Bly, Robert Elwood, 1926–2021,
American writer, translator, editor, and publisher, b. Lac qui Parle County,
Mn., Harvard (B.A., 1950), Univ. of Iowa (M.A., 1956). His poems, personal
and precisely observant, are informed by the American landscape; a number
also reflect his fierce opposition to the Vietnam War. Among his volumes of
poetry are The Light Around the Body (1967; National Book
Award), Sleepers Joining Hands (1972), The Man in
the Black Coat Turns (1981), and Loving a Woman in Two
Worlds (1985). His Collected Poems were
published in 2018. As head of the Sixties Press he printed unconventional
poetry and translations from lesser-known foreign poets. Beginning in the
1980s Bly was active in the “men's movement,” concerned with
establishing a new idea of masculinity in contemporary society. In his
best-selling nonfiction work Iron John (1990), Bly traces
various passages from boyhood to manhood and urges men to explore their
relations to their fathers and to discover their primitive masculinity.
The Sibling Society (1996) and The Maiden
King (1998, with M. Woodman) build on the social criticism of
Iron John.
See studies by R. P. Sugg (1986), W. V. Davis (1989), T.R. Smith, ed., Robert Bly In This
World (2011),M. Gustafson, Born Under
the Sign of Odin: The Life & Times of Robert Bly's Little Magazine
and Small Press (2021).
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