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WILLIAM WILCOXEN: Good morning with news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm William Wilcoxen. Republican US Senator Rod Grams says he will not make the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton an election issue. Minnesota Public Radio's Karin Louise Boothe has more.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Grams made his comments during a press conference at the State Capitol. He says as far as he's concerned, the impeachment issue is a history page that has turned. Grams who is considered to be one of the most vulnerable senators facing re-election, says he won't cling to the issue in order to gain votes.

ROD GRAMS: I believe right now that the votes ended the trial, closed the door on that chapter. And as I go into this cycle, if you're talking about politics, I'm going to be talking about things that I want to accomplish and things that I've done in Congress.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Grams says his key campaign issue will be a 10% across-the-board tax cut that he's proposing. This is Karen Louise Boothe, Minnesota Public Radio.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: Minneapolis City and police officials are considering suing gun manufacturers to hold them liable for gun violence. If the city does file a lawsuit, Minneapolis would join a small but growing number of US cities, employing a strategy patterned after the one states have used against the tobacco industry. The Minneapolis City Attorney's Office and Police Department are researching the relevant law and possible outcomes of a lawsuit.

Organizers of the Titanic exhibit on display in Saint Paul hope one of the few living survivors of the shipwreck will be on hand tomorrow to pull the cord to sound the ocean liner's whistles. 87-year-old Millvina Dean was nine weeks old when she was lowered to a lifeboat in a sack after the ship ran into an iceberg in 1912. Partly to mostly cloudy skies over Minnesota today, with high temperatures generally in the 20s around the state.

For the Twin Cities, partly cloudy with a high around 27. Right now in Duluth, light snow and 6 degrees. In the Twin Cities, mostly sunny and 15 degrees. And that's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm William Wilcoxen.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KATHERINE LANPHER: Good morning and welcome to Mid-Morning. I'm Katherine Lanpher. It started with a declaration. The editors of this magazine think that most of the poetry published in America today is too old fashioned.

With that battle cry in 1958, two young poets named William Duffy and Robert Bly issued forth their challenge to the literary establishment from a small farm in Madison, Minnesota. They called their new journal The '50s, and it attracted attention and influence far beyond its small list of subscribers. Some observers credit it with aiding the post-war evolution of American poetry, in which poets moved away from strict formalism toward the free verse we're so familiar with today.

The '50s published the translated works of Pablo Neruda, venerated today, but virtually unheard of in this country at the time. The small journal attracted and promoted new names like W.D. Snodgrass, Galway Kinnell, James Wright. The journal became almost as famous for its rejection letters. One prominent poet received this one-- "Reading your poetry is like driving a team of mules."

Eventually, the two co-founders went on to other things. William Duffy taught high school English and French in Grand Marais, Minnesota, while continuing to contribute to national poetry journals. Robert Bly won the 1968 National Book Award for his book of poems called the Light Around the Body. And he's perhaps best known today for his poetry, his translations of other poets, and his bestseller linked with the men's movement, Iron John.

The two men join us today in the studio. Welcome, both of you. I'm really glad you're here.

ROBERT BLY: Thank you.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Good morning.

KATHERINE LANPHER: What was so old fashioned about poetry when the two of you wrote that battle cry? We'll start with you, Robert Bly, and then I'll go to Bill Duffy.

ROBERT BLY: Well, I think that two things had gone on. One was, at that time, people were receiving a lot of grants to go to Italy. And you got endless poems about squares in Italy, which were very boring.

[LAUGHS]

So those were academic things done in a nice old meter. And the second thing was that we had been in the Second World War and it made us aware of the European countries. And when we began to look at those, their poetry was far ahead of ours.

KATHERINE LANPHER: So in other words, you were in a situation where the countries that perhaps this boring poetry was being written about, all those squares in Italy, when you actually went over to Europe, the voices were much fresher and vibrant than the way poets were writing about it here?

ROBERT BLY: Yeah. And I think the difference is that at that time we admired the European countries tremendously and their poetry, the poetry of Machado, the poetry of Lorca and so on.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Gabriel Garcia Lorca?

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, we needed all of that. Now, it's as if we think we're the leaders of the world so we no longer translate so much of that. They think because Schwarzenegger movies are everywhere that we are the leaders.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Yeah, not exactly the export I'm proudest of.

ROBERT BLY: No, that's right.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Bill Duffy, tell me, why did you think poetry was so old? What did old fashioned mean? And does it make you smile now to think of how you sat back 40 years ago and pronounced other things old fashioned?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Well, when we read poetry and anthologies, most of the poems we read were 50, 75 years old. And poets at those times were still copying and using the forms and traditions of the English without ever thinking that maybe there's a new American form.

KATHERINE LANPHER: So in other words, because if you love poetry, you're so used to free verse now. It's very hard to envision that if you were just out of college in the '50s, that if you wanted to write poetry, you still had to do formal meter. You had to count iambic pentameter.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Yes, that was so restrictive. We felt, though, that was like trying to practice the 100-yard dash in a jail cell.

ROBERT BLY: And there's a lot of feeling about that. We said some of these things that Bill was saying about the new American form. And Allen Tate wrote us a letter.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Now, just remember, not everyone's going to remember who Allen Tate is.

ROBERT BLY: Allen Tate was the great Southern writer who was at the University of Minnesota, the leader of the community in here. And he wrote a letter to us and he said, that's ridiculous, what you're saying. You can write poems that are not in iambic pentameter. A dog can walk on its front legs, too. So what?

KATHERINE LANPHER: It got nasty.

ROBERT BLY: A lot of anger came out.

KATHERINE LANPHER: It got nasty really quickly, didn't it?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Very angry. And then when they sent us these types of letters, many times as a retaliation, we'd published the letters. Maybe Robert, you have one of the letters there that you could--

ROBERT BLY: Well, you see this business, the poetry is too old fashioned. This is a gesture to make people mad. And so then-- and since all the poetry is too old fashioned, we didn't have to print any. So we'd reject everything that came in.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Wait, I just want to make sure I have this in the right context. The two of you, you're out of college. You're at the farm in Madison, Minnesota, and you're looking around at the poetry establishment. And basically, you're saying, who can we piss off? Do I have that right?

