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Loving a Woman in Two Worlds
In this new collection of poems, the National Book Award-winning poet explores the meaning of mature love in a sustained meditation on faithfulness, on the sustenance of intimacy, and on grief as the door to deep emotion
- GenresPoetryLiterature
78 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Robert Bly
291 books365 followersRobert Bly was an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.
Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota in 1926 to parents of Norwegian stock. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard and thereby joined the famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, which included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York living, as they say, hand to mouth.
Beginning in 1954, he took two years at the University of Iowa at the Writers Workshop 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. While there he found not only his relatives but the work of a number of major poets whose force was not present in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl and Harry Martinson. He determined then to start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States and so begin The Fifties and The Sixties and The Seventies, which introduced many of these poets to the writers of his generation, and published as well essays on American poets and insults to those deserving. During this time he lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and children.
In 1966 he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. During the 70s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 80s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau,The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
His work Iron John: A Book About Men is an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. He frequently does workshops for men with James Hillman and others, and workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He and his wife Ruth, along with the storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, frequently conduct seminars on European fairy tales. In the early 90s, with James Hillman and Michael Meade, he edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems from the men's work. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures.
Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota in 1926 to parents of Norwegian stock. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard and thereby joined the famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, which included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York living, as they say, hand to mouth.
Beginning in 1954, he took two years at the University of Iowa at the Writers Workshop 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. While there he found not only his relatives but the work of a number of major poets whose force was not present in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl and Harry Martinson. He determined then to start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States and so begin The Fifties and The Sixties and The Seventies, which introduced many of these poets to the writers of his generation, and published as well essays on American poets and insults to those deserving. During this time he lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and children.
In 1966 he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. During the 70s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 80s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau,The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
His work Iron John: A Book About Men is an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. He frequently does workshops for men with James Hillman and others, and workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He and his wife Ruth, along with the storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, frequently conduct seminars on European fairy tales. In the early 90s, with James Hillman and Michael Meade, he edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems from the men's work. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 7, 2018
A man and a woman and a blackbird
When the two rivers
Join in the cloudy chamber,
So many alien nights
In our twenties, alone
On interior mountains,
Forgotten. Blackbirds
Walk around our feet
As if they shared
In what we know.
We know and we don’t know
What the heron feels
With his wing-
Tip feathers stretched
Out in the air above
The flooded lake,
Or the truffled constellations
The pig sees
Past his wild snout.
A man and a woman
Sit near each other. On
The windowpane
Ice.
The man says: "How
Is it
I have never loved
Ice before?
If I have not loved ice,
What have I loved?
Loved the dead
In their Sumerian
Fish-cloaks?
The vultures celebrating?
The soldiers
And the poor?"
And yet
For one or two
Moments,
In our shared grief
And exile,
We hang our harps
On the willows,
And the willows
Join us,
And the man
And the woman
And the blackbird are one.
January 20, 2009
Lovely, evocative poems about how a man loves a woman, but realizes that the beloved and loving in general are mysteries we may never fully unerstand.
March 29, 2016
A book that's pretty to read at nighttime with windows open. Bly's kinda like that.
May 3, 2016
While I admit Bly isn't as complex or important a poet as, say, Robert Kelly or Jerome Rothenberg (the true originators of so-called 'Deep Image' poetics) I do think he has a certain distinctive something that keeps me reading all the old, slim paperback volumes I find in used bookstores. He has also done a great service to poetry in bringing certain poets to a broader attention through his translations, and he has a keen ear for the 'tone-leading' of vowels that Pound spoke of, and an innate sense of inclusion, allowing for other consciousnesses into his work: the snail, the moth, the old piece of plywood lying in the grass....
I think his work will still be read in a hundred years for this reason.
I discovered his work at a time when my own poetry needed to be brought back to the body, to the simplicity and wonder of small things, instead of stretching itself out endlessly into the grandiosity of pure rhetoric. In this book, Bly is at his jewel-like best, though I also love the big, shaggy, unruly poems in Sleepers Joining Hands, from which several of these poems are derived, here made tighter and more focused.
I think his work will still be read in a hundred years for this reason.
I discovered his work at a time when my own poetry needed to be brought back to the body, to the simplicity and wonder of small things, instead of stretching itself out endlessly into the grandiosity of pure rhetoric. In this book, Bly is at his jewel-like best, though I also love the big, shaggy, unruly poems in Sleepers Joining Hands, from which several of these poems are derived, here made tighter and more focused.
September 4, 2023
It took me until the 3rd or 4th reading to really gain respect for the collection. Is it the most exquisite poetry I’ve read? No. Not by a long shot. But it’s not by any means bad either. Bly’s feelings are earnest and relatable, which makes them beautiful. His word and metaphor choice is above average, though not entirely unique. They are feel good poems about love and being human, and pretty decent ones at that. Some individual lines sink deep but overall, the poems do not spark as much passionate inspiration for the written word as they do the experience of another. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
May 14, 2013
No individual poems stood out, but overall Bly's short 4 line poems, showing a quick image and functioning like long haikus, are the highlights here. Longer poems all tend to have a line or two that stand out but sometimes the stanzas fail to connect effectively. I'll have to read more and see if this is his normal style or simply one incarnation of it.
December 3, 2021
This was a risk for me. I once had a friend tell me every male poet is writing about sex somehow. It kinda ruined some of Bly's poems for me, especially in this volume, where so many ARE actually euphemisms, though some are not. I'm (so far) keeping this volume for the sake of the ones that are not, but you'll probably want to borrow from your local library first, see if you like it enough to buy it.
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August 3, 2022
Very much an American "deep image" collection, about the feeling and scenes and world around love than the emotion of itself. Simple plain language in the free verse.
I enjoy poetry that brings me to a place though, and this collection certainly did.
Read for day 2 of the 2022 Sealey Challenge, definitely worth the few dollars from the secondhand store.
I enjoy poetry that brings me to a place though, and this collection certainly did.
Read for day 2 of the 2022 Sealey Challenge, definitely worth the few dollars from the secondhand store.
May 4, 2023
There are many things to say, but I'll only say one.
It has left me in a permanent state of awe. Wonderlik!
It has left me in a permanent state of awe. Wonderlik!
May 15, 2023
Not as good as other Robert Bay books and poetry I have read. Short, only a few pages of poetry reflecting Bly's meanderings, Insiights about love.
June 27, 2016
This collection welcomes its reader with open arms and without judgment. The poems are stunning. They are kisses in a quiet dark
In no particular order, these five poems spoke nearest to my ear.
* The Minnow Turning
* Such Different Wants
* At Midocean
* The Hawk
* Alone A Few hours
In no particular order, these five poems spoke nearest to my ear.
* The Minnow Turning
* Such Different Wants
* At Midocean
* The Hawk
* Alone A Few hours
October 21, 2008
I like the title
Read
June 15, 2018811.54 B661Lo 1987
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews