Bly, Robert 1926–
Bly, Robert 1926–
(Robert Elwood Bly)
PERSONAL: Born December 23, 1926, in Madison, MN; son of Jacob Thomas (a farmer) and Alice (Aws) Bly; married Carolyn McLean, June 24, 1955 (divorced, June, 1979); married Ruth Counsell, June 27, 1980; children: Mary, Bridget, Noah Matthew Jacob, Micah John Padma. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Attended St. Olaf College, 1946–47; Harvard University, A.B., 1950; University of Iowa, M.A., 1956. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Lutheran.
ADDRESSES: Home—308 First St., Moose Lake, MN 55767. Office—1904 Girard Ave. Minneopolis, MN 55403. Agent—c/o Author Mail, George Borchardt, 136 East 57th St., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—odinhouse@earthlink.net.
CAREER: Poet, translator, and editor. Fifties (became Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, then Nineties) Press, Moose Lake, MN, founder, publisher, and editor, 1958–. Conductor of writing workshops. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1944–46.
MEMBER: American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Association of Literary Magazines of America (executive committee), American Poets against the Vietnam War (founder member; cochair).
AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright grant, 1956–57; Amy Lowell travelling fellowship, 1964; Guggenheim fellowship, 1964, 1972; American Academy grant, 1965; Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, 1967; National Book Award, 1968, for The Light around the Body; nomination for poetry award from Los Angeles Times, 1986, for Selected Poems.
WRITINGS:
POEMS
(With William Duffy and James Wright), The Lion's Tail and Eyes: Poems Written Out of Laziness and Silence, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1962.
Silence in the Snowy Fields, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 1962.
(Compiler, with David Ray) A Poetry Reading against the Vietnam War, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1966.
The Light around the Body, Harper (New York, NY), 1967.
Chrysanthemums, Ox Head Press (Menomonie, WI), 1967.
Ducks, Ox Head Press (Menomonie, WI), 1968.
The Morning Glory: Another Thing That Will Never Be My Friend (twelve prose poems), Kayak Books (San Francisco, CA), 1969, revised edition, 1970, complete edition, Harper (New York, NY), 1975.
The Teeth Mother Naked at Last, City Lights (San Francisco, CA), 1971.
(With William E. Stafford and William Matthews) Poems for Tennessee, Tennessee Poetry Press, 1971.
Christmas Eve Service at Midnight at St. Michael's, Sceptre Press (Rushden, Northamptonshire, England), 1972.
Water under the Earth, Sceptre Press (Rushden, Northamptonshire, England), 1972.
The Dead Seal Near McClure's Beach, Sceptre Press (Rushden, Northamptonshire, England), 1973.
Sleepers Joining Hands, Harper (New York, NY), 1973.
Jumping Out of Bed, Barre (Barre, MA), 1973.
The Hockey Poem, Knife River Press, 1974.
Point Reyes Poems, Mudra, 1974, new edition, Floating Island (Point Reyes Station, CA), 1989.
Old Man Rubbing His Eyes, Unicorn Press (Greensboro, NC), 1975.
The Loon, Ox Head Press (Marshall, MN), 1977.
This Body Is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood (prose poems), Harper (New York, NY), 1977.
Visiting Emily Dickinson's Grave and Other Poems, Red Ozier Press (Madison, WI), 1979.
This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years, Harper (New York, NY), 1979.
The Man in the Black Coat Turns, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1981.
Finding an Old Ant Mansion, Martin Booth (Knotting, Bedford, England), 1981.
Four Ramages, Barnwood Press, 1983.
The Whole Moisty Night, Red Ozier Press (Madison, WI), 1983.
Out of the Rolling Ocean, Dial Press (New York, NY), 1984.
Mirabai Versions, Red Ozier Press (Madison, WI), 1984.
In the Month of May, Red Ozier Press (Madison, WI), 1985.
A Love of Minute Particulars, Sceptre Press (Rushden, Northamptonshire, England), 1985.
Selected Poems, Harper (New York, NY), 1986.
Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, Perennial/Harper (New York, NY), 1987.
The Moon on a Fencepost, Unicorn Press, 1988.
