About Robert Bly
Robert Bly, born December 23, 1926 in Minnesota, and died November 21, 2021 in Minneapolis, was a writer, poet, translator, publisher and activist of the American mythopoetic movement. He was Minnesota's first Poet Laureate. He published his first collection of poems in 1962 Silence in the Snowy Fields. His largely pictorial and metaphorical style had a considerable influence on American verse until the 1980s. In 1966, Bly co-founded the Association of American Writers Against the Vietnam War, which he would direct and be its figurehead for many years. In 1968 he signed the petition in favor of a tax protest on the war (Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) planning to refuse to pay his taxes in protest against the war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he bequeathed the prize money to this cause.During the 1970s, He published over eleven works in different genres: poetry, essays, translations, mythanalysis, Native American literature, spirituality, storytelling, etc. In the 1980s, He wrote four books: Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Winged Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau, The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
Among his most famous works is The Wild Man and the Child (Iron John: A Book About Men), an international success translated into many languages. This book is also credited with being the foundation of the Mythopoetic men's movement in the United States.
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