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Robert Bly, one of the most famous American poets of the last half century and author of the bestselling classic of the men’s movement “Iron John”, has died. He was 94.
Bly, an active poet, writer, and editor for more than 50 years, and celebrated translator of international poets, died Sunday at his Minneapolis home after suffering from dementia for 14 years, his daughter Mary Bly said.
“Papa was in no pain. … His whole family was around him so how much better can you do? ”She told the Associated Press.
In 1962, Bly published his first volume of poetry, “Silence in the Snowy Fields”. In 1968 he won the National Book Award for “The Light Around the Body”, a book of protest poems from the Vietnam War. Bly donated the $ 1,000 prize money to the resistance movement.
But the native of Madison, western Minnesota, gained his greatest fame for a prose work called Iron John: A Book About Men. His meditation on modern masculinity was published in 1990 and has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years.
The book helped start a new men’s movement, but it also angered some feminists and drew some ridicule by conjuring up images of shirtless business people gathering in the woods to beat drums and howl at the moon .
“The media dismissed all of this work as drumming and walking in the woods, which reduced it to something ridiculous,” Bly told the Paris Review in a 2000 interview. “I don’t think the men’s seminars were a threat to the women’s movement at all, but many critics of ‘Iron John’ overlooked the point.”
Born on his family farm near Madison in 1926, Bly later said he started writing poetry in high school to impress a beautiful English teacher. After a brief stint in the Navy, he landed at Harvard in 1947 and was surrounded by some of the leading figures in the country’s literary scene, including the late Adrienne Rich, a classmate of his who became a prominent feminist poet and writer.
From there he went to New York City – sometimes he slept in Grand Central Station when he couldn’t find an apartment to crash – and then to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop for a year. Bly returned to Minnesota, where he would spend most of his life.
Back in Madison, Bly and another local poet started a poetry magazine they called The Fifties (later renamed The Sixties and then The Seventies). The inside cover of the front page signaled their intention to shake up the literary establishment with this warning: “Most of the poems published in America today are too old-fashioned.”
“Up until then there was a kind of academic lockdown on mainstream poetry. It all looked very Victorian and kind of refreshed, stuffy, smug, ”said Thomas R. Smith, a longtime friend of Bly’s who worked as his assistant for many years and is co-editor of several books about him. “He defied the convention that all major poetry came from the coasts and college campuses and created a new space for the poets of the American Midwest.”
In addition to writing poems influenced by his predecessors and colleagues in other countries, Bly also endeavored to make their original works available to US readers. Over the years, with the help of native speakers, Bly translated several dozen poets from a number of languages. Several poets whom he translated and promoted, including the Chilean Pablo Neruda and the Swede Tomas Transtromer, later received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
“The translation work in itself is an amazing part of his legacy,” said Jeff Shotts, senior editor at Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, who published some of Bly’s translations and other work.
With his tall, stocky build and a thick, wild head of hair – turned snow-white in his later years – Bly cut an impressive figure. His poetry readings were often boisterous affairs: he often wore masks or brightly colored scarves, made jokes and gesticulated wildly, and had a habit of reading the same poem twice in a row.
“He would say the first time the poem got stuck in your head, but the second time it could hit your chest,” said James Lenfestey, a fellow poet who was Bly’s neighbor in Minneapolis for many years.
George Borchardt, his agent for several decades, recalled one of his readings in New York City.
“I remember it was full and people really stuck to every word. He was a great reader, ”said the agent.
Borchardt also remembered Bly as a pleasure to represent him.
“He wasn’t the kind of writer who needed guidance to write,” he said.
Bly and his first wife, Carol, divorced in 1979; he moved to Minneapolis shortly afterwards. Bly leaves behind his second wife Ruth, whom he married in 1980, four children – Mary, Bridget Noah, Micha Bly and stepdaughter Wesley Dutta – and nine grandchildren.
Over the years Bly has published more than two dozen volumes of poetry, several translations of the works of other poets, and a handful of non-fiction books, of which “Iron John” was the best known.
Smith said “Iron John” had its roots in Bly’s struggle with his relationship with his father, a silent Norwegian farmer.
“That led to an investigation into what it means to be a man,” said Smith. “He saw American men at an intersection. He was concerned that men would lose their inner workings, their emotional lives, their connection to stories and traditions and literature. But the cartoon became that he was John Wayne with a drum. That is the opposite of what he was. ”
Mary Bly said funerals would be private. She urged fans to send memorial donations to their favorite poetry clubs.
“He was a great poet and a great father,” she said.
“And a great husband,” said Ruth Bly.
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This story was corrected to show that Bly died at the age of 94, not 95.
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Former Associated Press writer Patrick Condon contributed to this obituary.
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