The Apple Found in the Plowing, Haw River Books, 1989.
Angels of Pompeii, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1991.
What Have I Ever Lost by Dying?: Collected Prose Poems, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.
Gratitude to Old Teachers, BOA Editions (Brockport, NY), 1993.
Meditations on the Insatiable Soul: Poems, HarperPerennial (New York, NY), 1994.
Morning Poems, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.
Holes the Crickets Have Eaten in Blankets: A Sequence of Poems (Boa Pamphlets, No 9), Boa Editions (Rochester, NY), 1997.
Snowbanks North of the House, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.
The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.
EDITOR
The Sea and the Honeycomb, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1966.
(With David Ray) A Poetry Reading against the Vietnam War, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1967.
Forty Poems Touching Upon Recent History, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1970.
Leaping Poetry, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1975.
David Ignatow, Selected Poems, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 1975.
News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness, Sierra Books (San Francisco, CA), 1980.
Ten Love Poems, Ally Press (St. Paul, MN), 1981.
(With William Duffy) The Fifties and the Sixties (ten volumes), Hobart and William Smith, 1982.
The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau, Yolla Bolly Press (Covelo, CA), 1986.
Selected from Twentieth-Century American Poetry: An Anthology, New Readers Press, 1991.
(With James Hillman and Michael Meade) The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.
William Stafford, The Darkness around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, HarperPerennial (New York, NY), 1993.
(With Roy U. Schenk, John Everingham, and Gershen Kaufman), Men Healing Shame: An Anthology, Springer Publishing (New York, NY), 1995.
The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, Ecco Press (Hopewell, NJ), 1995.
Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems, HarperFlamingo (New York, NY), 1999.
The Best American Poetry 1999, Scribner (New York, NY), 1999.
TRANSLATOR
Hans Hvass, Reptiles and Amphibians of the World, Grosset (New York, NY), 1960.
(With James Wright) Georg Trakl, Twenty Poems, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1961.
Selma Lager, The Story of Gosta Berling, New American Library (New York, NY), 1962.
(With James Knoefle and James Wright) César Vallejo, Twenty Poems, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1962.
Knut Hamsun, Hunger (novel), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1967.
(With Christina Paulston) Gunnar Ekeloef, I Do Best Alone at Night, Charioteer Press (Washington, DC), 1967.
(With Christina Paulston) Gunnar Ekeloef, Late Arrival on Earth: Selected Poems, Rapp & Carroll (London, England), 1967.
Wang Hui-ming, Woodcut (limited edition), Epoh Studio (Amherst, MA), 1968.
(With James Wright) Pablo Neruda, Twenty Poems, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1968.
(With others) Yvan Goll, Selected Poems, Kayak, 1968.
Issa Kobayashi, Ten Poems, privately printed, 1969.
(And editor) Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo, Selected Poems, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1971.
Kabir, The Fish in the Sea Is Not Thirsty: Versions of Kabir, Lillabulero Press (Northwood Narrows, NH), 1971.
Tomas Tranströmer, Night Vision, Lillabulero Press (Northwood Narrows, NH), 1971.
Tomas Tranströmer, Twenty Poems, Seventies Press (Madison, MN), 1972.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Ten Sonnets to Orpheus, Zephyrus Image (San Francisco, CA), 1972.
Basho, Basho, Mudra, 1972.
Tomas Tranströmer, Elegy; Some October Notes (limited edition), Sceptre Press (Rushden, Northamptonshire, England), 1973.
Federico Garcia Lorca and Juan Ramon Jimenez, Selected Poems, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1973.
Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Three Swedish Poets—Martinson, Ekeloef, and Tranströmer, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1975.
Kabir, Grass from Two Years, Ally Press (Denver, CO), 1975.
Kabir, Twenty-eight Poems, Siddha Yoga Dham, 1975.
Kabir, Try to Live to See This!, Ally Press (Denver, CO), 1976.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Voices, Ally Press (Denver, CO), 1977.
Kabir, The Kabir Book: Forty-four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1977.
Rolf Jacobsen, Twenty Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, Eighties Press (Madison, MN), 1977.
Antonio Machado, I Never Wanted Fame, Ally Press (St. Paul, MN), 1979.
