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
To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown.
The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.
We did not come to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, Trees that start again.
Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.
Every noon as the clock hands arrive at twelve, I want to tie the two arms together, And walk out of the bank carrying time in bags.
The door to the soul is unlocked; you do not need to please the doorkeeper, the door in front of you is yours, intended for you, and the doorkeeper obeys when spoken to.
The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing
There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.
Don't go outside your house to see flowers. My friend, don't bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it, before gardens and after gardens.
It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.
I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.
The lead either forges an instant connection with the reader, or the package fails.
The beginning of love is a horror of emptiness.
We make the path by walking.