Robert Bly

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Bly at the Poetry Out Loud Festival, Minnesota, 2009

Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926 in Madison , Minnesota , USA ) is an American writer and protagonist of the American men's movement , whose mytho-poetic expression he represents.

Life

Robert Bly was born to Jacob and Alice Bly. The family had Norwegian roots. After graduating from high school , he joined the Navy in 1944 , where he spent two years. He then spent a year at St. Olaf College in Northfield , Minnesota, before going to Harvard University. Bly graduated in 1950 and stayed in New York for the next several years. In early 1954, he enrolled for two years in a writing workshop at the University of Iowa .

In 1956 he received a Fulbright scholarship, which enabled him to go to Norway to translate Norwegian poetry into English. Here he not only came into contact with his relatives, but also met authors such as Pablo Neruda , Georg Trakl or Gunnar Ekelöf and Tomas Tranströmer , who were hardly known in the USA. As a result he founded a literary magazine in which translations of these authors, as well as young American poets, should be published.

Bly was married to American writer Carol Bly from 1955 until their divorce in 1979 . He has been married to Ruth Ray since 1980.

plant

Bly's early poetry, collected in the 1962 volume Silence in the Snowy Fields , had a significant impact on American poetry for the next two decades. He won the National Book Award with the volume of poetry Light Around the Body , published in 1967 . He donated the prize money to the anti-war movement American Writers Against the Vietnam War , which he co- founded in 1966 . During the 1970s, Bly published eleven volumes of poetry, essays and translations. Further publications followed in the years to come.

Bly also became known in Europe with his book Eisenhans: A book about men , in which he psychologically analyzes the fairy tale of the same name by the Brothers Grimm and shows ways for men to deal with their masculinity. Already in the introduction to Bly distanced itself from the interpretation that it was his intention "to keep men back to the imperious behavior that have led to centuries of oppression of women and their feminine values." In the study of ancient myths Bly is looking for male archetypes , which he regards as necessary essential components of a balanced masculinity. Bly emphasizes the importance of male caregivers for adolescent boys and sees the fatherless society as one of the central social problems. Robert Bly leads workshops for men with James Hillman and workshops for women and men with Marion Woodman. Together with his wife he gives workshops for European fairy tales.

In 2000 Robert Bly received the McKnight Foundation's Distinguished Artist Award and in 2002 the Maurice English Poetry Award . He has published more than 40 editions of poetry, edited many other works, and provided translations from many languages, such as Norwegian, German, Spanish and others into English. The University of Minnesota bought Blys Archives in 2006. It contains more than 80,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts, notebooks, audio and video tapes and correspondence with many contemporary writers. In 2008, Bly was honored with the title of Minnesota's First Poet . In 1987 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2015 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

criticism

The author of the classic The Child in Us John Bradshaw takes up Robert Bly's theses from his personal experience of his own fatherlessness as very important. Due to the lack of male caregivers and role models, boys could not develop “healthy masculinity”.

Bly is often accused of an anti-feminist attitude and sociologists and gender researchers are criticized for accepting male behavior only as biologically predetermined and for excluding options other than the traditional male image. With his positive reference to the king , the warrior and the wild man , male dominance behavior and male violence are justified. In addition, it is not enough for critical men’s work to only deal with male self-perception, instead of engaging in a constructive dialogue between men and women.

In contrast, Bly defends his wild man as fundamentally different from the barbarian , who directs his violence outwards in an uncontrolled manner. Male self-discovery creates the prerequisite for a real dialogue between equal partners.

Works

In the 1970s, Bly published eleven volumes of poetry in which he emphasized the power of myth .

Poems

  • The Night Abraham Called to the Stars (HarperCollins, 2001)
  • Snowbanks North of the House (1999)
  • What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? Collected Prose Poems (1992)
  • Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (1987)
  • Mirabai Versions (1984)
  • This Body is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood (1977)
  • The Light Around the Body (1967) - won the National Book Award

Anthologies

  • The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures (Ecco Press, 1995)
  • Leaping Poetry (1975)
  • The Rag and Bon Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men (1992)
  • News of the Universe (1980)
  • A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War (1967).

Translations

  • Lorca and Jiminez: Selected Poems (Beacon Press , 1997)
  • Machado's Times Alone: ​​Selected Poems (1983)
  • The Kabir Book (1977)
  • Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Three Swedish Poets , Martinson, Ekeloef, and Transtromer (1975)
  • Neruda and Vallejo , Selected Poems (1971)

Nonfiction

  • The Sibling Society (Addison-Wesley , 1996)
  • The Spirit Boy and the Insatiable Soul (1994)
  • Iron John: A Book about Men (1990) (German 1991: Eisenhans: Ein Buch über Männer )
  • A Little Book on the Human Shadow (1988) (German Eagle Books 2018: The shadow. The dark sides of the human being )
  • Talking All Morning: Collected Conversations and Interviews (1980).
  • The Sibling Society (1996)
  • The Maiden King. The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine (1998)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b website of Robert Bly
  2. ↑ see enWP Carla Bly
  3. ↑ Gioia, Mason, Schoerke (eds.), Twentieth-Century American Poetics
  4. ↑ Robert Bly: Eisenhans. A book about men. Paperback edition 1993, Berlin: Knaur, p. 10
  5. ^ New York Times, March 1, 2008
  6. ^ Member History: Robert Bly. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 10, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Bly, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bly, Robert Elwood (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer with Norwegian roots
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Madison , Minnesota , USA