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934e945
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The Wild Man doesn't come to full life through being "natural," going with the flow, smoking weed, reading nothing, and being generally groovy. Ecstasy amounts to living within reach of the high voltage of the golden gifts. The ecstasy comes after thought, after discipline imposed on ourselves, after grief." --
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Robert Bly |
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4bdaba1
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IT IS SO EASY TO GIVE IN I have been thinking about the man who gives in. Have you heard about him? In this story A twenty-eight-foot pine meets a small wind And the pine bends all the way over to the ground. I was persuaded," the pine says. "It was convincing." A mouse visits a cat, and the cat agrees To drown all her children. "What could I do?" The cat said. "The mouse needed that." It's strange. I've heard that some people conspire In t..
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Robert Bly |
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80995d0
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I have daughters and I have sons. When one of them lays a hand
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Robert Bly |
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663f184
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THE FACE IN THE TOYOTA Suppose you see a face in a Toyota One day, and you fall in love with that face, And it is Her, and the world rushes by Like dust blown down a Montana street. And you fall upward into some deep hole, And you can't tell God from a grain of sand. And your life is changed, except that now you Overlook even more than you did before; And these ignored things come to bury you, And you are crushed, and your parents Can't hel..
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Robert Bly |
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f8c5989
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His large ears Hear everything A hermit wakes And sleeps in a hut Underneath His gaunt cheeks. His eyes blue, alert, Disappointed, And suspicious, Complain I Do not bring him The same sort of Jokes the nurses Do. He is a bird Waiting to be fed,-- Mostly beak-- an eagle Or a vulture, or The Pharoah's servant Just before death. My arm on the bedrail Rests there, relaxed, With new love. All I know of the Troubadours I bring to this bed. I do n..
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troubadors
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Robert Bly |
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637be2b
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Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive. Jump into experience while you are alive! Think... and think... while you are alive. What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death. If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic just because the body is rotten-- that is all fantasy. What is found now is found then. If you find nothing n..
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Robert Bly |
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9e20340
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like a note of music, you are about to become nothing
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Robert Bly |
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9d12a93
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Our story gives a teaching diametrically opposite. It says that where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the wound appears in our psyches, whether from alcoholic father, shaming mother, shaming father, abusing mother, whether it stems from isolation, disability, or disease, that is precisely the place for which we will give our major gift to the community.
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Robert Bly |
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fb019ab
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If any help was going to arrive to lift me out of my misery, it would come from the dark side of my personality.
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Robert Bly |
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a6b3772
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Finding the Father My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing- as the ocean carries logs. So on some days the body wails with its great energy; it smashes up the boulders, lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides. Someone knocks on the door. We do not have time to dress. He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets, to the dark house. We will go there, the body says, and there find the father whom we have..
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masculinity
manhood
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Robert Bly |
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c1e8d93
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It's good if you can accept your life--you'll notice Your face has become deranged trying to adjust To it. Your face thought your life would look Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten. That was a clear river touched by mountain wind. Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed.
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life
changing
coming-of-age
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Robert Bly |
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bd200f0
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It's all right if people think we are idiots. It's all right if we lie face down on the earth. It's all right if we open the coffin and climb in.
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earth
idiots
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Robert Bly |
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884879e
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Zeus energy, which encompasses intelligence, robust health, compassionate decisiveness, good will, generous leadership. Zeus energy is male authority accepted for the sake of the community.
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Robert Bly |
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6f2ee92
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We will have to call especially loud to reach Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.
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Robert Bly |
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900a026
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Don't ask why the elephants wear such large shoes, And why the kangaroos are reborn kidnappers, And why the sailing birds are all Romantics.
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kangaroos
elephants
romantics
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Robert Bly |
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2904cbf
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I am afraid there'll be a moment when I fail you, friend; I will turn slightly Away, our eyes will not meet, and out in the field There will be no one.
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Robert Bly |
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46b71db
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Hair is intuition. Hair is the abundance of perceptions, insights, thoughts, resentments, images, fantasies waiting and ready to come out whenever we are thinking of something else.
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Robert Bly |
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658bc5c
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The imperfect is our paradise. Note that, in this bitterness, delight, Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
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Robert Bly |
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4e16f1a
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It's hard to grasp how much generosity Is involved in letting us go on breathing, When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief. Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat When so many have gone down in the storm.
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Robert Bly |
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a52c92a
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There's a general assumption now that every man in a position of power is or will soon be corrupt and oppressive. Yet the Greeks understood and praised a positive male energy that has accepted authority.
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Robert Bly |
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93e1b97
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Something in the adolescent male wants risk, courts danger, goes out to the edge - even to the edge of death.
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Robert Bly |
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f10c5c0
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This resembles the slow discipline of art: it's the work that Rembrandt did, that Picasso and Yeats and Rilke and Bach did. Bucket work implies much more discipline than most men realize.
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Robert Bly |
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8c21a85
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READY TO SLEEP Don't be afraid The great lettuce of the world Is all around us.
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Robert Bly |
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7ae5756
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We did not come to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees, Trees that start again, Drawing up from the great roots.
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Robert Bly |
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dd291af
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We have never understood how birds manage to fly, Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams, Now how heaven and earth can appear in a poem.