ROBERT BLY: That's something like that.

[LAUGHS]

So then we'd keep all the poems we had and then we'd go up to Northern Minnesota. Maybe we'd get a bottle of whiskey or something and send all the poems for the whole month back in one night. And Bill was a genius at these rejection slips.

He'd say things like, Dear Mr. Jones, these poems remind me of false teeth. Yours sincerely, William Duffy. Or Dear Mr. Jones, these poems are a little like lettuce that's been left too long in the refrigerator. And then we'd get insulting letters back. And we'd print the letters because they had more excitement and energy in them than the poems.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Were these poets-- these must have been establishment poets who were not used to A rejection or B blunt language?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Many of them were heads of departments of universities. And of course, it irritated them to no end. And many of them were some beat poets who thought maybe they could get some beat poetry into the magazine.

ROBERT BLY: Well, that was a wonderful detail.

KATHERINE LANPHER: I was just going to say, now you guys were trying to do a middle course--

ROBERT BLY: Exactly. Between the academic on one side and the beats on the other.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Now, isn't it-- but the beats are so fashionable even today.

ROBERT BLY: Oh, yeah, they still are. But I remember Amiri Baraka, he was called LeRoi Jones then. And Jim Wright had done a poem describing taking a bus in Ohio. And then he says, I saw the farmer, his scarlet face apologetic with whiskey, throw the bar door's open and call a hundred white and black Holsteins from the clover field.

So most of the poets who were beat were city poets. And I remember LeRoi sent a letter saying, what is this ridiculous? How did you know there were hundreds of black and white Holsteins there?

And I said-- I pass it to Jim and I said, do you want to answer? He said, OK. He took a postcard. He said, dear LeRoi, I counted the tits and divided by four, yours sincerely.

[LAUGHTER]

So therefore, we'd get it from all sides, but that was the fun of it.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Well, it also strikes me that you were almost distinctly unfashionable.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, that's right.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Because you would think that in the '50s, that if you were young men, young poets with a cause who wanted to tick people off, the beats would have been the place to go.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah. But there was a kind of sloppiness there, which we didn't really like either. I still don't like a lot of it.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Or the diction.

ROBERT BLY: The diction.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Or the diction. So the literary landscape when you started this journal, let's talk about that for a minute. Because it strikes me that there weren't-- it seems like it must have been easier to start a journal and get attention in 1958 than, say, today.

ROBERT BLY: Oh, boy.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Bill Duffy?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Very, very much so. Most literary journals were published by universities or colleges. And then, of course, the beats had a number of journals. And I believe the Black Mountain group had a journal.

Outside of that, there weren't too many. And if there were small journals, they were on four or five pages of paper with a little cover on it they'd call a magazine. So what we were trying to do was much easier in those times than it would be today.

KATHERINE LANPHER: I have to share something with you. I wanted to get your reaction. I went out and I found the latest edition of Poets and Writers magazine. And they have an article in the back called "So You Want to Start a Literary Magazine" and here is the first paragraph.

"First, one word of advice-- don't. No, I mean it. Of all the myriad ways you could squander your time, starting a literary magazine or editing an existing one is the worst. Why? Because no matter how hard you work, no matter how much diligence and personal integrity you bring to your task, you're bound to anger many people most of the time."

WILLIAM DUFFY: But you see, the main reason I believe we started it above all was to have some fun--

ROBERT BLY: That's right.

WILLIAM DUFFY: --and to enjoy doing it. And it was never work to us. We enjoyed every moment whether it was writing rejection slips, reading the poems that came in, or putting the magazine together, even talking to the Irish press.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, we had it printed in Ireland because we didn't want any grants from anybody. So therefore, we had to support it with our own money. So we sent it around to various--

WILLIAM DUFFY: And we paid the poets also.

ROBERT BLY: Huh?

WILLIAM DUFFY: And we paid the poets also.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, we did. So we send it around to various places and they'd say, well, we'll charge $4,000 to do this. We'll charge these. We send it to Ireland, they said we'll do it for $672.

KATHERINE LANPHER: You had it printed in Ireland?

ROBERT BLY: We print from Ireland. Then they'd ship it over to the United States and I'd go to New York and pick it up. And they'd say, what are these things? They're poetry magazines.

What? They're all poetry magazines from Ireland. All right, take them. Get out of here. So they didn't charge us any.

KATHERINE LANPHER: That's hysterical.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Once in a while, we had to watch our language in Ireland. They'd criticize someone and cross out some of our words.

ROBERT BLY: Pablo Neruda had a poem about priests being naughty. And when the proof came back, there was a big gap there. And I said to my wife, this is funny, isn't it? Is this a little gap here?

We checked it out and they'd left out the lines about the priests. So I asked, well, what's the difference? Who cares.

KATHERINE LANPHER: And I want to-- also I want to set the scene for folks. Now, you were both sons of farmers.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Yes, that's right. We both had brothers, have brothers.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Who went into farming.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Yeah.

KATHERINE LANPHER: So you didn't have to. I'm just trying to get-- well, I see you raised eyebrows because you were both on farms at that time.

WILLIAM DUFFY: That's right. We were born on farms.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Well, tell me-- let's go back for a minute. I'd love to hear from both of you how you came to poetry. Because here you are, when you were young men of age, you were rejecting poetry as being-- not rejecting, but criticizing the poetry of the time as being too old fashioned. But obviously, something about poetry must have entered into your lives when you were growing up on these farms in Minnesota.

ROBERT BLY: What was it, Bill, with you?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Well, I remember going to high school in a backward way. Every poem that was presented in the English classes was a terrific best poem. And one time, I was bold enough to say I would like to read a bad poem.

And she got very angry with me. She says, why don't you go over to Carleton College when they have a poet speak? So I visited every speaker that-- every poet that came to Carleton to speak, and finally went to Carleton, myself, and presented some poems that I was writing in high school and talked to these poets at Carleton.

