Robert Bly facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Robert Bly
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Bly at the "Poetry Out Loud" finals, Minnesota 2009
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| Born | Robert Elwood Bly December 23, 1926 Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | November 21, 2021 (aged 94) Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Period | 1962–2018 |
| Subjects | Masculinity |
| Literary movement |
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| Notable works |
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| Spouse |
Carol McLean
(m. 1955; div. 1979)Ruth Counsell
(m. 1980) |
| Children | 4, including Mary Bly |
Robert Elwood Bly (born December 23, 1926 – died November 21, 2021) was an American poet, writer, and activist. He was also a leader in the mythopoetic men's movement, which explored men's roles and identities.
His most famous book is Iron John: A Book About Men (1990). This book was on The New York Times Best Seller list for over a year. It became a very important book for the mythopoetic men's movement. Robert Bly won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his poetry collection The Light Around the Body.
Contents
Robert Bly's Early Life and School
Robert Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota. His parents, Alice Aws and Jacob Thomas Bly, were from Norway. After finishing high school in 1944, he joined the United States Navy and served for two years.
He then studied at St. Olaf College in Minnesota for a year. Later, he moved to Harvard University. There, he met many other young people who would become famous writers. Some of them were Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, and John Ashbery. He finished college in 1950.
In 1954, Bly went to the University of Iowa to study writing for two years. He earned a master's degree in fine arts. In 1956, he received a special grant called a Fulbright Grant. This allowed him to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While in Norway, he discovered many important international poets whose work was not well known in the United States. These poets included Pablo Neruda and Rumi. He also met some of his relatives there.
Robert Bly's Family Life
Robert Bly lived on a farm in Minnesota. In 1955, he married Carol McLean, who was also a writer. They had four children together. Carol Bly won awards for her stories and novels. Robert and Carol divorced in 1979. Their daughter, Mary Bly, is a professor and writes romance novels.
In 1980, Robert Bly married Ruth Counsell. He became a stepfather to her two children. In 2012, his daughter Mary shared that he had Alzheimer's disease. Robert Bly passed away at his home in Minneapolis on November 21, 2021. He was 94 years old.
Robert Bly's Writing Career
Bly's first collection of poems, Silence in the Snowy Fields, came out in 1962. Its simple, clear style greatly influenced American poetry for the next 20 years. The next year, he wrote an essay called "A Wrong Turning in American Poetry." In it, he said that much of American poetry from 1917 to 1963 was missing "soul" or "inwardness." He believed this was because poets focused too much on being impersonal and intellectual.
Bly thought American poetry should be more like the deep, inward-looking work of European and South American poets. He admired writers like Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke.
Activism and Later Works
In 1966, Robert Bly helped start the American Writers Against the Vietnam War group. He was a leader among writers who opposed the war. In 1968, he signed a pledge to refuse to pay taxes as a protest against the war. When he won the 1968 National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he announced he would give his prize money to groups that helped people avoid being drafted for the war.
During the 1970s, Bly published many books of poetry, essays, and translations. He often wrote about the power of myths, meditation, and storytelling. In the 1980s, he published books like Loving a Woman in Two Worlds.
His most famous book, Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), became a worldwide bestseller. It was translated into many languages. This book is known for inspiring the Mythopoetic men's movement in the United States.
Bly often led workshops for men with other writers like James Hillman. He also led workshops for both men and women with Marion Woodman. He wrote The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine with Marion Woodman.
Great Mother Conference
In 1975, Bly started an event called the Great Mother Conference. This nine-day event used poetry, music, and dance to explore human thoughts and feelings. It has been held every year since then. In the beginning, a main topic was the "Great Mother" or goddess, a figure known in many ancient cultures. This focus on the divine feminine was seen as important during the time of the Vietnam War. Over the years, the conference has explored many different traditions of poetry, myths, and fairy tales. Bly stopped attending after 2010.
Awards and Robert Bly's Legacy
Robert Bly received many honors for his work. He was named the University of Minnesota Library's Distinguished Writer in 2002. He also received the McKnight Foundation's Distinguished Artist Award in 2000.
