October 2015 Archives

Minnesota's Robert Bly is one of the most influential living figures in world literature. Besides his many ground-breaking volumes of poetry, his contributions include incisive, provocative criticism and epochal translations of foreign poets, not least the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, as well as Spanish and Mideastern poets. This class traces Bly's dynamic career from his beginnings on a family farm through his days of early fame as poet and editor of the revolutionary poetry magazine The Fifties/The Sixties to international renown as proponent of "Deep Image" poetry.  

While illuminating the many facets and intellectual currents of Bly's fertile opus, we'll stay focused on his work as a poet, watching his development from book to book in a constant process of self-reinvention. Among the many stages of Bly's work, we'll pay special attention to his early explosive free verse period, his venture into the controversial prose poem, the sound experiments of his invented form the "ramage," and his later work with an American version of the Mideastern ghazal form.  

Along the way we'll learn from writing exercises adapted from Bly's own techniques for breaking free of expected patterns into fertile new territory, bringing us closer to the fiery genius of Bly's stellar achievement. More information on links below.