ROBERT BLY: Amazing. I didn't know that.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Well, so where did you grow up? What farm?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Where I grew up-- well, I grew up around Northfield and I was born in Webster Township in Rice County, and then went to Rosary School in Northfield and Central High School and Carleton College, and over at the--

KATHERINE LANPHER: Who were some of the poets who came to Carleton?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Oh, I can't remember right now. No, they were poets. They were minor poets maybe in the '40s. That's 50 years ago.

ROBERT BLY: But still, they're very impressive to a young guy in high school.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Oh, very impressive. They were my heroes when I was starting out.

ROBERT BLY: See, there it is. There it is. A lot of the poets were heroes at that time.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Do you think that poets are heroes now?

ROBERT BLY: Well, for a few, but it was-- the emphasis on literature then, it's hard to believe for some of the younger ones, but that's been taken over by emphasis on pop culture now.

WILLIAM DUFFY: One time I made a survey to find out how many poetry magazines had been sold in the United States. And I came to the conclusion that 1 out of every 25,000 people read a poem a month.

ROBERT BLY: That's weird.

KATHERINE LANPHER: That's not an encouraging statistic.

WILLIAM DUFFY: No, and that's what we had to deal with. It was probably much less in the '50s when we started this.

ROBERT BLY: But at the same time, we took a little ad in Poetry Magazine saying starting a new magazine [INAUDIBLE]. And in the first issue we got, we got poems from a wonderful poet, David Ignatow and Gary Snyder. Brilliant stuff.

KATHERINE LANPHER: I was just going to say, when you guys founded this thing in 1958, the landscape was bare enough that you could take out a small--

ROBERT BLY: That's right.

KATHERINE LANPHER: --ad like that and hear from nationally known poets.

ROBERT BLY: Exactly Yeah. So that was wonderfully exciting in a way because they paid more attention to us than we deserved. But I remember and where I met Bill, you want to ask about myself and poetry?

KATHERINE LANPHER: Yeah.

ROBERT BLY: I went to high school in Madison, Minnesota. And so sometimes people say to me, no, why do you write-- why did you get interested in poetry? Well, I'm supposed to say I'm very deep, that's really the reason.

But I said the truth is that we had a wonderful poetry teacher and she had beautiful legs. And she'd sit on the radiator and read poems. And I'd say, man, that poetry can't be all bad.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Can I just say, you male poets are all the same.

ROBERT BLY: Oh, like I know.

KATHERINE LANPHER: All the same.

[LAUGHS]

ROBERT BLY: I don't accept that as an insult.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Oh, you shouldn't.

ROBERT BLY: Eros is Eros. Anyway, so my old teacher is still alive. She lives in Saint Paul--

KATHERINE LANPHER: How are the legs?

ROBERT BLY: And maybe she'll hear this.

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: I hope.

ROBERT BLY: I haven't told her yet that's why I started getting interested in poetry. And after that then I went to Saint Olaf for a year and I fell in love with a girl there who wrote poetry. And I tried to write some to impress her. It didn't do any good.

And then I transferred to Harvard, and then I had lots of people. I was in Archibald MacLeish's his first class he had and so on. And Don Hall and Gary-- all kinds of people were in that class. Adrienne Rich was in our class, and Georgie Plimpton and all kinds of people.

KATHERINE LANPHER: One of the things that strikes me, what you were trying to affect with the journal and with all the talks that the two-- this journal that you founded, the 50s, which, of course, its name evolved into the 60s and the 70s as the time went on. I love the idea of two young men arguing on a farmhouse about poetry and having it matter. There's something wonderful--

WILLIAM DUFFY: Very pastoral, isn't it?

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: Well, actually, when I start reading and hearing more stories, pastoral isn't the term that comes to mind for me. When I think of the poet Jim Wright coming up to visit you guys with a suitcase, with a bottle of whiskey, and pastoral not the word that occurs to me.

ROBERT BLY: Bill read that poem that Jim wrote at your house.

KATHERINE LANPHER: And before you do that, it's quite possible there are people out there who don't know who Jim Wright is. And so can you give us a thumbnail sketch? Because I would love people to have more context to know what a gift this poem is.

ROBERT BLY: James Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. And it's interesting, this talk about affirmative action because his family was very poor. And the GI bill was really affirmative action bill. And as a result of that, Jim went to Kenyon College, where he was a student of John Crowe Ransom and so on.

Without that, there would have been no James Wright. And he produces marvelous poetry. And some people feel that it's just absolutely brilliant the way he was able to merge the deep, and the quiet and the gentle. And people just adore James Wright. He died just a few years ago.

KATHERINE LANPHER: I was going to say. And there's a new anthology out, in fact, the complete poems called Above the River.

ROBERT BLY: This is probably the most famous poem written in the whole of the '60s, the one he's going to read.

WILLIAM DUFFY: "Lying in a hammock at William Duffy's farm in Pine Island, Minnesota. Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly asleep on the black trunk, blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, the cowbells follow one another into the distance of the afternoon.

To my right, in the field of sunlight between two pines, the droppings of last year's horses blaze up into golden stones. I lean back as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over looking for home. I have wasted my life."

ROBERT BLY: See the tremendous number of articles that have been written trying to understand that last line. And people would say, well, if he wrote a great poem like that, how could he have wasted his life?

KATHERINE LANPHER: One of the things that strikes me about James Wright poetry is he does have killer last lines.

ROBERT BLY: Really?

KATHERINE LANPHER: Oh, yes. And in fact, I know that there was that poem of his that was just dedicated in a memorial by Rochester. Garrison Keillor was behind that. And I think-- could you read that one for us?

ROBERT BLY: Sure.

KATHERINE LANPHER: That's the one that always makes me swoony.

WILLIAM DUFFY: I think it's "Down on Highway 52."

ROBERT BLY: Yeah. We had been-- Jim and I had been visiting Bill in Pine Island, and then we drove towards Rochester. I don't know why.

And so about halfway there, Jim saw a couple of ponies in the field. And he said, let's pull off Robert. And I said, OK.

So we pull off and he walks-- I remember we walked over to the fence. And he was fond of those two ponies. And what you have to notice is a tremendous amount of the delicacy of Chinese poetry, comes into here.

KATHERINE LANPHER: The translations were just beginning to come over to this country--

ROBERT BLY: That's right.

KATHERINE LANPHER: --around that time.

ROBERT BLY: That's right. Usually, there's a lot of tough guy poetry. And this one is not a tough man poetry. I'll read it to you, "A Blessing"

"Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies darkened with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows to welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture where they have been grazing all day alone.

They ripple tensely. They can hardly contain their happiness that we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home, once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slender one in my arms, for she has walked over to me and nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white.

Her mane falls wild on her forehead. And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear that is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly, I realized, that if I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom."

So you see, there's something so healing about the end. We're looking at a person who is, in a way, a puritanized by fundamentalist religion and told that his body was evil. And here he sees these two ponies and they give him permission. They give him permission to say, "suddenly I realize if I stepped out of my body, I would break into blossom. Isn't it a gorgeous thing?

KATHERINE LANPHER: It is a gorgeous thing.

ROBERT BLY: They took a poll of American high school students about five years ago, gave them 100 poems and this one came out the first.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Did it really?

ROBERT BLY: On my high school students.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Wow! I didn't know that. We are talking to Robert Bly and William Duffy. William Duffy, a poet who spent decades teaching high school English and French in Grand Marais, Minnesota, contributing to National Poetry Journals. Robert Bly, a poet and translator, perhaps best known for his bestseller Iron John.

They're being honored today for their cheek of some 40 years ago when they founded a poetry journal called The 50s out of a farmhouse in Madison, Minnesota. The journal's been credited with helping to bring about the postwar poetry evolution in this country, a movement away from formalism to free verse. The journal reflected not only its founders' strong feelings on poetry, but also their sense of humor. Unless, of course, you were one of the people who got the rejection letter comparing your poem to false teeth.

There'll be a reception and a reading at 7:30 PM tonight at the Black Dog Cafe, 308 Print Street, Saint Paul. It's free and open to the public. Meanwhile, if you would like to join our conversation with Robert Bly and William Duffy, we're going to go to a news break and then they're going to be sharing more of their poetry.

But you can also join them in conversation. It's 1-800-242-2828, 1-800-242-2828. In the Twin Cities, it's 651-227-6000, 651-227-6000. I'm Katherine Lanpher. We're going to go to William Wilcoxen for a look at the latest news from the Minnesota Public Radio newsroom.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: Thank you, Katherine. Yugoslavia's president has refused to meet with a special US envoy. Christopher Hill flew to Belgrade today from the peace talks in France to urge Slobodan Milosevic to accept the Kosovo peace plan and the NATO troops that would enforce it.

US officials say Hill is now headed back to Paris following Milosevic's refusal to meet with him. Western diplomats have begun pulling out of Yugoslavia as the deadline nears for a peace deal. Aid organizations are still doing their work despite the threat of NATO airstrikes.

Consumer prices rose a barely detectable 1/10 of 1% last month. But in a separate economic report, the Commerce Department says the nation's trade deficit surged to an all-time high last year as a global recession triggered the first drop in exports in 13 years. Officials in Miami are going to court to gain control of a construction site where ancient Indian ruins have been found. Archaeologists say the stone circle could be part of a ceremonial temple. A developer wants to move the circle to make way for two apartment buildings.

Striking school bus drivers in Thief River Falls will be back at the bargaining table this weekend. Drivers and the Thief River Falls School Board will meet tomorrow morning to discuss a new contract proposal. Drivers went on strike yesterday after mediation failed to resolve a contract dispute.

Minneapolis DFLer Phyllis Kahn calls the University of Minnesota Board of Regents one of the worst old boy networks in the state. The four new regents selected by the legislature yesterday are all men. A chance of light snow in Western Minnesota and along the North Shore of Lake Superior today, partly to mostly cloudy skies elsewhere in the state. Highs today generally in the 20. For the Twin cities, partly cloudy with a high around 27 degrees. And that's the latest from the newsroom, Katherine.

KATHERINE LANPHER: All right. Thanks, William.

SPEAKER 1: You've been procrastinating and you still haven't gotten those tickets to see A Prairie Home Companion this weekend. Well, now's your chance. Get a $10 rush ticket by stopping by the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown Saint Paul Saturday morning. You'll get a number, then you can grab your latte and get on with your whirl of a day.

But come back at 4:15 when we start selling tickets in numbered order. The Fitzgerald box office opens Saturday morning at 10:00. Get in line, get your number, and then be there in person for the great guests, and music and all the news from Lake Wobegon on A Prairie Home companion this weekend.

KATHERINE LANPHER: I'm Katherine Lanpher. You're listening to Mid-Morning here on Minnesota Public Radio. We're continuing our conversation with William Duffy and Robert Bly, poets who 40 years ago, with some amount of cheek, founded a literary journal called The 50s.

It had an influence and a scope far beyond its small list of subscribers. It was able to publish young poets at the time like Galway Kinnell, James Wright, W.D. Snodgrass. It also was able to anger many members of the then literary establishment. The two co-founders are being honored tonight at the Black Dog Cafe. There will be a reading free and open to the public at 7:30 PM.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to join our conversation with Robert Bly. You might know his translations of other people's verse. His own book, in 1968, Light Around the Body won the National Book Award. He's also the author of such books as Iron John, The Sibling Society.

We're also talking to William Duffy, poet who spent decades teaching high school English and French. Bill Duffy, I happened to just completely by happenstance, talk to one of your students last night. And he has very strong memories of Jim Wright coming to your classroom to read his poems, and talk and teach. And I couldn't help but think of the opportunities you were able to give your students because of your connections with these nationally-known poets. How often did Jim Wright come up?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Well, I don't think more than a couple of times. But Robert also stopped in two or three times. These would be unannounced. I have a speaker for you today.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Yeah?