Antonio Machado, Canciones, Toothpaste Press (West Branch, IA), 1980.
Tomas Tranströmer, Truth Barriers, Sierra Books (San Francisco, CA), 1980.
Rainer Maria Rilke, I Am Too Alone in the World: Ten Poems, Silver Hands Press (New York, NY), 1980.
(And editor) Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke: A Translation from the German, and Commentary, Harper (New York, NY), 1981.
Rumi, Jalal al-Din, Night and Sleep, Yellow Moon Press (Cambridge, MA), 1981.
Goran Sonnevi, The Economy Spinning Faster and Faster, SUN, 1982.
Antonio Machado, Times Alone: Selected Poems, Wes-leyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 1983.
Windows That Open Inward: Images of Chile, photographs by Milton Rogovin, poems by Pablo Neruda, edited by Dennis Maloney, introduction by Pablo Neruda, White Pine Press (Buffalo, NY), 1985.
Rumi, Jalal al-Din, When Grapes Turn to Wine, Yellow Moon Press (Cambridge, MA), 1986.
Olav H. Hauge, Trusting Your Life to Water and Eternity, Milkweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN), 1987.
Ten Poems of Francis Ponge [and] Ten Poems of Robert Bly Inspired by the Poems of Francis Ponge, Owl's Head Press (Riverview, New Brunswick, Canada), 1990.
Lorca and Jimenez: Selected Poems, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1997.
(With Sunil Dutta) Ghalib, The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib: Selected Poems of Ghalib, Ecco Press (Hopewell, NJ), 1999.
(With Roger Greenwald and Robert Hedin) The Roads Have Come to an End Now: Selected and Last Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2001.
Tomas Tranströmer, The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 2001.
Tomas Tranströmer, Air Mail: Brev 1964–1990, Bonnier (Stockholm, Sweden), 2001.
Kabir, Kabir: Ecstatic Poems, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 2004.
The Winged Energy of Delight, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.
Also translator of such volumes as Forty Poems of Juan Ramon Jimenez, 1967, and, with Lewis Hyde, Twenty Poems of Vincente Alexandre, 1977.
OTHER
A Broadsheet against the New York Times Book Review, Sixties Press (Madison, MN), 1961.
(Contributor) Ten Songs for Low Man's Voice and Piano, Mobart (Hillsdale, NY), 1978.
What the Fox Agreed to Do: Four Poems, Croissant (Athens, OH), 1979.
Talking All Morning: Collected Conversations and Interviews, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1980.
The Eight Stages of Translation, Rowan Tree (Boston, MA), 1983, 2nd edition, 1986.
The Pillow and the Key: Commentary on the Fairy Tale "Iron John," Ally Press (St. Paul, MN), 1987.
A Little Book on the Human Shadow, edited by William Booth, Harper (New York, NY), 1988.
American Poetry: Wildness and Domesticity, Harper (New York, NY), 1990.
Iron John: A Book about Men, Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1990.
Remembering James Wright, Ally Press (St. Paul, MN), 1991.
(With Jacob Boehme) Between Two Worlds, music by John Harbison, G. Schirmer (New York, NY), 1991.
The Spirit Boy and the Insatiable Soul, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.
The Sibling Society, Addison-Wesley Publishers (Reading, MA), 1996.
(With Marion Woodman) The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 1998.
ADAPTATIONS: Bly appears on the recordings Today's Poets 5, Folkways, and For the Stomach: Selected Poems, Watershed, 1974; Bly appears on the videocassettes On Being a Man, 1989, A Gathering of Men, 1990, and Bly and Woodman on Men and Women, 1992.
WORK IN PROGRESS: The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations.
SIDELIGHTS: Robert Bly is one of America's most respected and influential poets. Since the 1960s, Bly has practiced a poetry that is nonacademic, based in the natural world, the visionary, and the realm of the irrational. In addition to his verse, he has drawn attention for his theories on the roots of social problems, and his efforts to help men reclaim their masculinity and channel it in a positive direction. Believing that modern man has become lost with his primitive roots, he often focuses on the hidden connections between the natural world and the human mind, and their surreal interactions. Bly's poetry is often categorized as part of the deep image school of writing, in which the poet employs a system of private imagery; however, Bly's wish is not to create a personal mythology, but rather to describe modern American life through powerful metaphors and intense imagery. Two of his major inspirations in this regard have been Spanish-language writers César Vallejo and Federico Garcia Lorca. Hugh Kenner, writing in the New York Times Book Review, remarked that "Bly is attempting to write down what it's like to be alive, a state in which, he implies, not all readers find themselves all the time."
