Robert Bly Popular Books

Robert Bly Biography & Facts

Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), which spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and is a key text of the mythopoetic men's movement. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body. Early life and education Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, the son of Alice Aws and Jacob Thomas Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving two years. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard University, joining other young persons who became known as writers: Donald Hall, Will Morgan, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Harold Brodkey, George Plimpton and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York. Beginning in 1954, Bly studied for two years at the University of Iowa at the Iowa Writers Workshop, completing a master's degree in fine arts, along with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, and others. In 1956, he received a Fulbright Grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While there, he became acquainted with the work of a number of major international poets whose work was barely known in the United States. These included both Norwegians and writers from Spain, Latin America and elsewhere, among them Gunnar Ekelof, Harry Martinson, Georg Trakl, Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Rumi, Hafez, Kabir, and Mirabai. He also connected with some of his family's relations. Personal life Bly lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife Carol (née McLean), whom he married in 1955, and their four children. Carol Bly was also a writer, winning awards for her short stories and novels. Robert and Carol divorced in 1979. Their daughter Mary Bly is a professor at Fordham University and author of romance novels under the pseudonym Eloisa James. In 1980, Robert Bly married Ruth Counsell and became the stepfather to her two children. In 2012, his daughter Mary told Minnesota Public Radio that he had Alzheimer's disease. Bly died at his home in Minneapolis on November 21, 2021, at the age of 94. Career Bly's early collection of poems, Silence in the Snowy Fields, was published in 1962. Its plain, imagistic style had considerable influence on American verse of the next two decades. The following year, he published "A Wrong Turning in American Poetry", an essay in which he argued that the vast majority of American poetry from 1917 to 1963 was lacking in soul and "inwardness" as a result of a focus on impersonality and an objectifying, intellectual view of the world. Bly believed this approach was instigated by the Modernists and formed the aesthetic of most post-World War II American poetry. He criticized the influence of American-born Modernists such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams, and argued that American poetry needed to model itself on the more inward-looking work of European and South American poets like Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Antonio Machado, and Rainer Maria Rilke. A Selected Poems translation of Rilke from the German, with Commentary by Bly, was published in 1981. Times Alone, Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, with facing page Spanish/English translation, was published in 1983. In 1966, Bly co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and was among the leaders of the opposition to that war among writers. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the war. In his speech accepting the 1968 National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he announced that he would be contributing the $1000 prize to draft resistance organizations.During the sixties Bly aided the Bengali Hungryalist poets who faced anti-establishment trials at Kolkata, India. Bly's 1970 poem "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last", later collected in his book Sleepers Joining Hands (1973), is a major contribution to anti-war poetry of the Vietnam War era. During the 1970s, he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations. He celebrated the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 1980s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau, The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow. Perhaps his most famous work is Iron John: A Book About Men (1990). This became an international bestseller and has been translated into many languages; it is credited with inspiring the Mythopoetic men's movement in the United States.Bly frequently conducted workshops for men, together with James Hillman, Michael J. Meade, and others, as well as workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He maintained a friendly correspondence with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves. Bly wrote The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine with Marion Woodman. He published a poetry anthology titled The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart (1992), with James Hillman and Michael Meade co-editing. Great Mother Conference In 1975, Bly organized a Great Mother Conference. Throughout the nine-day event, poetry, music, and dance were practiced to examine human consciousness. The conference has been held annually; since 2003 in Nobleboro, Maine. In the early years, one of its major themes was the goddess or "Great Mother", as she has been known throughout human history. Much of Bly's collection Sleepers Joining Hands (1973) is concerned with this theme. In the context of the Vietnam War, a focus on the divine feminine was seen as urgent and necessary. Since that time, the Conference has expanded its topics to consider a wide variety of poetic, mythological, and fairy tale traditions. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was much discussion among the conference community about the changes which contemporary men were going through, so "The New Father" was added to the Conference title. Bly stopped attending after 2010. Awards and legacy Bly was the University of Minnesota Library's 2002 Distinguished Writer. He received the McKnight Foundation's Distinguished Artist Award in 2000, and the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2002. He has published more than 40 collections of poetry, edited many others, and published translations of poetry and prose from such languages as Swedish, Norwegian, German, Spanish, Persian and Urdu. His book The Night Abraham Called to the Stars was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. He also edited the prestigious Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribners). In 2006 the University of Minnesota purchased Bly's archive, which contained more than 80,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts; a journal spanning nearly 50 years; notebo.... Discover the Robert Bly popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Robert Bly books.

