Review by Booklist Review
Bly's lasting fame will probably be as the most influential voice of the men's spirituality movement and, before that, as perhaps the most highly visible writer among anti^-Vietnam War protesters. He has maintained his primary public identity as a poet, however, though critics have seen his other activities as draining the creative impetus out of his poetry, and that was the nicest thing they said. His best work has mostly portrayed a life rooted in a homeland and steady ways of livelihood--his place is rural Minnesota; his familial, if not his own, livelihood is farming--as a springboard to universal consciousness. His apocalyptic antiwar poem, "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last," is splendid of its kind; several Point Reyes Poems (1974), most of which are in prose, effectively confront nature; and newer poems concerning his father's death are starkly powerful. Those poems are all here, but so is much that is slack and sentimental--Bly's critics are not wrong. This selection, unlike, say, Yvor Winters' Selected Poems [BKL Mr 1 99], would be better if it was smaller. --Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Heeded in the '60s as the head apostle of the "Deep Image" school of poets; known for "read-ins" against the Vietnam War; and heralded again recently as the author of the men's movement guide Iron John, Bly has been famous several times over. But this broad set of poems from his whole career reveals how detrimentally little his style has changed. Fond of would-be archetypal terms like "the darkness," "fields," "stones," and "the body," Bly seeks simplicity, knowledge of the collective unconscious, solidarity with nature and confidence in his desires: these projects entail, usually, a drastic distrust of subtlety and a near-total repudiation of intellect. Some of Bly's lines make parody pointless: "My body was sour, my life dishonest, and I fell asleep"; "As for me, I want to be a stone! Yes!"; "The bear between my legs/ has one eye only,/ which he offers/ to God to see with"; "In late September many voices/ Tell you you will die"; "More of the fathers are dying each day./ It is time for the sons"Äthis last from "Winter Privacy Poems at the Shack." Some of Bly's mannerisms blossomed into brilliance in the work of his late contemporary James Wright; Bly himself has written a few standout poems, most recently the bizarre "An Afternoon in June." But Bly's real and impressive aural skills, his sense of what is easily effective, and his self-assurance, allow him to go on writing what are at bottom the same lines over and over, whether their catalyst is Vietnam, or sex, or the California coast. One might say of Bly's work, as he says of "The Storm," "It lacked subtlety and obeyed/ Something or someone irresistible"; most of his poems now seem easy to resist. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
At 73, Bly continues a long career given, like that of fellow poet Robert Francis, "to seeing what is far away." A guide to concealed spiritual powers and champion of activist movements (the anti-Vietnam War movement, the men's movement), Bly may want "To sit here,/ Take no part, be called away by wind," but he embraces numerous roles: editing off-beat anthologies and books, translating international poets, and writing poetry that seeks to be receptive to the primitive and the sophisticated, the "wild" and the ingenious. Collecting over 200 poems from 1950 to 1998, this volume is an appealing poetic sampler, although the ten new poems are unexciting. The poems celebrating discoveries Bly makes when alone and silent are always striking, and his imaginative prose poems radiate witty delight. This selection shouldn't be confused with a true representation of the full body of Bly's work, but it is useful for libraries needing a readable overview of 50 years of thought-provoking poetry.ÄFrank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
