A Look At Robert Bly's New Collection

Robert Bly was the subject of a feature at Minnesota Public Radio, where he takes part in an interview and reads poems from his new collection Talking into the Ear of a Donkey.

From the interview, with Euan Kerr:

"A poem is always like going downhill in a sled," he says. "And you just hope that it'll gain some speed and that you won't crash at the end, and that you'll say, 'Oh wow! That's amazing!'"

But it's never a sure thing. Bly discards a lot of what he writes.

"Either I am lying about myself, or lying about someone else," he says. "Or simply my imagination fails and it's stupid. So there's a lot of throwing out that happens when you are doing a book of poems."

And, later, on the backlash Bly faced because of his poems:

Robert Bly has a reputation for fierceness at times, often railing against what he saw was wrong with the world. His book "Iron John" urged men to be more self aware and assert the positives of manhood. It attracted international attention, and a huge backlash.

"Well, that's interesting. I don't remember all that exactly, but I do remember people wanting to kill me," says Bly. "But that's not unusual."

Bly adds he is glad he raised the subject. Now his ferocity seems to be turned inwards. Robert Bly has never spared himself from introspection and rigorous self-criticism, and this appears in the new poems.

"It's hard to go through life without realizing how many of your old friends are gone, and how many disasters have taken place. So it's hard to live without a little bit of grief. Probably grief for your own idiocy would probably be part of that."

Full audio, along with input from Jim Lenfesty and Garrison Keillor, can be found by following the link above.