Best Seller Robert Bly Books of 2024

  • Morning Poems synopsis, comments

    Morning Poems

    Robert Bly

    "Morning Poems is a sensational collection Robert Bly's best in many years. Inspired by the example of William Stafford, Bly decided to embark on the project of writing a daily po...

  • When Things Get Dark synopsis, comments

    When Things Get Dark

    Ellen Datlow, Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Carmen Maria Machado & Paul Tremblay

    The Stoker Awardwinning chilling anthology of 18 short stories in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson, collecting today’s best horror writers. Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Jos...

  • A Wild Perfection synopsis, comments

    A Wild Perfection

    James Wright, Anne Wright, Jonathan Blunk & Saundra Rose Maley

    The life and work of a major American poet described in his own words."There is something about the very form and occasion of a letterthe possibility it offers, the chance to be as...

  • The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door synopsis, comments

    The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door

    Robert Bly & Leonard Lewisohn

    One of our most acclaimed poets brings the work of the great Persian mystic and poet, Hafez, to a new audience. There is no poet in our tradition who carries the amount of admirati...

  • Eating the Honey of Words synopsis, comments

    Eating the Honey of Words

    Robert Bly

    "Bly's imaginative prose poems radiate witty delight."  Library JournalA brilliant collection spanning half a century, from one of America's most powerful poets.Robert Bly had...

  • The Life and Ideas of James Hillman synopsis, comments

    The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

    Dick Russell

    James Hillman, who died in 2011 at the age of eightyfive, has been described by poet Robert Bly as “the most lively and original psychologist” of the twentieth century.  Based...

  • The Monkey Grammarian synopsis, comments

    The Monkey Grammarian

    Octavio Paz, Ilan Stavans & Helen R. Lane

    Nobel Prize–winner Octavio Paz offers a dazzling mind journey to the sources of poetry. Poet, diplomat, writer, philosopher, hailed as an “intellectual literary oneman band” by the...

  • A Little Book on the Human Shadow synopsis, comments

    A Little Book on the Human Shadow

    Robert Bly

    Robert Bly, renowned poet and author of the groundbreaking bestseller Iron John, mingles essay and verse to explore the Shadow the dark side of the human personality and the impo...

  • The Life and Ideas of James Hillman synopsis, comments

    The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

    Dick Russell & Sonu Shamdasani

    Considered to be the world’s foremost postJungian thinker, James Hillman is known as the founder of archetypal psychology and the author of more than twenty books, including the be...

  • The Night Abraham Called to the Stars synopsis, comments

    The Night Abraham Called to the Stars

    Robert Bly

    “The poems of The Night Abraham Called to the Stars mark the ripening of a new current in Bly’s career: Now in his mid70s, he is writing with tremendous energy and clarit...

  • Season of Life synopsis, comments

    Season of Life

    Jeffrey Marx

    The bestselling inspirational book in which the author reunites with a childhood football hero, now a minister and coach, and witnesses a revelatory demonstration of the true meani...

  • Meeting the Shadow synopsis, comments

    Meeting the Shadow

    Connie Zweig & Jeremiah Abrams

    The author offers exploration of self and practical guidance dealing with the dark side of personality based on Jung's concept of "shadow," or the forbidden and unacceptable feelin...

  • The Scandalous Hamiltons synopsis, comments

    The Scandalous Hamiltons

    Bill Shaffer

    An Alexander Hamilton heir, a beautiful female con artist, an abandoned baby, and the shocking courtroom drama that was splashed across front pages from coast to coastthis is the f...

  • The Winged Energy of Delight synopsis, comments

    The Winged Energy of Delight

    Robert Bly

    Robert Bly had always been amazingly prescient in his choice of poets to translate. The poetry he chose supplied qualities that were lacking from the literary culture of this count...

  • Airmail synopsis, comments

    Airmail

    Robert Bly & Tomas Transtromer

    The illuminating letters of the National Book Award winning poet Robert Bly and the Nobel Prize winning poet Tomas TranströmerOne day in spring 1964, the young American poet Robert...

  • My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy synopsis, comments

    My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy

    Robert Bly

    Readers have found Robert Bly’s ghazals startling and new; they merge wildness with a beautiful formality. The ghazal form is wellknown in Islamic culture, but only now finding its...

  • The Seekers synopsis, comments

    The Seekers

    John Densmore & Viggo Mortensen

    The iconic drummer of The Doors investigates his own relationship with creativity and explores the meaning of artistry with other artists and performers in this compelling and spel...

  • I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You synopsis, comments

    I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You

    Naomi Shihab Nye

    An awardwinning anthology of paired poems by men and women.In this insightful anthology, the editors grouped almost 200 poems into pairs to demonstrate the different ways in which ...