The Light Around the Body [Paperback]

Robert Bly (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

After The Industrial Revolution, All Things Happen At Once
Andrew Jackson's Speech
As The Asian War Begins
Asian Peace Offers Rejected Without Publication
At A March Against The Vietnam War
The Busy Man Speaks
Come With Me
Counting Small-boned Bodies
The Current Administration: 1
The Current Administration: 2
The Current Administration: 3
A Dream Of Suffocation
Driving Through Minnesota During The Hanoi Bombings
Evolution From The Fish
The Executive's Death
The Fire Of Despair Has Been Our Saviour
The Great Society
Hatred Of Men With Black Hair
Hearing Men Shout At Night On Macdougal Street
The Hermit
A Home In Dark Grass
Hurrying Away From The Earth
In Danger From The Outer World
Johnson's Cabinet Watched By Ants
A Journey With Women
Listening To President Kennedy Lie About The Cuban Invasion
Looking At New-fallen Snow From A Train
Looking At Some Flowers
Looking Into A Face
Melancholia
Moving Inward At Last
Opening An Oyster
Riderless Horses
Romans Angry About The Inner World
Sleet Storm On The Merritt Parkway
Smothered By The World
Suddenly Turning Away
Those Being Eaten By America
Three Presidents: Andrew Jackson
Three Presidents: John F. Kennedy
Three Presidents: Theodore Roosevelt
Turning Away From Lies
Wanting To Experience All Things
War And Silence
Watching Television
When The Dumb Speak
Written In Dejection Near Rome
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 62 pages
• Publisher: Harper & Row (August 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006090786X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060907860
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,220,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Passable, October 7, 2000

By 

"elljay" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Light Around the Body (Paperback)

From the author best known to the general public for instigating the "Iron John" men's movement, this volume won a National Book Award back in 1960-something, but as poetry it's not notably better or worse than the norm. The weakest poems are the ones that come off as relatively straightforward protest pieces (one section is titled "The Vietnam War"), but at least they're not as bad as the stupid titles might suggest. (I tend to quake in fear when I encounter poems called "Listening to President Kennedy Lie about the Cuban Invasion".) Elsewhere, Bly indulges freely, and with sporadic success, in the kind of imagistic, semi-surreal verse that characterizes much contemporary poetry. It's not bad; Bly, despite his overuse of "there is/are" constructions, comes up with some nice lines now and then. But only ardent fans of 60's-style anti-war poetry really need this stuff.