Born in western Minnesota, Bly grew up in that state in a community dominated by the culture of Norwegian immigrant farmers. After two years in the navy, he attended St. Olaf College in Minnesota for one year, then transferred to Harvard University. There he associated with other graduates who went on to make their name as writers, including Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, John Hawkes, George Plimpton, and Kenneth Koch. After his graduation in 1950, Bly spent some time in New York City before studying for two years at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, along with W.D. Snodgrass and Donald Justice. In 1956, he traveled on a Fulbright grant to Norway, where he translated Norwegian poetry into English. Translation would continue to be an important activity for him throughout his career. While in Norway, he discovered the work of many poets who would influence him greatly, including Neruda, Vallejo, and Gunnar Ekeloef. He founded his literary magazine and publishing house, The Fifties (which later changed its name to reflect the passing decades), as a forum for translated poetry. Returning to Minnesota, he took up residence on a farm there with his wife and children.
Bly's first widely acclaimed collection was Silence in the Snowy Fields. In an author's note, Bly stated that he is "interested in the connection between poetry and simplicity…. The fundamental world of poetry is an inward world. We approach it through solitude." He added that the poems in this volume "move toward that world."
In 1966, Bly cofounded American Writers against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. After winning the National Book Award for The Light around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the antiwar effort. The 1970s were a prolific decade for him, in which he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. He was strongly influenced by the work of Robert Graves, and his poetry showed his interest in mythology and pre-Christian religion.
In 1979, Bly and his wife divorced, an event which precipitated a serious crisis of the soul for the poet. His emotional journey through this time eventually led him to begin leading men's seminars, in collaboration with James Hillman and Michael Meade. Participants were encouraged to reclaim their male traits and to express their severely repressed feelings through poetry, stories, and other rites. During these seminars, Bly was quoted as saying in Newsweek, the emotions can run high. "On the first night of a seminar," he explained, "I may simply put out a question like, 'Why are you having such trouble in relationships with women, or your father?' And the amount of grief and loneliness that pours out is tremendous. So sometimes by the third day there'll be a lot of weeping."
Bly's work in this area led to the character of "Iron John," based on a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm; it came to stand for an archetype that could help men connect with their psyches. It is Bly's belief that modern men are greatly damaged by an absence of intergenerational male role models and initiation rituals. In his preface to Iron John: A Book about Men, he wrote, "The grief in men has been increasing steadily since the start of the Industrial Revolution and the grief has reached a depth now that cannot be ignored." Some critics found Bly's work in this vein to be anti-feminist; he replied by acknowledging and denouncing the dark side of male domination and exploitation. Bly posits a "Wild Man" inside of each male, an archetypical figure who leads men into their full manhood. Not an advocate of machoism or destructive behavior, Bly emphasizes that true masculinity contains such virtues as courage, strength, and wisdom. Still, some feminists continued to argue that Bly was advocating a return to traditional gender roles for both men and women, and other critics assailed what they saw as Bly's indiscriminate, New Age-influenced salad of tidbits from many traditions. Others found great value in the book, stressing its importance to contemporary culture's ongoing redefinition of sexuality. As Deborah Tannen put it in the Washington Post Book World, "This rewarding book is an invaluable contribution to the gathering public conversation about what it means to be male—or female." Bly's poetic style comes through in his prose as well. "To be sure, Bly's quirky style of argumentation does not follow a linear model from Point A to Point B," Dan Cryer noted in the Detroit News. "When he uses poems to make a point, clarity sometimes suffers. And his metaphorical language no doubt will put off some readers. Once a reader catches on, though, the rewards are plentiful." Iron John was at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for ten weeks and stayed on the list for more than a year. A related video-cassette, A Gathering of Men, was an equally phenomenal success.
