The out Looked Thoughts of Robert Bly

When it comes to poetry, many think of rhymes and a nice quite peaceful setting. Many find it nice to read poetry and feel a great pleasure in the literature. However when it comes to Robert Bly’s Poetry, it is sometimes the complete opposite. Bly’s poems do not rhyme and some do not have a peaceful setting. Poet Robert Bly has an uncommon style with his writing and a very direct way with his words. Reading his poetry may need second readings. Some poems may have a soft impact and others may have a hard impact, but in the end, bly gets his points across.

Bly’s odd way with words may throw someone off a bit. His different ways with his wording does this to his readers. His poems do not rhyme and he talks about some random things. Bly’s "Sleepers Joining Hands": “I sit down and fold my legs… The half dark room is delicious. How marvelous to be a thought surrounded by brains!” (Meditating 8). In that piece Robert Bly is talking about meditating and digging into his thoughts. Bly’s style with words and the form in which he puts them in could make it difficult for the reader to understand what he is saying. A lot of Bly’s work is also very straight edge. In other words, he is very direct with his work. To get a good example, here is a good message about the war in Iraq and global warming: “Tell me why we don’t lift our voices these days and cry over what is happening. Have you noticed the plans for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?” (War in Iraq 2). Bly states his thoughts on today's

biggest problems, such as global warming and the war in Iraq. Bly also uses a great use of nature. He seems to show his work as simple yet some times tough to understand. The poem “A Mountain Cabin in Norway” is a very simple and yet confusing poem. Bly states:

I look over to the other mountain side.

So many pines the eye can’t count them!

Sparks of darkness float around me.

No one comes to visit us for a week. (9).

In that poem Bly is just explaining his nice little getaway in the mountains of Norway and how many trees surround him. He also mentions on how it is starting to get dark. Then he states that no one comes to visit for a week. Which he probably enjoyed very much for the fact that he uses an exclamation point. Bly’s work is a bit odd and confusing because of big words and run-on-sentences. This sentence is from one of his poems in Sleepers Joining Hands: “I am only half risen I see how carefully I have covered my tracks as I wrote how well I brush over the past with my tail” (Cover the Past 6). That statement had no commas or periods to break it up. Bly has many ideas and thoughts when it comes to his work of poetry.

Bly gained many of his ideas and thoughts from inlisting in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. Also being in a poetry group while attending Harvard-University around the 1950’s (Robert Bly Biography1). Bly went to St. Olaf Collage in Minnesota but, after a year of being there, he transferred to Harvard University and joined a famous group of writers. He graduated in the 1950s. Attending at such a great and well-known school, Robert Bly has come up with many ideas while writing his poetry then, and in his future work. He determined to then start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States. So in the beginning of the fifties, sixties, and the seventies that introduced many of these poets to his generation (Akikaze Media Services 1). In 1956 Bly went to Norway and translated Norbueigian Poetry into English. He not only found his relatives but also great poets the United States never heard of before. In 1966 he co-founded “American Writers Against the Vietnam War” and it led to much of the opposition among writers to that war. In the 1960s Bly won a National Book award for “The Light Around the Body”. In the seventies, Bly published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations of literary work from out side countries of the United States. During the 1980s, Bly published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The winged Life, The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow. All of the books help Bly become know through out the poetry world. Bly’s Iron John: A Book About Men is an International Best Seller and is translated into many languages. Recent books by Bly are What Have I Ever Lost by Dying? Collected poems and meditations of the Instable Soul, all were published by Harper Collins (Robert Bly Biography1). Bly's work is created by many of his life experiences.

Bly’s work shows of his life’s work with many phrases and events that take place in his poems. In the one passages in Bly’s book Sleepers Joining Hands, he is talking about the governments and cretin bills being passed. “And when you try to