Robert Bly, renowned poet and author of the ground-breaking bestseller Iron John, mingles essay and verse in this profound work of mythology and Jungian psychology to explore the Shadow—the dark side of the human personality—and the importance of this inner work in confronting it.What happens when we ignore the parts of ourselves we’ve locked away?The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us: Discover Bly’s famous metaphor for the represse...

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...

Striking and moving poems that are rooted deep in the earthThe 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 impo...

Acclaimed poet and translator Robert Bly here assembles a unique cross–cultural anthology that illuminates the idea of a larger–than–human consciousness operating in the universe. The book's 150 poems come from around the world and many eras: from the ecstatic Sufi poet Rumi to contemporary voices like Kenneth Rexroth, Denise Levertov, Charles Simic, and Mary Oliver. Brilliant introductory essays trace our shifting attitudes toward the natural world, from the "old position" of dominating o...

In his numerous roles as groundbreaking poet, editor, translator, storyteller, and father of what he has called "the expressive men's movement," Bly remains one of the most hotly debated American artists of the past half century. In this new collection of poems, the National Book Award-winning poet explores the meaning of mature love in a sustained meditation on faithfulness, on the sustenance of intimacy, and on grief as the door to deep emotion.

This discussion between best-selling authors Deborah Tannen (You Just Don't Understand) and Robert Bly (Iron John) is presented as a sort of continuing education program. It is utterly delightful. The authors are both funny and serious. They care a great deal about the topic of women and men's conversational styles. The production is so well done that even questions from the audience are picked up by the microphones. This would be excellent for both bookstores and public libraries in which...

Robert Bly is in beautiful form, reading seven of his own poems from Stealing Sugar from the Castle and Coleman Barks reads some segments from the Shams Tabriz Sayings, as well as Rumi poems.A Better Listen audio production.

This album was recorded during the first public presentation addressing the subject of Bly’s latest book, The Sibling Society, and John’s forthcoming, Teach Us to Care & Not to Care. Bly and Lee share their thoughts, feelings and experiences about how and why we have become a nation of “squabbling siblings.” Discover how to identify these “half-adult” behaviors and what affect they have on society and relationships. Learn how to replace adolescent actions with adult choic...

Discover the profound and transformative journey of Robert Bly, an American poet, essayist, activist, and luminary of the mythopoetic men's movement. Known for his exploration of "Men and the Wound," Bly has astonished and enlightened audiences over the years with his mystical vision of the universe, where animals, plants, and objects stand as equals with humanity. As a voice of transcendentalism and meditative mysticism, each stage of Bly's work is marked by his unwavering dedication to t...

Through poetry, music and storytelling, Robert Bly takes us on a thought provoking and entertaining journey captured by this extraordinary live audio program recorded at the Open Center in New York City. Bly says parents make it clear there are certain parts of us they don’t like, ’you’re too noisy’ … One image is to say we take that part and put it into a bag. Our independence and feeling goes into the bag, the bag is getting heavy and two miles long…You could say we spend our life until ...

Robert Bly looks beyond the individual psyche to the problems of our public life, explaining why we as a culture are so adrift. What he finds is an infantilized society in which the battle between youth and age has been won by youth. Bly argues that in the collapse of the old patriarchal world-view, we are becoming a world of "siblings" who do not look up to heroes, leaders, or God, but only sideways at an army of siblings like ourselves. Through the psychological lessons embedded in ancie...

During this talk, Iron John author Robert Bly gives a delicate and lively view of the fantastic flowering of feeling in 12th Century Provence. The feeling thought, developed from Arabic, Gnostic, and Albigensian sources, blossoms as love poetry famous at that time. In this recording, Bly distinguishes between the literal mode, the psychological mode, and the mythological mode, and locates the “Amor” or ecstatic love in the latter, which led to Sufism among the Arabs. Bly’s recitation of Pr...