The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems [Paperback]

Robert Bly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2002

Robert Bly's new collection of poetry is made of forty-eight poems written in the intricate form called the ghazal, which is the central poetic form in Islam. The influence of Hafez and Rumi is clear, and yet the poems descend into the wealth of Western history, referring at times to Monet, Giordano Bruno,Emerson, St. Francis, Newton, and Chekhov, as well as to events in Bly's own life. The leaping between joy and "ruin" produces a poetry which makes him, as Kenneth Rexroth noted, "one of the leaders in a poetic revival which has returned American literature to the world community."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Iron John: A Book About Men took off in the early '90s, Bly's poetic reputation was instantly eclipsed, though he had long embraced mythic precedents and close examination of masculine feelings in his work. Bly has also worked in collaboration with linguists to translate Islamic religious poetry, and this eighth collection reflects these and other varied and sustained interests. The book's 48 lyrics are written in a single (here terceted) form, the ghazal, used by such great Islamic poets as Ghalib, and harness high points of Western art and literature to draw general, biblically backed conclusions about the human condition out of the mire. The three poems inspired by Rembrandt are probably the best here, simple in diction and understated in effect: "Titus receives a scattering of darkness./ He's baptized by water soaking in onions;/ The father protects his son by washing him in the night." But too many lines veer from the prosaic into the clunky in their quest for universal imagery: "My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping,/ Abandoned woman by night," notes the speaker of the title poem. After a series of mentions of animals in "The Wildebeest," a reference to "The Moses of the beaver" is unconsciously comic at best. The cultural references follow one another at a fast and furious pace, and while the initial surprise of finding Chekhov and Blake or Kierkegaard and Cezanne in the same poem can be pleasant, there is little holding them there beyond Bly's will-to-form. No one will doubt Bly's sincerity, but the poems fall short of the heady figures they invoke. (May)Forecast: Despite their flaws, these poems surpass the new work of last year's Eating the Honey of Words: New & Selected Poems. Bly's multitude of fans will recognize their hero's concerns and preoccupations, here more elegiacally than ever, and relish some of the real achievements.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Robert Bly's books of poetry include The Night Abraham Called to the Stars and My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy. His awards include the National Book Award for poetry and two Guggenheims. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060934441
• ISBN-13: 978-0060934446
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,687,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, November 27, 2006

By 

GirlPowerNazi (your arse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems (Paperback)

The title poem, refered to as "clunky" by the Publishers Weekly reviewer, is also one of the first poems of the many, many that I have read and collected that really spoke to me. It is one that I enjoy reading still today.

Perhaps this collection is technically inferior in some ways that more studied men than I might disdain, but it feels like a Hermann Hesse novel to me: I know that it isn't the "best" literature, but it is literature that inspires me to feel and contemplate, which makes it a favorite of mine.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Part of a larger conversation, July 31, 2010

By 

Douglas Bass (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems (Paperback)

There are some things I like about these poems.

In this volume, Robert Bly has introduced a number of readers to the ghazal form, which is a good thing. It's my understanding that he's taken a small amount of poetic license with the form, but I don't have a problem with that.

There are some great images that address the human condition, ("We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars," "Beauty has reached us drenched in birth blood," "...we were born mortgaged and howling.")

Humanity is recognized as part of nature in this collection, and man and nature are together in the same wobbly old boat. Nature is just as fallen as mankind, we live in the kingdom of the serpent. "Every old frog is a son of Robespierre"

And yet, people try to be more than a badger digging in the mud, people try "to climb on the sounds of their lover's names toward God," as improbable as success might be.

There are some things I don't like about these poems.

"As I was saying to the Prince of Wales the other day, I just hate it when people drop names." And Bly does this in abundance in this volume. It would be nice if there were pictures of the paintings referenced in the poems, or even a little context about the people mentioned. That's why I'm not giving this book five stars.

I suggest that instead of reading this book by itself, you read it with the books "My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems" (more poems by Bly) and "The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures" (spiritual poems collected by Bly) The title poem is the first poem in The Night Abraham Called To The Stars, and "My sentence was a thousand years of joy." is the last line of the last poem in that book. Those two books are mirror images of each other, in a way. There's a section in "The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy" about the animal soul, the Nafs, the mischief it can cause, and what to do about it. There were many places in "The Night Abraham Called To The Stars" where I recalled poems in "The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy"