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A Little Book on the Human Shadow

Robert Bly

4.08 · Rating details · 1,287 ratings · 91 reviews

Robert Bly, renowned poet and author of the ground-breaking bestseller Iron John, mingles essay and verse to explore the Shadow -- the dark side of the human personality -- and the importance of confronting it.

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Paperback, 96 pages

Published 1988 by Harper

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· 1,287 ratings · 91 reviews

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Sep 25, 2011 Krzysztof rated it it was ok

Shelves: reviewed, poetry, essay, 2011

If this were instead "a Medium-sized Book on the Human shadow," things may have been more clear but, then, they'd probably be more annoying, too.

Bly is not a gentle (note the space) man. He is a bull. In a way, he's the perfect person to talk about the Human Shadow, because he's living proof of its existence. But I suspect he doesn't even have a clear idea how he's managed to "eat his [own] shadow" and so who is he really to advise us? Well, again, he's a bull - that's who. He's got a resonant, If this were instead "a Medium-sized Book on the Human shadow," things may have been more clear but, then, they'd probably be more annoying, too.

Bly is not a gentle (note the space) man. He is a bull. In a way, he's the perfect person to talk about the Human Shadow, because he's living proof of its existence. But I suspect he doesn't even have a clear idea how he's managed to "eat his [own] shadow" and so who is he really to advise us? Well, again, he's a bull - that's who. He's got a resonant, self-assured voice and that helps people relate to concepts like the shadow. But he forces too much. Let me explain that . . .

A near mirror image of Bly is William Stafford. Where Bly is muted black, Stafford is off-white. In a sit-down chat, Stafford once explained to Bly the concept of Blake's "Golden Thread" and how it relates to writing poetry. The Blake lines are:

"I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball
It will let you in at Heaven's Gate
Built in Jerusalem's Wall."

Stafford said that any thread in writing is golden if you don't pull it too hard. "Masterful people," he said, "break that thread" and then he tells Bly, "watch out, Robert." He claims he's not suggesting that Bly breaks the threads, so I'll say it for him.

Bly eschews definition. One of the problems with him is that he uses metaphorical, poetical language throughout his prose with little to no clarification on what he means other than by sketching outward from the vague image and sort of smudge-shading it. For example, he refers to the "white nightgown mentality" and keeps on going as if that image should to make sense to everyone. One can never even be sure if the image is his own or if he's borrowing from another poet. In the case of the white nightgown, the sketch later turns out to be signed by Wallace Stevens, but still with no reference to its original usage. Sometimes Bly will interrupt himself to ask, "is the image clear?" Well, if it's not, how're we meant to answer? If my image of smudge-shading isn't clear, it's in keeping.

A college professor of mine was all but obsessed with Robert Bly and while I enjoy a lot of what Bly has to say, I am cautious. I remember telling my professor that Bly was too powerful a force in the poetry/literary community - that his ideas carry too much weight and that they run the risk of capsizing the whole ordeal (at least for certain writers). See, Bly likes to go on as if he knows what he's talking about, but about 40-50% of the time, he's talking shit. He's liable to contradict himself from year to year, poem to poem, and talk to talk and think nothing of it. That's all fine and dandy for him, but there's a danger in his mode of expression, too (and here I'm well aware that I'm using Bly's diction).

When Bly engages in equivocation, it's tempting to accuse him of obfuscation. The problem is that there's no direct way to address this idea of the Human Shadow. But one thing I think I can say is that his stark gender roles are the product of a free-for-all era in psychology. Like horoscopes, Jungian archetypes are fun to think about, but they're not terribly instructive and if you take them too seriously, they can be quite limiting. Bly hurts his arguments by putting the sexes into clearly labeled boxes.

It occurs to me, though, that Bly's success is probably largely due to his flexability. Just when you catch him in a contradiction (as William Booth does toward the end of the book), he merely retracts his statement and agrees to pursue another path. That bastard. Nothing phases him and he goes on to lead another round-circle meeting of repressed men trying to invoke the animus.

