Robert bly Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Author: Robert Bly
Quotes of Author: Robert Bly

Robert Bly _ Kabir: Ecstatic Poems
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 _ Eating the Honey of Words: New
Snowfall in the Afternoon"1The grass is half-covered with snow.It was the sort of snowfall that starts in late afternoonAnd now the little houses of the grass are growing dark.2If I reached my hands down near the earthI could take handfuls of darkness!A darkness was always there which we never noticed.3As the snow grows heavier the cornstalks fade farther awayAnd the barn moves nearer to the house.The barn moves all alone in the growing storm.4The barn is full of corn and moves toward us nowLike a hulk blown toward us in a storm at sea;All the sailors on deck have been blind for many years.
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Robert Bly _ Silence in the Snowy Fields
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 _ Silence in the Snowy Fields
The human face shines as it speaks of thingsNear itself, thoughts full of dreams.The human face shines like a dark skyAs it speaks of those things that oppress the living
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Robert Bly _ A Little Book on the Human
Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.
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Robert Bly _ Neruda and Vallejo: Selected
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 John Knoepfle
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Robert Bly
BAD PEOPLE"A man told me once that all the bad peopleWere needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernailsYou need; they are really claws, and we knowClaws. The sharks--what about them?They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced menIn black coats who chase you for hoursIn dreams--that's the only way to get youTo the shore. Sometimes those hard womenWho abandon you get you to say, "You."A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.It doesn't move on its own. It takes sometimesA lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.Then they blow across three or four States.This man told me that things work together.Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;And a careless God--who refuses to let youEat from the Tree of Knowledge--can lea
Robert Bly _ Eating the Honey of Words: New
In the Month of May"In the month of May when all leaves open,I see when I walk how well all thingslean on each other, how the bees work,the fish make their living the first day.Monarchs fly high; then I understandI love you with what in me is unfinished.I love you with what in me is stillchanging, what has no head or armsor legs, what has not found its body.And why shouldn't the miraculous,caught on this earth, visitthe old man alone in his hut?And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?And lovers, tough ones, how many there arewhose holy bodies are not yet born.Along the roads, I see so many placesI would like us to spend the night.
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Robert Bly _ A Little Book on the Human
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, and musicians belong to the second group and love intuition, music, the feminine, owls, and the ocean. The right-thinking group loves action, commerce, and Empire.
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Robert Bly _ Iron John: A Book about Men
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 coolness. The coolness of some American men means that they have skipped ashes.
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Robert Bly _ Stealing Sugar from the
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 lakeOr a pinecone. But I liked herMost. 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 small," she said."Don't you know anyone elseTo fall in love with?"What would you have said to Her?
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Robert Bly _ Silence in the Snowy Fields
With Pale Women in MarylandWith pale women in Maryland,Passing the proud and tragic pastures,And stupefied with loveAnd the stupendous burdens of the foreign trees,As all before us lived, dazedWith overabundant love in the reach of the Chesapeake,Past the tobacco warehouse, through our dark livesLike those before, we move to the death we loveWith pale women in Maryland.
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