Acclaimed poet and translator Robert Bly here assembles a unique cross-cultural anthology that illuminates the idea of a larger-than-human consciousness operating in the universe. The book’s 150 poems come from around the world and many eras: from the ecstatic Sufi poet Rumi to contemporary voices like Kenneth Rexroth, Denise Levertov, Charles Simic, and Mary Oliver. Brilliant introductory essays trace our shifting attitudes toward the natural world, from the “old position” of dominating or denigrating nature, to the growing sympathy expressed by the Romantics and American poets like Whitman and Dickinson. Bly’s translations of Neruda, Rilke, and others, along with superb examples of non-Western verse such as Eskimo and Zuni songs, complete this important, provocative anthology.
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About the Author
Robert Bly, poet and critic, is the author of many books, including the National Book Award-winning Light Around the Body, as well as the popular Iron John. He is also known for his translations of the poetry of Pablo Neruda, Gunnar Ekelof, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Knut Hamsun, among others, and for his compelling, interpretive readings.
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50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Re-tuning to the UNIVERSE.,
This review is from: News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (Paperback)
Most of the books we read, no matter how startling they may be and no matter how much seeming "News" they may bring us, somehow end up fitting quite comfortably into our mind. We read them, we may be excited about them for a while, but they are soon set aside and we move on, quite unchanged, to fresh pastures.Rarely, very rarely however, a book will happen along that truly rocks us, a book that has the power to shift our mind into a different register, to provide us with a whole new way of seeing. Such books have the effect of somehow altering our mind, re-structuring it, opening up new synapses, and thereby enabling or empowering us see the world in a wholly new and different light. These are golden books, bearers of striking truths, of real "News." Perhaps we need to be intellectually and emotionally ready for them, but when they do come they can effect a radical change in our outlook on life. Despite many years of intensive reading, I can think of only two or three books that have affected me in this way. One of them was by the British writer, Douglas E. Harding. Another was the present book. One of the things Bly's 'News of the Universe' taught me to see was that modern human beings are a very strange lot, a life-form that is totally and utterly obsessed with just one thing - itself. Most of our waking moments are occupied with people-related matters. We are almost manically people-obsessed. We read books about people, watch movies about people, think and talk incessantly about people. And we don't find this odd. We are concerned with what people are saying, thinking, feeling, doing, wearing, drinking, eating, buying, building, plotting, loving, fearing, suffering, etc. But always it's people that our attention is focused on, and we often completely overlook the fact that people are just ONE among the many MILLIONS of earth's interesting life-forms, and that even the earth itself is just one of an infinite number of worlds. In other words, in our constant people-centered busy-ness what we overlook is - THE UNIVERSE. People, of course, are important. But what about the rest of the universe? Robert Bly's invaluable book has been written to redress the balance. He seems to want us to see just how totally wrapped up we are in ourselves, and that this obsession is neither wholesome nor realistic. It is in fact a form of madness and extremely dangerous. 'News of the Universe' is a book of some 300 pages and is divided into six main parts. Each of these six parts consists of a brief essay followed by a generous selection of poems which serve to illustrate the themes of the essay. Bly's book would be worth having for the poems alone. He has brought together a rich collection of both the familiar and the unfamiliar, from many periods and cultures, and the non-English poems have been very well-translated. I often return to my own well-thumbed copy, purchased about fifteen years ago, to re-read my favorites. One of these is the poem 'GOLDEN LINES' by Gerard de Nerval, a poem which could serve as a manifesto for the book. It is preceded by this epigraph from Pythagoras : "Astonishing! Everything is intelligent!" Here are the opening lines, slightly adjusted since they should be set out as poetry: "Free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker / on this earth in which life blazes inside all things? / Your liberty does what it wishes with the powers it controls, / but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there. // Look carefully in an animal at a spirit alive; / every flower is a soul opening out into nature; / a mystery touching love is asleep inside metal..." (page 38). These lines bear careful pondering by our manically people-obsessed world, as do many others in Bly's carefully culled selection. But almost as impressive as the poems are Bly's introductory essays themselves. Personally I consider them to be minor masterpieces, and I find myself often returning to them also. Despite their brevity, it would be impossible here for me to convey an adequate idea of the sheer freight of true "News" content that they carry, real "News" that is vastly more important for us to become aware of than the trivia which passes for 'news' in our popular media. Basically what the essays and poems set out to do, and they do it very effectively indeed, is to demonstrate that what Bly calls the "Old Position," the "pride in human reason" and "the conviction that nature is defective because it lacks reason" has had the effect of "deforming all poetry and culture" (page 3). What we must learn to realize and to fully embrace is the notion that human consciousness is only one of the many kinds of consciousness operating in the universe. We cannot continue to deny consciousness, and therefore value, to the non-human, and on the basis of this fundamental error proceed to separate humans out and pretend that the rest of earth's living matrix doesn't matter. Such a procedure has led to a grotesque deformation of our civilization, and it can only end in the complete destruction of all life. This, needless to say, is not the sort of news that most of the inhabitants of our media-befuddled world want to hear. And this because collisions with reality are usually painful. But for the few thoughtful and courageous and concerned who are still out there, and who would like to re-tune to the Universe, I would urge you to acquire a copy of Robert Bly's book. It's a luminous book, and definitely one of the most important books I've ever read. It may just give you a new and more realistic outlook on life.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Connecting with the Universe,
By E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (Paperback)
"The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.""News of the Universe" was originally issued as a Sierra Club book and contains poems selected (and sometimes translated) by Robert Bly. The book is worth buying just for Bly's introduction and his analysis of 'Dover Beach'. Frequently, I find myself dipping into "News of the Universe" for inspiration (like a Protestant choosing a random verse from the Bible). I keep this book at work for the times when I feel really out of touch with the Natural World. Then I open up "News of the Universe" and find (for instance): The poems that Bly selected for this book make me feel less isolated from the Universe. The poems ring true. They refresh. Since that was Bly's stated intention when he collected the poems, you ought to try them yourself and see if they work for you. There is also a sense of the presence of Death in them--what Bly defines by the Spanish word "Duende" in another one of his anthologies--so much so, that many of the poems in this book can be used as elegies.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A call to stop using rational thought,
This review is from: News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (Paperback)
Borges once quoted from a chinese encyclopedia: "...every animal falls within one of the following groups : a)property of the emperor, b)stuffed, c)trained, d)little pigs, e)mermaids, f)mythological, g)mongrel dogs, h)included in this list, i)shaking like crazy, j)too many to be counted, k)drawn with a very tiny brush, l)etc., m)just hatched and n)those that look like flies." We laugh, but all our orders, kingdoms, classes and phyla are just as silly and laughable. This book of poems is an invitation to put aside for a while the rational mind that creates encyclopedias and sets and classes (what Bly calls the old cartesian order) and to experience the universe like the animals do, to perceive nature as something new and strange.This book helps us achieve that goal by means of poems that unsettle rational thought, for example: "In the Aztec design God crowds/ into the little pea that is rolling/ out of the picture. / All the rest extends bleaker/ because God has gone away.// In the White Man design, though,/ no pea is there./ God is everywhere,/ but hard to see./ The Aztecs frown at this.// How do you know he is everywhere?/ And how did he get out of the pea?" If you enjow little shocks like that one (what pretentious people call epiphanies) buy this book, it is filled with them.
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