He published over 40 collections of his own poetry. He also edited many other poetry books. He translated poetry and prose from languages like Swedish, Norwegian, German, Spanish, Persian, and Urdu. His book The Night Abraham Called to the Stars was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award.
In 2006, the University of Minnesota bought Bly's collection of writings. This included over 80,000 pages of handwritten notes, a journal he kept for nearly 50 years, and hundreds of audio and video tapes. It also contained letters he exchanged with many other writers. This collection is kept at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota.
In February 2008, Bly was named Minnesota's first poet laureate. This is a special title given to a poet who represents the state. In February 2013, he received the Robert Frost Medal. This award recognizes a poet's lifetime achievements from the Poetry Society of America.
Robert Bly's Translation Work
Robert Bly was very willing to work with others, especially in his many translation projects. He would work with people who knew the original language of a poem very well. Then, he would use his skills as a poet to create a poetic translation that captured the feeling, not just the exact words.
He was most interested in poets who showed what he called "Leaping Poetry." He explained this idea in his 1972 book Leaping Poetry An Idea with Poems and Translations Chosen by Robert Bly. He said:
My idea, then, is that a great work of art often has at its center a long floating leap... The real joy of poetry is to experience this leaping inside a poem. A poet who is "leaping" makes a jump from an object soaked in unconscious psychic substance to an object or idea soaked in conscious psychic substance. What is marvellous is to see this leaping return in poetry of this century.
This means he liked poems where the ideas or images made surprising, imaginative jumps. He believed this made poetry exciting and deep. Poets he chose as examples included Pablo Neruda and Tomas Tranströmer.
News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (1995) is a collection of poetry from around the world that Bly edited. He also translated many Eastern ecstatic poems. These included poems by Kabir, Rumi, Mirabai, and Hafez.
Robert Bly's Ideas and the Men's Movement
Much of Robert Bly's writing focused on what he saw as problems for many men today. He believed this was partly because traditional father figures were less present. This left young boys without guidance as they grew up. Bly often wrote about the "Absence of the Father." He thought that problems like sadness, youth crime, and a lack of leadership were connected to this issue.
Works by Robert Bly
Poetry Collections
- Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected and New Poems, 1950-2013 (2013)
- Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems (2011)
- Reaching Out to the World: New & Selected Prose Poems (2009)
- My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy (2005)
- The Night Abraham Called to the Stars (2001)
- Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems (1999)
- Morning Poems (1997)
- What Have I Ever Lost by Dying?: Collected Prose Poems (1992)
- Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (1985)
- The Man in the Black Coat Turns (1981)
- This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years (1979)
- Sleepers Joining Hands (1973)
- The Light Around the Body (1967) — Won the National Book Award
- Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962)
Translations by Robert Bly
- The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez (2008), with Leonard Lewisohn
- The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge (2008), with Robert Hedin
- Peer Gynt (2008) — a play by Henrik Ibsen
- Kabir: Ecstatic Poems (2004)
- Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems, with Jane Hirshfield (2004)
- The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations (2004)
- The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer (2001)
- Lorca and Jiménez: Selected Poems (1997)
- Machado's Times Alone: Selected Poems (1983)
- Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke: A Translation from the German and Commentary by Robert Bly (1981)
- The Kabir Book (1977)
- Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems (1971)
- Hunger (1967) — a novel by Knut Hamsun
Anthologies (as editor)
- The Best American Poetry (1999)
- The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures (1995)
- The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men Co-edited with James Hillman and Michael Meade (1992)
- News of the Universe (1980)
- Leaping Poetry (1975)
Nonfiction Books
- More Than True: The Wisdom of Fairy Tales (2018)
- The Maiden King : The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine, with Marion Woodman (1998)
- The Sibling Society (1996)
- Iron John: A Book About Men (1990)
- A Little Book on the Human Shadow, with William Booth (1988)
See Also
- Religion and mythology
- Joseph Campbell
- Mythopoetic Men's Movement