WILLIAM DUFFY: And I'd explain a little bit. And they'd read the poems and give me a chance for a break.

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: That's very modest of you. This particular student I talked to remembered very clearly having Jim Wright come into the room and read. And, of course, you have done-- I assume that you have kept up with your own poetry?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Yes, I have. In fact, the last time I was over at Robert's, he said, we ought to get a couple of books together for you, Bill. He said, you got so many poems strewn all over the place. And I said, well, you know, it's gone on 30, 40 years. Maybe there's still a lot of time left.

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: In the Great River Review, some of your poems are published as well. Are you going to share any of those with us today?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Well, I can share one about my mother--

KATHERINE LANPHER: Yeah, I'd like to hear that.

WILLIAM DUFFY: --the last night I saw her. I had an aunt who had Lou Gehrig's disease, couldn't speak anymore, but she was very intuitive. And she wrote on a piece of paper to my uncle, call Bill-- I was in Grand Marais and this is in Northfield-- to come see his mother because he won't be able to talk to her anymore if he doesn't come down today. So my uncle called me and I headed down to Northfield. That was the last time--

KATHERINE LANPHER: What did your uncle say?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Well, he just told me that he read the note. This is the note that she wrote. He said she couldn't speak, so she would write these notes.

And she woke up in the night and wrote that note to him. And my mother died on feast of Saint Bridget's, February 1. And Saint Bridget was a Duffy so it was very appropriate.

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: All right, Bill Duffy.

WILLIAM DUFFY: It's called "The Last Night." The beckoning call brought years of road flurries from Grand Marais to Northfield to a frail white rose limped, hunched over, surrounded by a wheelchair and alien bed, guilty for food she hadn't eaten. My last goodbye I knew and daring question time. I'd have been kinder a couple more times.

Get me out of here. The priest can't. Your brother won't. And my mumblings were swallowed up by the clammy nursing home ghosts.

Early January dusk settled on those shiny hands, blurring her faint smile as she picked at her meal while orderlies filled voids. Each set of farewell kisses, eternal prayers in the dark night thickened in my veins, peeling away the years in my heart until I finally pulled my legs down that long gray hall with those last glorious words of hers. You'll never know how much I've loved you. Dying on St. Bridget's day, she lived a thousand months. The only time she ever hurt me was the night she died.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Thank you, Bill Duffy. We're going to go to Steve in Bloomington. Welcome to Mid-Morning, Steve. Thanks for joining our conversation.

STEVE: Hello. Am I on?

KATHERINE LANPHER: Yes, you are.

STEVE: All right, I'd just like to say a comment to Mr. Bly. I'm a big fan of yours. Actually, I was on-- seven years ago, I was in Abiquiu, New Mexico, down at the Ghost Ranch where Georgia O'Keeffe used-- I guess, live or reside for a while. I was in their gift shop down there.

I found a 10-page translated poems, love poems. But my girlfriend at the time gave it to me. It was seven years ago.

And I was like it was Abiquiu, New Mexico. I'm like, wow, I found this little pamphlet. I still have it to this day.

I have them on my book collections, I just wanted to say. I couldn't believe it here I am down in New Mexico in a small town, and I found some of your works. It was kind of-- I wasn't expecting to find any there. So that's all--

ROBERT BLY: That's right.

STEVE: And I just want to say I'm a big fan and thanks for all your writings and everything.

ROBERT BLY: Thank you so much.

STEVE: And I'll ring up. Thank you.

ROBERT BLY: Thank you for calling.

KATHERINE LANPHER: All right. Thanks, Steve. Now, here we have these lovely fan letters, and you sent out all those nasty rejection letters when you had your journal The 50s. I'm curious, did the two of you get rejection letters and that's how you knew how to write such funny ones?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Well, you see, we were very bold and brash, that's true. And sometimes maybe we look back on it and maybe it was too much. Perhaps we were really unkind many times. But we think it was worth it.

[LAUGHS]

ROBERT BLY: Yeah. I wouldn't have sent some of those now, but we got some wonderful letters back. Here's the one-- someone sent me a poem called "Walking Wounded" and Bill wrote the rejection slip.

"Dear Mr. Bly, your reaction to "Walking Wounded" is better than no reaction at all. I was beginning to think you were completely vegetable. My poem, "The Wounded Hypotenuse," will rampage on the pages of Contemporary Review, June issue, along with, quote, "music and the death of Mr. E.E. Cummings." I'll send you a copy so you can see what a real literary magazine looks like. Perhaps Mr. Duffy will read it to you.

[LAUGHS]

It's not bad.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Wait a minute. But the poem was called the "Wounded Hypotenuse?"

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, his poem is.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Oh, I'm sorry.

[LAUGHS]

Yeah, you really [INAUDIBLE].

ROBERT BLY: Why not? He wrote some good. Dear Mr. Bly, about other languages. We really emphasize the great poetry in other languages. And Harry Smith, who was an editor of a wonderful magazine in New York at the time, wrote us this letter.

Dear Bly, about other languages, as far as I know, English is richest in poetry. Naturally, there have been great poets writing in other languages too. I don't even doubt the lovely poems are written in China, but I am unaware of any China man who has done as well as John Donne. See, that's the mood of that time.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Oh, that is the mood.

ROBERT BLY: Whoa, whoa!

KATHERINE LANPHER: Now, I was going to ask you if you had any women who were published in The 50s.

ROBERT BLY: Oh, yes, we did.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Yeah, OK. Because in all the different interviews and the research I found, it was just-- it was just men. And I was curious. We're going to go to Andrew in Minneapolis. Welcome to Mid-Morning.

ANDREW: Yes. Hi.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Hi.

ANDREW: I was just-- I just have a comment concerning rhythm, and meter and tradition in poetry. That I think free verse has really broke the reins for a lot of great expression in poetry nowadays, but I also think it's really important. And a lot of poets nowadays seem to be missing that.