But despite all of this, he'll then say something charming like, "Critics usually accept the world the poet creates. If he says east is north, they say: Why didn't I think of that before!" and you love him again for his willingness to admit that we're all probably full of shit. ...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Nikki rated it it was amazing

Shelves: psychology

This book is a fabulous resource for my Jungian Psychology research paper on the shadow. It explores various components of the shadow in a very accessible manner. Bly offers essentially what I would call a great dialogue on the shadow, interspersed with his poetry. One chapter is even an interview between Bly and his editor Booth. I really feel like I just sat down with these two men and listened to a beautiful conversation about this complex idea. I call it complex primarily because the shadow This book is a fabulous resource for my Jungian Psychology research paper on the shadow. It explores various components of the shadow in a very accessible manner. Bly offers essentially what I would call a great dialogue on the shadow, interspersed with his poetry. One chapter is even an interview between Bly and his editor Booth. I really feel like I just sat down with these two men and listened to a beautiful conversation about this complex idea. I call it complex primarily because the shadow maintains such a negative connotation, but it is not necessarily always that way. As Booth stated, “it is not something destructive in its very essence” (60).
In the first part, Bly discusses “Problems in the Ark,” and really shares the most poetry here, giving us images of the polarization of lightness and darkness. In second part, “The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us,” Bly dissects the human shadow. Essentially, we are born as a full 360 ball of energy. But we slowly start putting things away in our “bag” to receive positive attention from our parents; what they don’t like gets buried in our bag. We carry on in this manner through high school, now putting the things our peers don’t like in our bag. By our early 20’s, Bly says we only have a sliver of that original ball. Then after a decade or so, we’re ready to dig into our bag and pull it all back out. While all this is going on, we also start projecting (another thing which is not always inherently bad). Then we’re carrying out things we’ve buried in relationships with parents, children, spouses, friends. If our projection is strong enough, the other person is ultimately forced into wearing that mask. It’s a complicated business! And my mind is stuck right now in the thought of the many images and ideas we live with consciously and subconsciously. I’m back to thinking first about perception, and how our reality is what we experience. Throw in that that at the same time we are receiving projections and giving projects, and the self is becoming an even more complicated thing for me to wrap my mind around.
In the third part, Bly discusses “Five Stages in Exiling, Hunting, and Retrieving the Shadow.” First we project, but then something starts to rattle and there’s a disconnect. In the third stage we seek to repair the rattle, and what I see going on is justification, a way of working with the disconnect that is incomplete. In the fourth stage, we come to feel diminished. However many ways we’ve projected ourselves, given away a part of ourselves, those are all ways we now feel diminished. The most interesting commentary here is that Bly said when you share this feeling of diminishment with a friend, the last thing that friend should do is try to cheer you up. I guess this really spoke to me, because I’m always trying to bring everyone sunshine (a nick-name I’ve earned by many). Finally, in the fifth stage, we retrieve that very thing we originally threw out or projected. And then we eat it. We can do this by giving the thing language, or perhaps first with working with it through images or art. And why should we do this? Because “every bit of energy that we don’t actively engage with language or art of floating somewhere in the air . . . No one should make you feel guilty for not keeping a journal, or creating art, but such activity helps the whole world” (43). Here’s the thing about these stages: they can be going on all at once, and they continually reoccur. Also, as Bly really discussed in the second part, the shadow isn’t just personal; there is also a communal shadow and a national shadow, which means we also must deal with the communal projections and the national projections.
In part four, we have the great interview with Booth and Bly. The first key note is that hatred is something that can help us get at our shadows. Who or what is it that really gets us riled up? What is it that you are despising? It’s something in yourself you have buried. Booth questions Bly about the “negative connotations and associations with evil” that are present in the shadow, where Bly explains that evil is separate, but the dark imagery of the shadow can get confused with it. Yet, in fact, “a person who absorbs the shadow becomes not dark, but light and playful” (54). Ultimately, “The shadow energies seem to be a part of the human psyche, a part of its 30-degree nature, and the shadow energies becomes destructive only when they are ignored” (59).
In the fifth and final part, Bly discusses “Wallace Stevens and Dr. Jekyll,” claiming that “[a]ll literature, both of the primitive and the modern peoples, can be thought of as creations by the ‘dark side’ to enable it to rise up from the earth and join the sunlit consciousness again” (63). Bly discusses the shadow-side of Dr. Jekyll, and how we see stories where the shadow side rises and ultimately fails. The discussion also examines a handful of modern poems, and here’s the one I found the most significant.
Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.
Comes back to what I was thinking about perception and the unique experiences we all have, no matter how many are sharing that experience with us.
Bly leaves us with this reflection: “If the shadow’s gifts are not acted upon, it evidently retreats and returns to the earth. It gives the writer or person ten or fifteen years to change his life, in response to the amazing visions the shadow has brought him – that change may involve only a deepening of the interior marriage of male and female within the man or woman – but if that does not happen, the shadow goes back down, abandoning him, and the last state of that man is evidently worse than the first.

