Robert Bly
Robert Bly
Robert Blyis an American poet, author, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His most commercially successful book to date was Iron John: A Book About Men, a key text of the mythopoetic men's movement, which spent 62 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 December 1926
CityLac Qui Parle County, MN
CountryUnited States of America
I have daughters and I have sons./When one of them lays a hand/On my shoulder, shining fish/Turn suddenly in the deep sea.
As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.
Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.
Be careful how quickly you give away your fire.
What does it mean when a man falls in love with a radiant face across the room? It may mean that he has some soul work to do. His soul is the issue. Instead of pursuing the woman and trying to get her alone, away from her husband, he needs to go alone himself, perhaps to a mountain cabin, for three months, write poetry, canoe down a river, and dream. That would save some women a lot of trouble.
I want nothing from You but to see You.
There are years from my childhood that I cannot remember and I cannot forget.
But our gusty emotions say to me that we have / Tasted heaven many times: these delicacies / Are left over from some larger party.
The candle is not lit To give light, but to testify to the night.
I was unfaithful even to Infidelity.
Those of us who make up poems have agreed not to say what the pain is.
I knew this friendship with myself couldn’t last forever.
Every breath taken in by the man Who loves, and the woman who loves, Goes to fill the water tank Where the spirit horses drink.
I felt a longing to compose a radical or root poem that would speak to what has its back turned to me.