Book description
The poems of Robert Bly are rooted deep in the earth. Snow and
sunshine, barns and cornfields and cars on the empty nighttime roads,
abandoned Minnesota lakes and the mood of America now--these are his
materials. He sees and talks clearly: he uses no rhetoric nor mannered
striving for effect, but instead the simple statement that in nine lines
can embody a mood, reveal a profound truth, illuminate in an important
way the inward and hidden life. This is a poet of the modern world,
thoroughly aware of the complexities of the moment but equally mindful
of the great stream of life--all life--of which mankind is only a part.
"Mr. Bly's poems name delicate, humble things, and at the same time
describe man assuming his existence, beginning over again the test of
illusions. At the end of each poem there is silence, without
complaint." --Wallace Fowlie, New York Times Book Review ROBERT
BLY, poet, translator, editor, lives on a farm near Madison, Minnesota,
in the region where he was born. He has been dedicated to poetry even
before his student years at Harvard. Silence in the Snowy Fields, his
first book of poetry, was published in 1962. His second, The Light
Around the Body, won the 1968 National Book Award for poetry. Among
several translations is Time Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado
(Wesleyan 1983).