And this is just a touch of the ideas offered in this small text. I will mention one more small idea that spoke to me personally:
“Our culture teaches us from early infancy to split and polarize dark and light . . . 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 Moth. Most artists, poets, and musicians belong to the second group and love intuition, music, the feminine, owl and the ocean. The right-thinking group loves action, commerce and Empire.”
I never really gave this much thought before, but I’m clearly a left-thinker. I hadn’t really considered myself an artist, but I suppose being a writer places me in the category. My jaw just dropped though when I first read this passage and it defined me so well! I always follow my intuition. One of my favorite things on this planet is live music. I’m definitely in touch with my feminine side. I even collect figures of owls. And, most importantly, to me at least, is the ocean. The wonderful, beautiful, deep, endless ocean with all its creatures and magnificent power. As far back as I can remember, I have always loved sitting in the sand gazing at the waves. I’ve never cared to go to the beach during the summer because it’s filled with people, clutter and noise. But cool winter nights? The ocean exists by itself, and it always fills me with serenity. ...more

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May 01, 2007 John Rogers rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-favorite-reads

Simple: This book should be required reading for every human. It concisely describes the most powerful human decision making engine, which our culture refuses to acknowledge, the shadow, which has been identified as the "id" and "super-ego" by Freud and the "collective unconscious" by a smarter guy named Carl Jung, who was one of Freuds students, but discarded all the psychosis of Freud and framed it in a far more intuitive way.

Bly, a great poet/writer, describes the power we project onto other ...more

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May 06, 2011 William2 rated it liked it

Shelves: 21-ce, nonfiction, psychology

Robert Bly has this wonderful Jungian lens through which he sees the world. Here he is discussing the subconscious mind, which he represents with the metaphor of the shadow. The book is distilled from three or four poetry readings he gave in the 1970s. He wants us to be in touch with our dark side, meaning the subconcious. The metaphor of the shadow he sees is also a bag in which we are forced to put every personal attribute not desired by our parents, who want us to be only "nice." Yet we are e ...more

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Apr 18, 2014 Vinni Dalpiccol rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015, the-good-life

This book’s foreword starts by saying that the reader should not go on unless he is willing to change his life. It mentions a warning from Jacob Boehme before one of his books saying that going on not willing to make changes will make the book bad for him.

It is appropriate, and even for that foreword alone, the book would already have been a worthy read. Why do we read, if not to change our lives? To examine ourselves from different perspectives and act on them? Our shadow is that thing we (well ...more

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Jul 16, 2018 Ashlie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviews, vib-lounge

`One of the things we need to do as Americans is to work hard individually at eating our shadows, and so make sure that we are not releasing energy which can then be picked up by the politicians, who can use it against Russia, China, or the South American countries.`

This is a little gem of a book. Although written in the 80`s it seems to be a timeless classic.
...more

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Mar 02, 2014 Shahine Ardeshir rated it it was amazing

The idea behind this little book is, essentially, that we all have a shadow to our personality, a dark side where we repress things about ourselves that we don't like. The longer we ignore it, the more powerful can get and (in a sense) the less psychologically whole we are.

The book uses metaphor, poetry, and references to writing and popular culture to expand on that idea, and touches upon how we may identify and start to own our own shadow. The reason I loved it so much is because the idea res ...more

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Mar 21, 2017 Sohaib rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-men-must-read, favorites, nonfiction, psychology, 2017-reads, understanding-jung, jungian-psychology

My new favorite poet, Robert Bly, and another Savior of a book—a psychological poem on the human shadow.