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earth
heaven
dreams
genius
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Robert Bly |
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d379127
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contemporary man looks down into his psyche, he may, if conditions are right, find under the water of his soul, lying in an area no one has visited for a long time, an ancient hairy man.
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Robert Bly |
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69de811
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AGAPE Today no one has come to inquire, nor have they wanted anything from me this afternoon. I have not seen a single cemetery flower in so happy a procession of lights. Forgive me, Lord! I have died so little! This afternoon everyone, everyone goes by without asking or begging me anything. And I do not know what it is they forget, and it is heavy in my hands like something stolen. I have come to the door, and I want to shout at everyone: ..
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Robert Bly |
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385e6da
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The Dingy Playing Cards" by Robert Bly Friends, it's time to give up our hope for Rapture. Saucers will not carry us away. Raskolnikov Had to depend on the police to help him sleep. Our soul loves the dingy cards that have been dealt To the ne'er-do-wells. The old men put the old Queens down with their smoke-stained fingers. In the Cirque Du Soleil, when the acrobats Sweep out over the crowd, babies are being Born who know much more..
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Robert Bly |
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1bd467e
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With Pale Women in Maryland With pale women in Maryland, Passing the proud and tragic pastures, And stupefied with love And the stupendous burdens of the foreign trees, As all before us lived, dazed With overabundant love in the reach of the Chesapeake, Past the tobacco warehouse, through our dark lives Like those before, we move to the death we love With pale women in Maryland.
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Robert Bly |
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36c06c2
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Conversation With the Soul" The soul said, "Give me something to look at." So I gave her a farm. She said, "It's too large." So I gave her a field. The two of us sat down. Sometimes I would fall in love with a lake Or a pinecone. But I liked her Most. She knew it. "Keep writing," she said. So I did. Each time the new snow fell, We would be married again. The holy dead sat down by our bed. This went on for years. "This field is getting too s..
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Robert Bly |
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431f7c0
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Ashes present a great diminishment away from the living tree with its huge crown and its abundant shade. The recognition of this diminishment is a proper experience for men who are over thirty. If the man doesn't experience that diminishment sharply, he will retain his inflation, and continue to identify himself with all in him that can fly: his sexual drive, his mind, his refusal to commit himself, his addiction, his transcendence, his coo..
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Robert Bly |
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56d29e1
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Our culture teaches us from early infancy to split and polarize dark and light, which I call here "mother" and "father." So some people admire the right-thinking, well-lit side of the personality, and that group one can associate with the father, if one wants to; and some admire the left-thinking, poorly-lit side, and that group one can associate with the mother, if one wants to, and mythologically with the Great Mother. Most artists, poets..
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shadow
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Robert Bly |
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9fde247
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In the Month of May" In the month of May when all leaves open, I see when I walk how well all things lean on each other, how the bees work, the fish make their living the first day. Monarchs fly high; then I understand I love you with what in me is unfinished. I love you with what in me is still changing, what has no head or arms or legs, what has not found its body. And why shouldn't the miraculous, caught on this earth, visit the old man ..
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Robert Bly |
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1f14b76
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BAD PEOPLE" A man told me once that all the bad people Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails You need; they are really claws, and we know Claws. The sharks--what about them? They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men In black coats who chase you for hours In dreams--that's the only way to get you To the shore. Sometimes those hard women Who abandon you get you to say, "You." A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It do..
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Robert Bly |
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1dd4107
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When a boy grows up in a "dysfunctional" family (perhaps there is no other kind of family), his interior warriors will be killed off early. Warriors, mythologically, lift their swords to defend the king. The King in a child stands for and stands up for the child's mood. But when we are children our mood gets easily overrun and swept over in the messed-up family by the more powerful, more dominant, more terrifying mood of the parent. We can ..
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Robert Bly |
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7243444
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TWILIGHT I have dreamed of flight. And I have dreamed of your laces strewn in the bedroom. I have dreamed of some mother walking the length of a wharf and at fifteen nursing the hour. I have dreamed of flight. A "forever" sighed at a fo'c'sle ladder. I have dreamed of a mother, of fresh sprigs of table-greens, and the stars stitched in bridals of the dawn. The length of a wharf ... the length of a drowning throat! Translated by ..
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Robert Bly |
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8dbcd90
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Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.
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Robert Bly |
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019a413
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The human face shines as it speaks of things Near itself, thoughts full of dreams. The human face shines like a dark sky As it speaks of those things that oppress the living
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human
living
sky
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Robert Bly |
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dd55605
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Taking the Hands" Taking the hands of someone you love, You see they are delicate cages... Tiny birds are singing In the secluded prairies And in the deep valleys of the hand."
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Robert Bly |
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46766a7
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Snowfall in the Afternoon" 1 The grass is half-covered with snow. It was the sort of snowfall that starts in late afternoon And now the little houses of the grass are growing dark. 2 If I reached my hands down near the earth I could take handfuls of darkness! A darkness was always there which we never noticed. 3 As the snow grows heavier the cornstalks fade farther away And the barn moves nearer to the house. The barn moves all alone in the..
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Robert Bly |
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8bdcd44
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What has death and a thick body dances before what has no thick body and no death. The trumpet says: "I am you." The spiritual master arrives and bows down to the beginning student. Try to live to see this!"
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Robert Bly |