Bly put forth more "timely and important" ideas on social ills in his 1997 book The Sibling Society. In it, he contends that North Americans are like a race of perpetual adolescents; that young children grow up too quickly, yet never quite finish the process to become full-fledged adults. The result is a world full of people who lack empathy or sympathy, whose lives are self-serving and detrimental to the human race as a whole. The root of these problems, in Bly's opinion, is the erosion of respect for authority of all sorts. As Andres Rodriguez wrote in National Catholic Reporter, the poet finds that "consumer capitalism, in other words, has created a savage society where greed and desire extend almost limitlessly on the horizontal plane, while the vertical plane (for example, tradition, religion, devo-tion) is nearly totally absent." John Bemrose, reviewing The Sibling Society in Maclean's, remarked that while Bly is not the first person to present the ideas found in his book, "he brings a unique ability to bear on the subject as an interpreter of folktales and great literature," and explains the way "a constant bombardment of advertising keeps the hunger for new goods raging, and as corporations convince politicians that they must be allowed to do what they like (essentially taking over the leadership of society), people succumb to an infantile need for instant gratification." The poet "makes a convincing stab at defining maturity, championing such traditional virtues as self-discipline and a concern for others, as well as less obvious qualities, including a deeper respect for the gifts of the dead to the living. Bly's cranky and often brilliant jeremiad is not going to please apologists for the consumer society. But that alone should be enough to recommend it."
Throughout his career, Bly has maintained his devotion to translating the world's visionary poetry, in part as an effort to furthering multicultural understanding. His collection The Night Abraham Called to the Stars reflects his interest in other cultures; the poems in it are stylized versions of a Middle Eastern lyric known as the ghazal. Though traditionally a love-poem, the ghazal also regularly shifts its focus to touch on politics, myth, and philosophy. As such, it was a natural choice for Bly, and his best work in the form is "simple in diction and understated in effect," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer.
Michiko Kakutani observed in the New York Times, "What has remained constant in his work,… is Mr. Bly's interest in man's relationship with nature, and his commitment to an idiom built upon simplified diction and the free associative processes of the unconscious mind." Peter Stitt of the New York Times Book Review also emphasized the importance of free association in Bly's poetry. "Bly's method," Stitt wrote, "is free association; the imagination is allowed to discover whatever images it deems appropriate to the poem, no matter the logical, literal demands of consciousness." M.L. Rosenberg, writing in Tribune Books, noted in Bly's work a blending of European and South American influences with a decidedly American sensibility: "Bly is a genius of the elevated 'high' style, in the European tradition of Rilke and Yeats, the lush magical realism of the South Americans like Lorca and Neruda. Yet Bly's work is truly American, taking its atmosphere of wide empty space from the Midwest, and its unabashed straightforward emotionalism and spiritualism." "The energy with which the Minnesota poet Robert Bly unreservedly gives himself to his ideas, or in some cases, his prejudices," James F. Mersmann commented in his Out of the Vietnam Vortex: A Study of Poets and Poetry against the War, "makes him both one of the most annoying and most exciting poets of his time."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
BOOKS
Bly, Robert, Silence in the Snowy Fields, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 1962.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 5, 1976, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 38, 1986.
Contemporary Poets, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.
Daniels, Kate and Richard Jones, editors, On Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1982, pp. 146-152.
Davis, William Virgil, Understanding Robert Bly, University of South Carolina Press (Columbia, SC), 1989.
Davis, William Virgil, Robert Bly: The Poet and His Critics, Camden House (Columbia, SC), 1994.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 5: American Poets since World War II, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980.
Friberg, Ingegard, Moving Inward: A Study of Robert Bly's Poetry, Acta University Gothoburgensis, 1977.
Heep, Hartmut, A Different Poem: Rainer Maria Rilke's American Translators Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Robert Bly, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1996.
Howard, Richard, Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1969, revised edition, 1980.
Lacey, Paul A., The Inner War: Forms and Themes in Recent American Poetry, Fortress Press, 1972.
Lensing, George S., and Ronald Moran, Four Poets and the Emotive Imagination: Robert Bly, James Wright, Louis Simpson, and William Stafford, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1976.