My shadow bag is dense with unconscious mud; and I do, like everybody else, practice random mud-slinging (projection) on daily basis. This book taught me how and where to aim, redirecting my overworked slinger back to the one responsible—the one holding it!

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Mar 31, 2012 Jaime rated it really liked it

Shelves: grow

This book is thought-provoking, and I'm glad I read it, and thought of about ten people who I wanted to ask to read it so I could discuss it. At 90ish pages you can get through it in about an hour or two, and the ideas within it are worth having running through your mind as you look at the world. All that being said, I'm looking forward to rereading it when I have a better understanding of Jung's actual writings on the shadow; the 'definitions' of it in here I find a little bit reductionist. And ...more

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Aug 17, 2007 (0v0) rated it did not like it

Bloviant. I am making up that word just for this book.

Coarse opinions masquerading as poetic depth.

When a poet has a stupid personality, it shows. Every bloviant detail. This book exposed more superficial opinions and obtuse viewpoints than I could bother to digest. It exposed me to the fact that the scholarly Mr. Bly is indeed not at all well read.

I especially love the long passage in chapter four, in which the author ravages "generalizers" (a general term for God-knows-who). He has so much ine ...more

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Jul 19, 2016 Sherif Nagib rated it did not like it

I strongly believe the title to be deceiving. Expected a lot more & was disappointed . Had to sift through pages and pages of poetry, Politics in 80's America, and Wallace Stevens, to find something I could make sense of. I understand why so many people appreciate it, but to me it was a huge pile of unrelatedness.

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May 24, 2017 Cameron Bernard rated it liked it

Half of the time I understood and appreciated the parts about facing your shadow.
The other half I had no idea where Bly was going.

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Oct 20, 2012 Andrea Paterson rated it it was ok

Shelves: poetry, essays, religion-myth-sprituality, non-fiction

Highly variable in its readability. I found some of the text too convoluted to read. The sections on anger and the shadow in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Rilke, and Yeats were compelling. A central idea that shadow material must be LIVED, not just brought to light, was quite interesting and worth musing on further. Since the political context of Bly's writing is mostly unknown to me, I think I may have missed some of his points. There were some questionable theories in the section on projectio ...more

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Apr 29, 2018 Daniel rated it it was amazing

This little book was a real joy to read and absorb. There is a lot to take in here and to use, because in these pages it is said several times that when you look into the shadow self, the long bag of shadow you drag behind you, you must change due to the encounter of it. This is very true. We broadcast out our insecurities and our hate and anger to others based on our shortcomings. Shortcomings, fear and many other things are our shadow. The shadow of the human is not evil, though it can be. Wha ...more

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Sep 05, 2019 Sumit Pal rated it did not like it

Was the least impressive/impactful of all the books on shadow that I've read. Filled with poems and abstraction which even for a book on shadow is overwhelming. Multiple references to other poets and other works by the author themselves only decrease interest as the book goes on. The new ways of looking at the shadow are novel but questionable as they are described as a hodgepodge of multiples schools of thought. The biggest takeaway from the book is the interview section.

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Jan 28, 2017 Nairy Fstukh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, jung-read

Bly discusses shadow work in true Jungian spirit. Reads like a chat over a glass of wine remembered for a long time.

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Jun 01, 2015 Bruno Silva rated it really liked it

This is remarkably small for the amount of good knowledge in it. Not a difficult book to read, but certainly not easy to understand.

