The Politician and the Poet Laureate
Tim Walz, Robert Bly, and The Teeth Mother
Two quick disclaimers on this one. First, if you’re exhausted with election coverage, I get it. I wrote this piece to discuss a poem, but antiwar poetry is inherently political, and needs to be understood in its proper context. Second, this post contains graphic depictions of violence, because, well, war poetry. If you don’t have the head space for that right now, I get that too.
In 2008, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty named Robert Bly as the state’s first poet laureate. A Minnesota native, Bly wrote several collections of strident antiwar poems during the Vietnam era, the most famous of which is “The Teeth Mother Naked at Last,” originally published in 1970 and later in the collection Sleepers Joining Hands (1973).
It’s an excellent poem. It has weight, momentum, direction. Reading it feels like standing close to a train as it thunders along the tracks; you feel it in your chest as much as you hear it. And it perfectly captures the growing anger and disillusionment that Americans felt as the Vietnam War dragged on, and on, and on.
The timing of Bly’s appointment feels significant. One month earlier, George W. Bush delivered his final State of the Union address, where he boasted of killing less Iraqi civilians than usual. Bly penned his poem while Lyndon B. Johnson sat in the Oval Office, but many sections feel eerily similar to Bush’s approach to the Iraq War:
“Let us not be deterred from our task by the voices of dissent….”
The whine of the jets
pierce like a long needle.
As soon as the President finishes his press conference, black wings carry
off the words,
bits of flesh still clinging to them.If you’re wondering why I’m bringing up Minnesota’s Bush-era poet laureate in 2024, it’s because the late 2000s were significant for another Minnesotan: Tim Walz.
In 2006, Walz entered the race for Minnesota’s 1st congressional district. Support for the Iraq War had fallen to all-time lows, and Walz made it the central issue of his campaign. It was enough to unseat a six-term incumbent in a Republican-leaning district, and it sent the National Guard veteran to Washington, DC to join the 110th United States Congress.
He had a busy freshman term, serving on four committees (freshmen are usually limited to two). He opposed sending additional troops to Iraq in 2007, repeatedly called for an end to the conflict, and carved out a reputation for himself as a tireless advocate for veterans throughout his six terms in Congress.
In 2018, he was elected Governor of Minnesota, and won a second term in 2022. In 2024, Kamala Harris named Tim Walz as her pick for Vice President.
(We’re getting back to the poem soon, I promise.)
The political situation is obviously different than it was in 2008 (or 1970, for that matter). Support for the war in Ukraine has faded among Republican voters, and the Israel-Hamas War is seen as a major issue for young progressives, but neither war has really seen the same drop in general public support that we saw with the Iraq or Vietnam Wars.
In an election with razor thin margins, both parties are trying to court as many voters as they can, but it’s hard to imagine either candidate focusing solely on foreign policy. According to a recent poll, foreign policy is the 4th most important issue for Republicans, and the 8th most important issue for Democrats.
Still, there are passages in Bly’s poem where the ink feels as fresh as it did fifty years ago.
When Kamala Harris took the stage at the Democratic National Convention, she promised to grow the economy, create jobs, and “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Here’s Robert Bly, 54 years earlier:
This is what it's like to have a gross national product.
It's because the aluminum window shade business is doing so well in
the United states that we roll fire over entire villages
It's because a hospital room in the average American city now costs $90
a day that we bomb hospitals in the North
It's because the milk trains coming into New Jersey hit the right
switches every day that the best Vietnamese men are cut in two
by American bullets that follow each other like freight carsWhen Donald Trump appeared on the air to ramble incoherently about Haitian immigrants, fourth-trimester abortions, and the Afghanistan withdrawal, you could almost believe that Bly had an early copy of the script.
First the President lies about the date the Appalachian Mountains rose.
Then he lies about the population of Chicago, then he lies about the
weight of the adult eagle, then about the acreage of the Everglades
He lies about the number of fish taken every year in the Arctic,
he has private information about which city is the capital of
Wyoming, he lies about the birthplace of Attila the Hun.And as the Israel-Hamas War nears its one-year anniversary, and Americans are confronted with clear evidence of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, you start to realize just how clearly history repeats itself sometimes.
But if one of those children came near that we have set on fire,
came toward you like a gray barn, walking,
you would howl like a wind tunnel in a hurricane,
you would tear at your shirt with blue hands,
you would drive over your own child's wagon trying to back up,
the pupils of your eyes would go wild—
If a child came by burning, you would dance on a lawn,
trying to leap into the air, digging into your cheeks,
you would ram your head against the wall of your bedroom
like a bull penned too long in his moody pen—
If one of those children came toward me with both hands
in the air, fire rising along both elbows,
I would suddenly go back to my animal brain,
I would drop on all fours, screaming,
my vocal chords would turn blue, so would yours,
it would be two days before I could play with my own children again.If Kamala Harris is elected in 2024, Tim Walz will once again head to Washington, DC, where he’ll have an important voice in American foreign policy. As Vice President, he’ll sit in on cabinet meetings, hear reports from intelligence officials, and meet with foreign heads of state. As President of the Senate, he may cast the deciding vote in defense legislation. If the President is incapacitated or otherwise incapable of fulfilling her duties, he may end up serving as Commander in Chief.
And so I find myself wondering if these two antiwar Minnesotans ever crossed paths.
Robert Bly and Tim Walz almost certainly knew about each other, but I can’t find any evidence that they ever met. Bly was obviously very political, and even published a collection of poems criticizing the Iraq War in the years before Walz’s 2006 run.
Though he didn’t live in Walz’s district, he would’ve seen the congressman’s name on the news, and it’s easy to imagine him cheering for his fellow Minnesotan as he spoke out against Bush’s policies.
In 2021, Tim Walz named Gwen Westerman as Minnesota’s third poet laureate. At some point during the selection process, you have to wonder if he asked about Minnesota’s previous poet laureates, if only to get an idea of what they do. It would’ve been a short list, with Robert Bly’s name at the top, and it’s easy to picture Walz thumbing through an old copy of Sleepers Joining Hands.
If not, as Governor of Minnesota, Walz should be able to pick up a copy at his local library, or maybe spend a few bucks from his campaign war chest to buy a used copy.
Hell, he can have my copy if he wants it. Because I really think he should read it.