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Robert Bly Biography

Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926) is an American poet, essayist, activist, and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His most commercially successful book to date was Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), a key text of the mythopoetic men's movement, which spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body.

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Robert Bly Quotes

Those of us who make up poems have agreed not to say what the pain is.

Agreed, Make, Pain, Poems, Say

Adulthood has something to do with not choosing any of the pure points of view, but living about half of what you really want to live.

Adulthood, Choosing, Half, Points, Views, Want

The models of adulthood are disappearing fast. How can two people have a new marriage if neither of them is an adult?

Adult, Adults, Disappearing, Models, People, Two

If we call the young ones, say 10 to 30 years old, 'siblings,' we can see they tend to be naturally ecological. They regard whales and owls as siblings too. That's a great advance.

Advance, Naturally, Regard, Sibling, Whales, Years

The body weeps the tears the eyes never shed.

Body, Eye, Shed, Tears

Rumi is astounding, fertile, abundant, almost more an excitable library of poetry than a person.

Abundant, Fertile, Library, Persons, Poetry

The older I get, the more beauty I see in the word renunciation.

Beauty, Older, Renunciation, See, Word

We know that the adult in a certain sense has an attitude toward life exactly opposite to the attitude of commercials. Commercials say, 'Your longing for 3. 2 beer is very important. Your longing for skin that doesn't have any wrinkles in it, that's very, very, very important. ' The adult says, 'No, I've got wrinkles, so what?'

Attitude, Beer, Know, Sense, Skin, Wrinkles

In ordinary life, a mentor can guide a young man through various disciplines, helping to bring him out of boyhood into manhood; and that in turn is associated not with body building, but with building and emotional body capable of containing more than one sort of ecstasy.

Bring, Discipline, Emotional, Men, Ordinary, Turn

My feeling is that poetry is also a healing process, and then when a person tries to write poetry with depth or beauty, he will find himself guided along paths which will heal him, and this is more important, actually, than any of the poetry he writes.

Beauty, Feelings, Healing, Poetry, Tries, Writing

Sociological prose can tell you everything, but it can't point out the grief.

Grief, Prose, Sociological

The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large.

Adolescent, Adults, Distance, Large, Miles, True

The dead made this world. We didn't make it. They made the poetry and the songs and the customs.

Customs, Made, Make, Song, World

I think that poetry is important when you are shipwrecked, when the ordinary structures that hold you up are gone.

Gone, Hold, Important, Ordinary, Shipwrecked, Thinking

Vertical thought likes to imagine the vast distances between the stars.

Distance, Imagine, Likes, Stars, Vast

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.

Calamity, Human, Humans, Obsession, Obsessions

The French still offer Sartre and Derrida rather than Pascal.

Derrida, French, Offers, Pascal, Sartre

I want nothing from You but to see You.

Nothing, See, Want

Vertical attention is not the same as, and doesn't evolve from nor imply, hierarchy. We could say that hierarchy is associated with power, and vertical attention with longing for the Divine Feminine, for the Divine Masculine, for what the Sufis call 'wine. '

Attention, Divine Feminine, Longing, Sufis, Wine

As the saying goes, you might as well be yourself; everyone else is taken.

Being Yourself, Everyone, Might, Saying, Taken

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