Well, there's a great Australian poet named John Kinsella, and he seems to-- he seems to have it somewhat. But sometimes I think you can look at men like William Yates, who found ways to express things in certain stanzaic forms and/or in free verse, and I think it's really important that we hold that tradition. But we also-- because sometimes I think like a villanelle can express things that maybe you couldn't do in free verse. And by making yourself use these old forms, it shows that you're adhering to tradition but also finding new ways to express it in these old forms.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Andrew.

ROBERT BLY: I agree with you. It's gone too far in the other direction now. If we had a magazine now, we'd probably defend some really good metered verse.

KATHERINE LANPHER: So does that mean you don't like prose poems, for instance?

ROBERT BLY: No, I like prose poems, but it doesn't have to be considered the only kind. I just finished editing a book called Best American Poetry of '99, which is you choose 75 of the best poems published in American literary magazines in the last year. And I ended up in the introduction praising Richard Wilbur for a wonderful, metered poem that was in The New Yorker about at Christmas time. And this man is right that things can be said with that, that cannot be said in free verse.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Some of these forms are so beautiful. He mentioned a villanelle. Can you for people-- when I do shows, for instance, on education, I make people define what a tax levy is or what pedagogy is in terms of education. So I'd like to do the same thing with poetry. Can you tell us what a villanelle is?

ROBERT BLY: Well, in the iambic pentameter, you have 10 syllables only. And it's an alternate rhythm, like, as the waves make toward the pebble shore. And then the Arabs and many others have much more complicated meters. And the villanelle is an adaptation of some of that in which you end-- maybe you have five or four words and you end all the lines with one of those words.

It really makes you think in order to be able to say something fresh. And yet the delight is seeing this word house and field or girl come up at the end of every other line. So it's beautiful.

KATHERINE LANPHER: I'm curious if the way that you taught poetry, Bill Duffy, over the years changed.

WILLIAM DUFFY: I didn't teach creative writing really. I only taught the poetry that was in the anthologies. And of course, you get a feeling for it a little more.

But I did use exercises a couple of times a year where I asked the students to write their own poems. In fact, I forced them to write their own poems and then would sometimes print all their poems into a book using the Minnesota Press. And they enjoyed that immensely. And then, of course, the next year they knew their poems were going to be in maybe a book and so they they'd make another attempt, a better attempt.

KATHERINE LANPHER: We're going to go to Mary in Minneapolis. Welcome to Mid-Morning.

MARY: Yes. Hello.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Hello.

MARY: I'm just enjoying this so much. I want to tell you, Robert Bly, that I have a copy of your book, News of the Universe. And it is totally tattered and I have carried it all over the world with me. And I think it's all but saved my life.

ROBERT BLY: Thank you.

MARY: And your translations of Rilke, which I have given away to friends and have been very, very supportive and wonderful. So thank you for that and all the other good work you've done. I also wanted to tell you that I was a student of James Wright.

ROBERT BLY: Really?

MARY: At the University of Minnesota in the '50s. And I was in his writing class of his.

ROBERT BLY: Wow!

MARY: I have written a story about this, which I have yet to get published, but it's--

ROBERT BLY: Why don't you send it to me? 1904, Girard Avenue, South Minneapolis.

MARY: What is it?

ROBERT BLY: 1904 Girard, G-I-R-A-R-D, Avenue, South Minneapolis, 55403. I'd love to see that story about Jim's teaching.

MARY: Well, I have to tell you, in there-- I would thank you very much for the offer. I will do that after I work up it up again. I wrote it many years ago.

But in there I describe him as smelling of plowed fields and flannel shirts. And he was this warm, incredible man. And I was very pleased because he gave us an assignment on love.

And he wrote my-- read my piece to the class. I wish I had that now. But he took me into his office, which he shared with Robert Penn Warren, who I describe as a black crow.

[LAUGHS]

And he talked to me about how important it was to write for writing's sake.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you.

KATHERINE LANPHER: When Jim Wright taught here, that was a particularly rich time, it seems to me. When you moved to the Twin Cities and you were interested in writing, eventually someone tells you about this time when Robert Lowell was at the University of Minnesota and Jim Wright was there. Of course, they were in different departments. And Jim Wright came to grief at the University of Minnesota, didn't he? I mean, they fired him.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah. This sort of thing, especially the emphasis on spontaneity and freshness, doesn't come without paying a price. And there are many people in the English department at the University of Minnesota that hated that, and I've never forgiven any of them.

So it is true that he went off, I remember, for a lecture, a little reading tour three or four days. And when he got back, his roommate, a person he was with in the office said, listen, Jim, I have to tell you this. There was a tenure meeting held while you were gone and you didn't make it. And they didn't give him a chance to answer. And one of the charges against him was that he had asked to have been given a lecture on classic language, and he gave a talk on Ring Lardner.

[LAUGHS]

And Allen Tate walked out. But by the end, the classics club stood up and gave him a standing ovation because he pointed out in Ring Lardner's language, there was no thing ornamental. Every word kicked in exactly like that.

And he said, if you'll read it, horse is the same way. And the classic-- that's how brilliant he was. The classics department, gave him a standing ovation. But meanwhile, Tate had already gone and Tate voted against him, too.

KATHERINE LANPHER: And Tate was the department--

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, so that was disgraceful on the part of the University of Minnesota. That they tried to make it up a little bit lately by buying all of his papers, which are now at the University of Minnesota along with John Berryman's papers so that was good. And the University of Minnesota, I think, has a much more open English department now.

KATHERINE LANPHER: It's interesting to try to think back to a time when the debate over metered formal verse versus free verse could be so intense that people would lose tenure over it.

ROBERT BLY: I'll tell you another funny story. Jim came out to the farm and he was looking depressed. And I said, what's the matter? He'd come out on the weekends. He said, I should have known better.

I said, what did you do? Last night, I was with people in the English department and I recited a couple of lines of Whitman.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Walt Whitman?

ROBERT BLY: Yeah. And there was a total silence. And finally, one of the wives said, just name one line of Whitman that's good.

Just name one. Just go ahead. Just name one.

And he said, how could I-- how could I be so stupid? That anger against Whitman is past, but there was a part of that thing you're talking about. It was really fresh. And so Jim would walk into these things.

WILLIAM DUFFY: And you see, we couldn't have done what we did in those times if we had been associated with a university at all. We were free to criticize the universities and the writing associated with them. And we wouldn't lose our jobs because we didn't have any.

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: One of the things that strikes me is that one of the reasons you were able to have so much fun with this literary journal is because, if you'll excuse this vernacular, the establishment of poetry was so uptight, you couldn't even recite Walt Whitman at a dinner party without someone acting as if you had just pooed it on the table, right?

ROBERT BLY: That's right. And they wouldn't support any women poets and they wouldn't support any South American poets.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Exactly. And I had a little time with Robert, too, because he had a Protestant ethic of always wanting to work, work, work, work all the time, even on the free verse things.

[LAUGHS]

ROBERT BLY: That's true.

KATHERINE LANPHER: When did when did the two of you actually decide to start this journal? Do you remember?

ROBERT BLY: I remember Carol Bly and I were driving past Pine Island. And she said, Bill Duffy-- no, not Pine Island. It was--

WILLIAM DUFFY: Clara City.

ROBERT BLY: And she said, there's a man named Bill Duffy teaching English here. Let's stop and see him. I said, OK.

So we went in and he came back from school and mind if I tell this story. The telephone rang. It was a superintendent. Superintendent said, Mr. Duffy, it's not necessary to discuss prostitution in the seventh grade.

[LAUGHS]

Well, there it was, a little spontaneity popping out, getting past. It wasn't Longfellow or something else. So I said, wow, this man has got a little spark in there. And so later, we decided we had so much fun talking about poetry, we might as well cause trouble.

KATHERINE LANPHER: There you go. We are talking to Robert Bly and William Duffy. William Duffy is a poet who spent most of his career teaching high school English and French in Grand Marais, Minnesota. Robert Bly, poet, translator, the author of the best selling Iron John.

They're being celebrated tonight at the Black Dog Cafe at 308 Prince Street in Saint Paul with a reception and reading sponsored by the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Red Wing and also the Great River Review. What's being celebrated? Well, their cheek of 40 years ago when they founded a literary journal called The 50s out of a farmhouse in Madison, Minnesota.

If you would like to join our conversation with William Duffy and Robert Bly, call 1-800-242-2828, 1-800-242-2828. In the Twin cities, it's 651-227-6000, 651-227-6000. Robert Bly read the poem "A Blessing" earlier by James Wright. And if you are curious about where that poem has been dedicated, there is a bronze plaque at the I-90 High Forest Safety Rest Area outside of Rochester, Minnesota. And the plaque features this poem, "A Blessing" by poet James Wright.

Since we've been getting some phone calls about how to find the work of James Wright, the new complete poems is just out. It's called Above the River. We are going to Brian in Saint Paul. Welcome to Mid-Morning, Brian.

BRIAN: Hello. Thanks for taking my call. And I'm on a car phone so I apologize if I disappear off the face of the Earth here.

KATHERINE LANPHER: All right.

BRIAN: I had a question about professionalism in the arts and American cultural depravity in general. I'm a musician and I'm visiting Europe. I noticed that you can put on a resume that you are a musician there, and they all understand that that means that you've been trained and you dedicated yourself to it. Whereas, in the United States, if you say you're a musician, people say, oh, yeah, my dad's a musician and he can play two or three ragtime songs on the piano or something like that.

I was wondering if poetry, if you feel that that's the same way in the United states, if you feel that there is-- what is the difference between a poet and someone who just composes poetry? And is that an important distinction to make at all?

ROBERT BLY: Bill, what do you say?

KATHERINE LANPHER: I am curious to hear what you think, Bill Duffy, especially because you and Robert Bly went on divergent paths. And you spent all that time teaching. I think of you as a poet. Did you think of yourself as a poet while you were also a teacher?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Oh, yes, I thought myself a poet. But back in the '40s, I think, as we mentioned before, poets were thought of as heroes. Someplace along the line, everybody wrote a poem. And so poetry lost its influence or poets lost their influence. But I think now in modern times, a poet has-- that we've made the circle again where I believe poets again are becoming-- really good poets are becoming heroes again.

ROBERT BLY: That's nice. One thing you can say, the difference between a poet in the European sense and one who simply writes a lot of poetry is the one who is a poet always compares his work to the best. And if it isn't good enough, he feels ashamed or she feels ashamed and doesn't print it.

KATHERINE LANPHER: I keep thinking of another James Wright story. Obviously, I'm a James Wright fan. But when you first published The 50s, your first edition of the literary journal and you sent it out to people, you got a four page, single-spaced letter from James Wright. And one of the things he said was he was so upset because another literary journal had compared him to--

ROBERT BLY: That's a wonderful story. I hadn't thought of it in this connection. The Kenyon Review reviewed James's first book, which was rather modest iambic poetry, and compared him to Keats. And James said, this isn't right. This is completely wrong.

And I think I'm going to-- he said, I went and I decided to quit writing poetry at all if it's going to be this sloppy. And then he said, I found in a mailbox a copy of The 50s, which said, we got other standards we can compare ourselves to. Then he orders a four-page, single-spaced letter talking about all of that with his typical outflow of generous feeling and his shame that his poetry wasn't better than it was at that time.

WILLIAM DUFFY: And all his poems at that time had been in form, and meter and all the old fashioned poetry that we were criticizing.

ROBERT BLY: And he was considered the leading poet in that whole world. And when he joined us--

WILLIAM DUFFY: That farm.

ROBERT BLY: Whoa! People were really mad.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Did you guys feel like you were outlaws at the time?

WILLIAM DUFFY: Yeah, I thought we felt we were like outlaws.

ROBERT BLY: I still feel like an outlaw.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Yes, we both raised a lot of hell and could be called outlaws.

[LAUGHS]

ROBERT BLY: Outlaw still has the word law in it.

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: We're going to go to Dave in Minneapolis. Welcome to Mid-Morning.

