Robert bly essay

He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body. Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry.

Beginning in 1954, Bly studied for two years at the University of Iowa at the Iowa Writers Workshop, completing a master's degree in fine arts, along with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, and others. In 1956, he received a Fulbright Grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English.

During the sixties Bly aided the Bengali Hungryalist poets who faced anti-establishment trials at Kolkata, India. Bly's 1970 poem, "The Teeth Mother Naked At Last," later collected in his book Sleepers Joining Hands (1973), is a major contribution to anti-war poetry of the Vietnam War era.

In the latter volume, we have his sixteen most important essays, written from 1977 to 2005, though mostly in the 1980s and 1990s. The book is divided into four sections, but the essays really fall into only two categories: essays on poetry and poetics and essays on specific writers, mostly poets.