Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota, and he attended Harvard University and the University of Iowa. He was a prolific author who published more than 30 books of poetry and edited a magazine to introduce foreign poets to an English audience. He also gave workshops on masculinity based on his book Iron John: A Book about Men, the founding text of the mythopoetic men’s movement. In his early poems such as “Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River” and “Waking from Sleep,” Bly used descriptions of American geography to evoke a feeling of solitude and isolation and to reveal a consciousness merging those emotions with landscapes.
More By This Poet
Driving toward the Lac Qui Parle River
I
I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota.
The stubble field catches the last growth of sun.
The soybeans are breathing on all sides.
Old men are sitting before their houses on car seats
In the small towns. I am happy,
The moon rising above...
Waking from Sleep
Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the waterlines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.
It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was...
Prayer for My Father
Your head is still
restless, rolling
east and west.
That body in you
insisting on living
is the old hawk
for whom the world
darkens.
If I am not
with you when you die,
that is just.
It is all right.
That part of you cleaned
my bones more
than once. But I
will meet...