Malkoff, Karl, Escape from the Self: A Study in Contemporary American Poetry and Poetics, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1977.
Mersmann, James F., Out of the Vietnam Vortex: A Study of Poets and Poetry against the War, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 1974, pp. 113-157.
Molesworth, Charles, The Fierce Embrace: A Study of Contemporary American Poetry, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1979.
Nelson, Howard, Robert Bly: An Introduction to the Poetry, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1984.
Newsmakers 1992, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.
Ossman, David, The Sullen Art, Corinth, 1963.
Peseroff, Joyce, editor, Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1984.
Poems for Young Readers, National Council of Teachers of English, for the Houston Festival of Contemporary Poetry, 1966.
Roberson, William H., Robert Bly: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography, Scarecrow (Lanham, MD), 1986.
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.
Shaw, Robert B., editor, American Poetry since 1960: Some Critical Perspectives, Dufour, 1974, pp. 55-67.
Smith, Thomas R., editor, Walking Swiftly: Writings and Images on the Occasion of Robert Bly's Sixty-fifth Birthday, Ally Press (St. Paul, MN), 1992.
Stepanchev, Stephen, American Poetry Since 1945: A Critical Survey, Harper (New York, NY), 1965, pp. 185-187.
Sugg, Richard P., Robert Bly, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1986.
PERIODICALS
America, September 28, 1996, William J. O'Malley, review of The Sibling Society, p. 34.
American Dialog, winter, 1968–69.
Antioch Review, summer, 2002, John Taylor, review of The Roads Have Come to an End Now, p. 535.
Book, January-February, 2002, Stephen Whited, review of The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, p. 70.
Booklist, October 15, 1994, Ray Olson, review of Meditations on the Insatiable Soul, p. 395; April 1, 1996, Ray Olson, review of The Sibling Society, p. 1322; May 1, 1999, Ray Olson, review of Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems, p. 1573.
Boundary 2, spring, 1976, pp. 677-700, 707-725.
Carleton Miscellany, Volume XVIII, number 1, 1979–80, pp. 74-84.
Chicago Review, Volume 19, number 2, 1967.
Chicago Tribune Book World, May 3, 1981; February 28, 1982, p. 2.
Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 1963.
Commonweal, July 23, 1971, pp. 375-380.
Detroit News, December 5, 1990, p. 3D.
English Studies, April, 1970, pp. 112-137.
Explicator, fall, 1999, Tom Hansen, review of Surprised by Evening, p. 53.
Far Point, fall-winter, 1969, pp. 42-47.
Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), April 4, 1987; December 8, 1990, p. C10.
Harper's Magazine, August, 1968, pp. 73-77; January, 1980, p. 79.
Hollins Critic, April, 1975, pp. 1-15.
Hudson Review, autumn, 1968, p. 553; spring, 1976; spring, 1978; summer, 1987.
Iowa Review, summer, 1972, pp. 78-91; spring, 1973, pp. 111-126; fall, 1976, pp. 135-153.
Lamp in the Spine, number 3, 1972.
Library Journal, October 15, 1994, p. 62; July, 1996, Terry McMaster, review of The Sibling Society, p. 140; June 1, 1997, Fred Muratori, review of Morning Poems, p. 103; October 1, 1998, Mary Ann Hughes, review of The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine, p. 118; June 1, 1999, Frank Allen, review of Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems, p. 118.
Listener, June 27, 1968.
London, December, 1968.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 18, 1980, p. 9; December 29, 1985, p. 11; October 26, 1986, p. 4; November 30, 1986, p. 11; December 2, 1990.
Maclean's, July 22, 1996, John Bemrose, review of The Sibling Society, p. 61.
Michigan Quarterly Review, spring, 1981, pp. 144-154.
Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine, January, 1994, p. 38.
Modern Language Quarterly, March, 2001, Margaret Bruzelius, "The Kind of England … Loved to Look upon a Man," p. 19.
Modern Poetry Studies, winter, 1976, pp. 231-240.
Moons and Lion Tailes, Volume II, number 3, 1977, pp. 85-89.
