"Robert Bly Revealed" at U of Minnesota

Submitted by Matt on Wed, 2009-09-30 17:33

Site here. For those unfamiliar, more on Bly here. Excerpt:

'Robert Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota to Jacob and Alice Bly, people of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving two years. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard University, joining the later famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, including Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Harold Brodkey, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York.
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Among his most famous works is Iron John: A Book About Men (link added), an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. The book is credited with starting the Mythopoetic men's movement in the United States. Bly frequently conducts workshops for men with James Hillman, Michael J. Meade, and others, as well as workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He has taught at the annual "Great Mother Conference" since 1975. He maintains a friendly correspondence with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.'

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Comments

To tell you the truth, I only got about half-way through his book. A little too 'mytho' for me. MR movement now needs something grounded in science, like Moxon's book, more than anything else.
-ax

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Submitted by axolotl on Wed, 2009-09-30 19:18

I view Bly as a kick-starter for men's rights, even if he didn't intend it to be that way. There were other books written prior to Iron John that addressed men's issues in a man-friendly way, but for some reason, Iron John just caught fire. I don't think Bly ever thought it would. I think the reason is that Bly wasn't making lists of what rights men should have or what 2x-standards we were being subjected to. Instead he was tacitly acknowledging that we had needs and feelings that were particular to us as men and that it was worth the time and trouble to address these needs. This is a far cry from the neck-and-above stuff that had come up before, to little avail. This approach to men worked because it said it was 1) true we had feelings and needs that were important and 2) it was all right to have these things. This is the first step toward acknowledging that we have rights. When this book first came out, the only people whose rights anyone was discussing was women's. By this time the civil rights movement as a matter of ethnicity had sputtered down and was overshadowed by the obsession with women and women's rights.

Despite being poo-poo'ed by feminists and dismissed as sissyish by housewives all over America, this book nonetheless started a stampede. Even though the MP men's movement is all but gone now, it led to what is now emerging: a men's rights movement that is focused on action and defending the interests of men, rather than on "personal growth". Personal growth is good and necessary, but does not necessarily lead to such things as equitable child custody arrangements, equal sentencing between the sexes, prohibitions against male genital mutilation, etc., etc. Even so, there is no reason not to do both.

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Submitted by mcc99 on Wed, 2009-09-30 21:44

I wasted my time trying to read that absurd book when it came out and found it to be nutty as a fruitcake.

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Rise, Rebel, Resist.

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Submitted by MichaelClaymore on Wed, 2009-09-30 22:02

I live in Minnesota and have attended Bly's workshops. He gives support to men's rights, but he's a poet and is just more into literature and myths etc.

I think he has opened the door for many men. It is up to the men to walk through and see the validity of the men's rights movement.

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Submitted by charlie on Wed, 2009-09-30 22:32

This is an excellent book for men to read. It is male friendly in a potent way. Not only does he say that men are "people" but he goes a step farther and claims that men's way of "being human" is uniquely different from that of women and is all too often misunderstood. The book explains, through telling stories, how he sees men as being unique and of just as much value as females. Just different. Bly was a poet and a purveyor of ideas. He was never an activist nor was he political. He was a poet.

Isn't his wife a staunch feminist? LOL

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Submitted by Tom on Thu, 2009-10-01 10:45