Iron John

Bly, Robert

ISBN 10: 0679402896 ISBN 13: 9780679402893

Publisher: Random House, 1991

Synopsis

Here is the long-awaited work of renowned poet and storyteller Robert Bly that explores and challenges the male psyche. In it, Bly brings to light a burgeoning "underground" of men seeking to find a lost heritage of emotional connection -- to their fathers, their children, their wives, themselves. Using the Grimm fairy tale as a vehicle, Bly takes us back to a model of masculinity which is neither Rambo nor "wimp," but rather more like Odysseus. He examines the myths and cultural underpinnings of this classic male model -- a combination of fierceness and tenderness long since sacrificed to the demands of the industrial revolution. Such a sacrifice, says Bly, has given rise to a male sense of loss and unacknowledged pain.

Iron John works to heal this pain and to define a new era in the relations between the sexes -- it is the definitive book about men -- for men and for women.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Bly is a poet, storyteller, translator and worldwide lecturer. His poetry has won many awards, including the National Book Award. This is his first full-length book of prose. He lives with his wife in Madison, Minnesota.

From Library Journal:

Bly, a major American poet who won a National Book Award in 1968, appears regularly at workshops for men. The book's title refers to a mentor-like figure in a Grimms fairy tale who serves as Wild Man, initiator, and source of divine energy for a young man. This marvelous folktale of resonant, many-layered meanings is an apt choice for demonstrating the need for men to learn from other men how to honor and reimagine the positive image of their masculinity. Bly has always responded to Blakean and Yeatsian intensities, preferring to travel the path lit by mythic road signs. His intent here is to restore a lost heritage of emotional connection and expose the paltriness of a provisional life. For many men capable of responding imaginatively to allegory and myth this will be an instructive and ultimately exculpating book. Others may regard it as an inscrutable attempt, intuitive at best, to find merit in male developmental anxieties. For all collections emphasizing family or gender studies.
- William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0679402896
• ISBN 13: 9780679402893
• Binding: Audio Cassette