table, landed on the table and came over to my coffee drink and I was taking pictures the whole time and it pulled the straw out of the coffee drink and I was taking photographs and I said what's going on here?
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Now they're very intelligent birds which I wasn't aware of until I read about them later.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: But it pulled the straw out and it dropped the straw and then it grabbed the lid of the drink and pulled the drink over and some of the coffee spilled onto the on the table and it took a little sip, shook its head, as if to say eh.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: And then adios, mis amigos, and it was gone.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: But it was one of those, one of those things that you know, you just never forget.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Right, oh, absolutely I'm.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: I'm obsessed with crows.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Like that's my life's dream right now to just attract crows to my home and to have them as outdoor not pets, but outdoor companions.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: That will just oh yeah I, yeah, I guess they're up here in the trees.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I'll send you the photos, the sequence of photos, at some point, please do, I'm so envious right now.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, I want to jump out of my studio and literally hang out with you right there, come on.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Another coffee please.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: I know right.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: One more coffee, please, yeah it's nice.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Nature is everything to me.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: A lot of my poetry, uh is, is about nature.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I write a lot of nature poems, like that mighty one this morning um, love poetry, nature poetry, a few, a little bit of fantasy poetry where I go back through the middle ages and create some strange story and other things.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: But yeah, nature poetry is predominant throughout my writing as well.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: I love that you have such a broad range of interest though of you know different aspects or areas of poetry that you can go into.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: That's the versatility there is so impressive.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: I think maybe you're going to be my inspiration to improve on that, to try it at least.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, Take a walk in the woods and your senses will start talking to you and all of a sudden, something will resonate and you'll go back and you'll start to write.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: That's what I find.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Nature opens up all my senses, you know, attacks my emotions.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: So we did speak very early on about some of the other things you do photography and all of those things.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I would love to get a little bit more into all of that, because you wear a lot of hats, like we said poet, photographer, editor, philanthropist.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit, if you will, just about each thing and how.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, let's start with photographer Photography.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: How did you get into that?
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I've been doing that for years.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I've got several cameras, I don't know.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I think I began to realize that it seemed to me that poetry and photography sort of went hand in hand, because they both explain the world around you, what you're looking at, what you're thinking around you, what you're looking at, what you're thinking.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: You know, a photograph tells you who you are really in some ways.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, anybody can take a picture of a wall, but if you get out there and you start photographing nature and wildlife and things like that, I don't know, they just seem to work with me sort of in tandem, and I've just been doing it for years now and I enjoy it.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: I always say that you know, photography is easy, poetry is not.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: You know, you already know I agree with you.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: I'm not, and I have to admit I'm not really a good photographer either, so I can't I cannot put that hat on.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Editing I can.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Are you talking more about like book editing or like video graphic editing, stuff like that?
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: What kind of editing do you like to do?
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Well, I've done darkroom work with black and white.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: I can do that.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I can edit something that somebody has written if they like me to.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a very good student, but yet after Vietnam I really got into reading and I kind of like Abe Blinken, I'm sort of self-taught.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: And I kind of like Abe Blinken, I'm sort of self-taught, and so I learned a lot.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I did a lot of reading of the early poets Keats and Shelley, lord Byron, ts Eliot, et cetera, et cetera, robert Frost but I found them very, very difficult, very.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: They were difficult to read, not to read, but I don't know.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Their language was very, was hard to me in a lot of ways.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Not all of them, but I mean I needed to soften that language up some.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: So I became.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: I think I've reached a point where I have my own style.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Now I write in stanzas and I do rhyme scheme.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think I answered your question, though I'm sorry.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: No you really did?
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: No, you did, you did.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: We just evolved into another part of it.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: That's all which made me think of, though do you have any favorite poets that have inspired you?
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Well, I've always I have liked Lord Byron.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I like some of Frost.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I like Farlan Getty, a San Francisco beat poet from the 50s.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Not only was he interesting, but he also wrote poetry with a sense of humor.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I like Farlan Get.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Poetry with a sense of humor I liked.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: I liked Farlan Getty and a couple of others, but as far as it was more like reading though, I mean, I can't say they really influenced my writing.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: If you know what I mean, I I'm sort of I'm well like any, any writer you're, you're an individual.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would imagine reading anything else in the genre that I'm writing in, only because I'm afraid that it'll influence me.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Do you kind of like, when you're in your writing mode, do you kind of turn all of that stuff off and avoid reading other things so that it doesn't kind of seep in?
