Robert Bly Biography

Robert Bly was an American poet and the author of the best-selling prose work on modern masculinity, Iron John (1990).

Bly’s strong poems and charismatic personality made him one of the most prominent poets of the post-World War era, and in the 1960s he made headlines as an outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

After three decades as a celebrated poet and translator, Bly was credited with starting a “men’s movement” in the U.S. after the publication of Iron John, a treatise urging men to reconnect emotionally with mythical and traditional Western masculine archetypes.

Bly’s poetry has won many awards, including the 1968 National Book Award (The Light Around the Body), and he’s translated the works of such poets as Kabir (India), Hafez (Iran), Pablo Neruda (Chile) and Rainer Maria Rilke (Austria-Hungary).

His books include Sleepers Joining Hands (1973), The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart (1992), Morning Poems (1997) and The Night Abraham Called to the Stars (2001).