The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made.
Robert BlyThere's a quality we could call vertical attention, which is an attention upward toward ancestors, spiritual states, angels, gods.
Robert BlyMy feeling is that poetry is also a healing process, and then when a person tries to write poetry with depth or beauty, he will find himself guided along paths which will heal him, and this is more important, actually, than any of the poetry he writes.
Robert BlyThe world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it from them for a little while. They created it, they wrote its literature and its songs, and they are deeply invested in how children are treated, because the children are the ones who will keep it going. The idea that each of us has the right to change everything is a deep insult to them.
Robert Bly