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't bother me anymore because it did.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Initially I could have signed some roadblocks there reading other poets, but now I don't really read any other poets.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: What I read is history, especially American history, war, because I had one ancestor who was at Concord and at the Battle of Saratoga, where he was saved a lot of lives.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: His name was Samuel Bliss, a great, great, great great grandfather of mine.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: So that had a little bearing on, I mean the historical aspect of my family.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: So that had a little bearing on I mean the historical aspect of my family.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: But other than that, it's more like I don't know.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: My mother was a piano player.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: She used to write music and things like that.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's a continuation of that.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: My twin brother, donald, is not, is not, he doesn't do those those things.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I love him dearly, but he, I don't know this, this poetry thing just grabbed me and just wouldn't let me go and it's kind of like you know you're, you're compelled, I compel you to write, you will write, that is, and you know what, to everyone who is a?
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: writer.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Author.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: They're all nodding right now because that's so true it does.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: You are compelled.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Once you start, you can't stop.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Absolutely so yeah, no no, you're right, you know what.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: You know this as well as I do and other writers.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Yes, I'm also starting to write my biography because I have led an interesting life in some degrees, especially my early childhood.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: When I tell those stories, wow, that'll sell the book alone, I know.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: And then the progression through andrus, which was like arriving, you know, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: When we got there, I went down to the barn.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: The first day I was there after I put my, my clothing and things in our dorm room in foster hall, which was we had English house parents, we had an English cook.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: There were only 20 of us in the cottage, a cottage, big stone building.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: I heard the cows.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I went down to the barn and I went down to the end and I was looking at these beautiful dairy cows and there was a calf in there.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: I stuck my hand in to pet the calf and she started to suck on my fingers.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: And then I heard then I heard this, this loud screeching from behind the barn.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: I said what's that?
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I ran out and went around the back.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: I was let's say I was 13 years old ran around the back of the barn and there were two beautiful displaying peacocks and I remember looking skyward and said thank you God, thank you.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: And I felt safe for the first time in my life.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: You know, I was so I was so hoping that you would say that you are working on an autobiography or a memoir.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: I was so hoping you would say that and I'm so glad to hear it, because that was one of the first things that I thought at reading your your bio here in preparation for this, and then talking to you and listening to your life experiences, I'm like this this needs to be all.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: This is a story that needs to be told and needs to be read Thank you, so I'm so excited that you're working on that and, like you, kind of answered multiple questions in one shot because I was going to ask you what's next for you, like, what are you working on next?
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming that's a big part of.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Are you like typical authors and working on multiple projects at once?
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: No, I can't do that.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, if I'm writing poetry, I'm writing poetry.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: If I'm writing something else, it's something else.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: But I did write, excuse me.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Several years ago I sent notices to my Vietnam friends who were with me in Vietnam who survived, and I asked them to send me their reminiscences and their remembrances of Vietnam.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: So I've got a folder full of their information, which is going to be a rather extensive chapter or more on my Vietnam experiences.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty much there.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: It's just a matter of writing it, and I just got my first laptop, so that's going to make a difference.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I want to sit outside and write my story.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, oh, that's going to be amazing.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Well then, you have to promise to come back in and tell us about that when it's done.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: So that's very exciting, robert, tell me, tell me what our last kind of final message for our readers and our listeners and viewers what's, what would you hope for people to take away from reading your poetry?
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Is there, is there something like them to just walk away with?
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I would say that when you're feeling at your worst and you're feeling down and you think that you can't go on any further, remember that life is beautiful and it's more beautiful every day and stay with it.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: And if you have things that are important to you, try to write them down so that your family will have something that they can remember later on.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Keep those.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: It's important, and I wish my family had done that too, and I'm doing it now with writing poetry and for anybody that has any aspiration at all to write poetry, put a few words on paper, see where it goes, doesn't hurt.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's so true.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: That is like the first step Anytime somebody asks like you know, how do I become an author?
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Well, you start writing.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Yep, that's all you got to do.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Put a few words down, that's all you got to do.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is the first hurdle to get over.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Everything else comes after that.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: But just start writing, Robert, all of your advice there was spot on and so wonderful and inspiring for somebody who's just wondering where and how and why and just trying to get up the courage to do that, and I think you just gave it to them.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: So that's a beautiful thing.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: You are a man of many gifts that you just keep giving to others and I think the beautiful thing.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: It was such an honor to meet you and talk with you and get to have this opportunity to share your story and your work.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: So again, I thank you very much.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: I thank you for your time and your questions were spot on and I want to thank you for your time and I enjoyed it.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you, I'm so glad you enjoyed it.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: All right, my friends, we will see you guys in the next episode, and the links to by Roberts Books will be in our show notes, so be sure to check them out, and we will see you in the next episode, take care.