Robert Bly

New New books on writing poetry. Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry.

How to write specific forms:
Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka.
Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát.
Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Adam Zagajewski. Aleda Shirley. Anne Carson. The Beowulf Poet. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise.
Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Charles Atkinson. Corey Marks.
Franz Wright. Galway Kinnell. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet.
Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jorie Graham. Karen Braucher. Karl Shapiro. Kay Ryan.
Laureate Poets: Britain; USA.
Louise Glück. Len Anderson. Li Young Lee. Linda Pastan. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A).
Rainer Maria Rilke Richard Hugo. Robert Bly. Sara Teasdale. Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn. Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

Robert Bly
Poems. Prose. Time Line. Books.

Poems.

My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy

My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy.

This Tree Will be Here for a Thousand Years

This Tree Will be Here for a Thousand Years.

A very physical sixth collection. The poet walks at dawn. He fishes in the night. He bends to touch things and pick them up.

Favorite poems include:

"Out Picking Up Corn".

"Black Pony Eating Grass" with its opening deep metaphor:

Near me a black and shaggy pony is eating grass, that crunching is night being ripped away from days, a crystal's sound when it regains its twelve sides.

"Fishing on a Lake at Night" a song of praise to the quietness of lamplight and moonlight.
"Women We Never See Again" with its piled-up metaphors.
"Walking Where the Plows Have Been Turning", a marvelous prose poem.

"Amazed by an Accumulation of Snow" where he leaps from one image to another, many immensely removed from snow:

It is a shock that snow fell over the whole farm while the singer remained private and alone in his house. It is as if the African heron carved of buffalo horn suddenly would open his mounth and call, or a bell from under glass would lift and ring. The horse's hoof kicks up a seashell, and the farmer finds an Indian stone with a hole all the way through.

Prose.

Iron John.

Time Line.

1926.: Born December 23 in Madison, Minnesota to parents of Norwegian heritage.
1944.: Enlisted in Navy for two years.
1946.: At St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
1947.: Transferred to Harvard University. His fellow undergraduate writers included John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Kenneth Koch, George Plimpton, and Adrienne Rich.
1950.: Graduated from Harvard.
1954.: Began two years at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop. His fellow student writers included Donald Justice and W.D. Snodgrass.
1956.: Fulbright Grant to travel to Norway in order to translate Norwegian poetry into English.
: Started The Fifties, a literary magazine, followed by The Sixties, and The Seventies.
1966.: Co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War. Began to lead much of the opposition among writers to the Vietnam War.
1967.: Poems: The Light Around the Body; won National Book Award; Edited anthology A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War.
1971.: Translations (with James Wright and John Knoepfle): Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems.
1975.: Translations: Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Three Swedish Poets [Martinson, Ekeloef, and Tranströmer].; Edited Leaping Poetry, a small anthology of translated poetry interleaved by the author's essays.; Poems in a chapbook, Old Man Rubbing His Eyes; later printed in 1979 as the first section of This Tree Will be Here for a Thousand Years.
1977.: Poems: This Body is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood.; Translations: The Kabir Book: 44 of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir.
1979.: Poems: This Tree Will be Here for a Thousand Years. Includes many poems for Bly's 1975 chapbook, Old Man Rubbing His Eyes. [Republished with extensive revisions in 1992, indicating that the Tree changes with time.]
1980.: Edited News of the Universe, an anthology of poetry from around the world and through the ages.; Non-fiction: Talking All Morning: Collected Conversations and Interviews.
1983.: Translations: Machado's Times Alone: Selected Poems.
1984.: Translations: Mirabai: Six Versions.
1987.: Poems: Loving a Woman in Two Worlds.
1990.: Non-fiction: Iron John: A Book about Men.; Essays: American Poetry: Wildness and Domesticity.
1992.: Poems: What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? (Collected Prose Poems).; Edited: The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men, an anthology of poetry.
1994.: Non-fiction: The Spirit Boy and the Insatiable Soul.
1995.: Edited: The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, an anthology of poetry
1996.: Non-fiction: The Sibling Society.
1999.: Poems: Snowbanks North of the House.; Edited: Best American Poetry 1999
2001.: Poems: The Night Abraham Called to the Stars.
2005.: Poems: My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy.

Books.

Links and Books.

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