DAVE: Welcome. Thanks for having me. My question goes to a book I read a couple of years ago called, "Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry in American Culture." And my question is that-- I guess that's my question to you is, can poetry matter?

Or I guess what I'm saying is, when I read about former centuries, like when you read about the 18th century, you get a feeling that people like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope were a part, a vibrant part of the culture outside of poetic circles and outside of academia. And yet you come into the late 20th century and I don't get that feeling. When was the last time you went to a party and you heard someone talking about a book of poetry they were reading? Again, a party where you were outside of academia or outside of poetic circles.

And so I guess my question to you is, what is the state of poetry? Clinton just delivered his State of the Union. What is the state of poetry circa 1999? Is it still a vibrant part of the American culture?

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, thank you.

WILLIAM DUFFY: Well, just a few words. I have a theory about poetry. Whereas, history records our culture and our events in prose, I believe all poetry records our culture, and our lives and our feelings every day in our poetry. And therefore, all our poetry should be a history of our lives.

ROBERT BLY: And I must say, too, that even though there's not the concentrated attention as it was in the 18th century, poetry in America is in extremely good shape. When you compare it to poetry in Germany, in Germany, it's never left the university. They don't have any such thing as poetry readings, and poetry slams and so on. From that point of view, the poetry in the United States is really marvelous in its breadth and its intensity.

KATHERINE LANPHER: It's almost becoming-- I've been to some poetry slams and they're almost muscular in their appreciation of poetry. Now, we are running out of time. Do the two of you, either one of you, have some poetry you want to share?

ROBERT BLY: Well, he wrote a poem about his mother. Maybe I'll read one about mine, shall we?

KATHERINE LANPHER: That would be lovely.

WILLIAM DUFFY: And of course, the Irish always, I think, have beaten the English in modern poetry, don't you believe?

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, Irish poetry is marvelous.

KATHERINE LANPHER: You guys are making it sound like a soccer match.

ROBERT BLY: Yeah, well, that's right. We're the type. So this is a poem called "Thinking of Gitanjali." Gitanjali is a book by Rabindranath Tagore. And I just wanted to get the word gitanjali next to the word mink.

[LAUGHS]

And this is for my mother, who died a few months ago, "Thinking of Gitanjali." A man is walking along, thinking of Gitanjali, and a mink leaps out from under a log. I don't know why it is I want you to sit on my lap or why it is our children speak to us lovingly.

Answering that is like plotting one's political life by listening to Schubert or letting the length of your poem be decided by how many times the goldfish turns in his bowl. I do remember that boy in the third grade who said, we're friends, but let's fight. So affection intricately inserts itself. The story makes sense, I guess, like everything else had happened when you were on your way to school. And those gestures of love our mother gave us, we saved somewhere, as Tagore did, until they became evidence of the love of God.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Thank you. Bill Duffy and Robert Bly, I want to thank you both for joining us today for this hour of poetry.

WILLIAM DUFFY: It was fun.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Good.

ROBERT BLY: Thank you. I love your enthusiasm. And I loved you weeping when I was reading the James Wright poem about the horse.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Oh, you weren't supposed to tell.

ROBERT BLY: You know how to respond to poetry. Weeping is just right.

WILLIAM DUFFY: And I think you should read some of your own poems on air sometime.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Well, OK, now I'm blushing. We got to go.

[LAUGHS]

I am Katherine Lanpher thanking both Robert Bly and William Duffy for joining us today. That reading is tonight, 7:30 PM at the Black Dog Cafe. You're listening to Mid-Morning, Minnesota Public Radio.

GARRISON KEILLOR: A Prairie Home Companion, live from Saint Paul this week with Irish music from Solas, rhythm and blues from Kelly Hunt and her band, The Guys' All-Star Shoe Band, Guy Noir, Radio Private Eye, and the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.

SPEAKER 2: Listen for A Prairie Home companion Saturday afternoon at 5:00 on all MPR stations and again Sunday at noon on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KATHERINE LANPHER: Mid-Morning is produced by Kerry Dwyer. Our assistant producer is Shirley Idelson. We also had production help this week from John Bischoff and Steve Griffith. Melanie Sommer is the executive producer.

I'm Katherine Lanpher. You have been listening to Mid-Morning here on Minnesota Public Radio. And we're going to go to--

JOHN RABE: Hey, Katherine.

KATHERINE LANPHER: --John Rabe.

JOHN RABE: It's Robert Bly who gave me some of the best advice ever.

KATHERINE LANPHER: Really?

JOHN RABE: And that was-- do you remember telling me this? You can never read a poem too slowly out loud.

[LAUGHS]

KATHERINE LANPHER: That's actually really good.

JOHN RABE: You can read one word a minute, and the words would sink in and it would really work. Gary Eichten is off for the last day today. So I'm filling in on Midday from, well, just a few minutes until 1 o'clock.

First hour, we're going to talk about landmines. And our guest is the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jody Williams, also co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. The United States' taken a lot of heat for not signing on to the Ottawa Convention to ban landmines. We'll talk about that and other landmine topics.

In the second hour, we're going to get a lot of context from General Wesley Clark, who is, in fact, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, somebody who will be making a lot of the decisions to come. And perhaps just less than the next 24 hours--

KATHERINE LANPHER: Exactly. That deadline is tomorrow.

JOHN RABE: --as the situation heats up in Kosovo. That's noon to 1:00, General Clark.

KATHERINE LANPHER: All right, it's all coming up.

SPEAKER 3: Coming up on Sound Money this week, a look at the future of Social Security with Olivia Mitchell, executive director of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School. Sound Money, Saturday morning at 10:00, again Sunday afternoon at 5:00 on Minnesota Public Radio KNOW on FM 91.1.

KATHERINE LANPHER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. It's mostly sunny, 18 degrees at KNOW FM 91.1 Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Twin Cities weather for today, partly cloudy, a high in the mid to upper 20s. Tonight, mostly cloudy with flurries, a low in the teens. Saturday, partly cloudy, high in the mid to upper 20s.