Nation, March 25, 1968, pp. 413-414; November 17, 1979, pp. 503-504; October 31, 1981, pp. 447-448; November 26, 2001, Ian Tromp, review of Stargazing and Sufi Poetics, p. 54, review of The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, p. 54.
National Catholic Reporter, February 7, 1997, Andres Rodriguez, review of The Sibling Society, p. 23.
National Review, May 20, 1996, Florence King, The Sibling Society, p. 66.
New Republic, November 14, 1970, pp. 26-27; January 3, 1994, p. 31A; September 16, 1996, David Bromwich, review of The Sibling Society, p. 31.
New Statesman, November 15, 1996, Kirsty Milne, review of The Sibling Society, p. 47.
Newsweek, November 26, 1990, pp. 66-68.
New York Review of Books, June 20, 1968; November 28, 1996, Diane Johnson, review of The Sibling Society, p. 22.
New York Times, May 3, 1986; May 16, 1996.
New York Times Book Review, September 7, 1975; January 1, 1978; March 9, 1980, p. 8; April 26, 1981; February 14, 1982, p. 15; January 22, 1984, p. 1; October 13, 1985, p. 15; May 25, 1986, p. 2; February 22, 1987, p. 34; September 30, 1990, p. 29; December 9, 1990, p. 15; May 29, 1994, Richard Tillinghast, review of The Darkness around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, p. 10; December 31, 1995, Bruno Maddox, review of The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, p. 8; October 11, 1998, Karen Lehrman, review of The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine, p. 11; November 18, 2001, Noah Isenberg, review of The Half-Finished Heaven, p. 68.
New York Times Magazine, February 3, 1980, p. 16.
Ohio Review, fall, 1978.
Partisan Review, Volume XLIV, number 2, 1977.
Poetry, June, 1963; March, 1996, Ben Howard, review of Meditations on the Insatiable Soul, p. 346; April, 2002, John Taylor, review of The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, p. 45.
Prairie Schooner, summer, 1968, pp. 176-178.
Publishers Weekly, May 9, 1980, pp. 10-11; October 12, 1990; March 25, 1996, review of The Sibling Society, p. 70; September 14, 1998, review of The Maiden King, p. 61; March 29, 1999, review of Eating the Honey of Words, p. 97; July 26, 1999, review of The Best American Poetry 1999, p. 84; April 23, 2001, review of The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, p. 73.
Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, number 29, 1975, pp. 95-117.
San Francisco Review of Books, July-August, 1983, pp. 22-23.
Schist I, fall, 1973.
Sewanee Review, spring, 1974.
Shenandoah, spring, 1968, p. 70.
Star Tribune, December 2, 2001, John Habich, Weird Elation, p. E1.
Texas Quarterly, number 19, 1976, pp. 80-94.
Times Literary Supplement, March 16, 1967; February 20, 1981, p. 208.
Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 12, 1987, p. 5.
TWA Ambassador, December, 1980.
U.S. News & World Report, June 24, 1996, John Leo, review of The Sibling Society, p. 24.
Utne Reader, May-June, 1996, interview with Robert Bly, p. 58.
Virginia Quarterly Review, winter, 1963.
Washington Post, October 23, 1980; February 3, 1991, p. F1.
Washington Post Book World, April 1, 1973, p. 13; January 5, 1986, p. 6; December 14, 1986, p. 9; November 18, 1990, p. 1.
Western American Literature, spring, 1982, pp. 66-68; fall, 1982, pp. 282-284.
Win, January 15, 1973.
Windless Orchard, number 18, 1974, pp. 30-34.
World Literature Today, autumn, 1981, p. 680; spring, 1994, Ashley Brown, review of Gratitude to Old Teachers, p. 378; winter, 2000, Michael Leddy, review of The Best American Poetry, 1999, p. 172.
ONLINE
Menweb, http://www.menweb.org/ (July 5, 2003), Bert H. Hoff, interview with Robert Bly.
PBS Web site, http://www.pbs.org/ (July 5, 2003), "No Safe Place: Violence against Women" (interview with Robert Bly).
Robert Bly Home Page, http://www.robertbly.com/ (July 5, 2003), Frances Quinn, interview with Robert Bly.