The book talks about the part of us we tend to deny ourselves and the world from experiencing it. It is not difficult to see how much of our being we repress from our lives, specially the instincts with “tails and lots of hair”, meaning the most “primitive“ side of ourselves. In our civilized, religiously raised world, the meaning of the world primitive is usually ...more

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Sep 10, 2011 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: psychology-therapy, poetry

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. In many instances it reminded me of Tanya Wilkinson’s Medea’s Folly and I wonder if this might have been part of the inspiration for her book. If you liked this, definitely check out hers. One of the strongest components of the work was how accessible it was. Bly does an excellent job of explaining and describing the shadow in a way that is resonant and can be easily accessed. Additionally, I found his sympathetic description of projection as mildly brilliant, as I thoroughly enjoyed this book. In many instances it reminded me of Tanya Wilkinson’s Medea’s Folly and I wonder if this might have been part of the inspiration for her book. If you liked this, definitely check out hers. One of the strongest components of the work was how accessible it was. Bly does an excellent job of explaining and describing the shadow in a way that is resonant and can be easily accessed. Additionally, I found his sympathetic description of projection as mildly brilliant, as I had never heard it described that way. “If we didn’t project, we might never connect to the world at all” was a sentence that gave me great pause and got the wheels turning about the role of projection as not just a defense mechanism, but also as a potential tool for understanding and relating to the world and ourselves. Along these lines, Bly offers us a hint to finding our shadow by recalling a story about Jungian analyst who thought that by examining the people we hate in an irrational way can give us insight into the parts of ourselves that we have rejected. To me, this corresponded well with the third stage of shadow work: “moral intelligence to repair the rattle”. In this stage, the projection is breaking down and so the psyche invents ways to reinforce it. From these two ideas I began to wonder if the people I irrationally dislike may not be unexpected confrontations with my own shadowy pieces.

Robert Bly’s A Little Book on the Human Shadow is devoted to the role of the shadow both in the psyche of the individual or culture and the work and development of the poet. While Bly is decidedly a poet, the book is deeply concerned with psychological development and its impediments. Bly believes that the shadow is an integral component of the whole being and only by recovering and uncovering its neglected pieces can a person or a culture revive its lost power or rebound from feelings of diminution. In the book, Bly offers several definitions of “shadow” and then offers his own: “the long bag we drag behind us”. One of the five chapters is devoted to the “bag”, including how it is formed, how our parents and culture can effect its contents, and how its presence can effect our lives and relationships. Bly also looks at the role of projection in relationship to our shadow. The middle part of the book is devoted to the five stages of shadow work and how one might discover their own shadow. This discovery process is continued in a conversation between Bly and William Booth in the fourth chapter in addition to a discussion about the role of the shadow in poetry. Finally, in an critical essay on the role of the shadow and Wallace Stevens, Bly returns to where he started the book: “You must change your life”, which he argues Stevens was unable to do and thus the genius of his poetry suffered.

...more

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Feb 04, 2012 Jason rated it liked it

There are so few books on the shadow and this one helped me understand the concept much better. It also helped me figure out some ways to figure out where my shadow might lie and how to reintegrate it. I love that Bly points out that in our culture we tend to assume the only alternatives are expression or repression. If our shadow is anger or sexuality going the way of complete expression may be dangerous and hurtful to others, for example. Bly offers a third option beyond total expression or re ...more

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Feb 20, 2011 Peycho Kanev rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry

Just like the magazine published by Robert Bly was typical for the 60’s, so and his poetry expresses his troubles and problem about this decade. The personal troubles and problems of the society. Bly not only attacks what he considers as tyrannical literary line, but he merciless reviews the nuclear projects and the war in Vietnam.
The tirelessly attempts of Bly to renew the American poetry and to bring it near to the achievements of the Hispanic poetry has some considerable success. Within his ...more

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Feb 05, 2018 Bryon Brandt rated it it was amazing

If you run from a Ghost he will chase you forever.
But if you turn and face him, he will disappear.

My major take-away from this book was:
On the one hand there is the part of us we like to brag about, and
On the other hand there is the part of us we prefer to hide.

And when you get to the point that you can talk about one hand, as easily as the other,
you are well on your way to Health, Healing, and Happiness in your life.

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Jun 20, 2017 Ben Chapman rated it liked it

The book deserves more than a quick review, but I've only got a few minutes, so here goes:

* I prefer his poetry, most of the time, to his prose.
* He actually made me like Wallace Stevens's poetry even more.
* Much of the book seems dated and it does feel like it was adapted (as it was) from a series of talks or presentations. One of the most successful chapters is the one that is actually in the form of an interview.

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Dec 31, 2017 Suhrob rated it it was ok

Started out promising - have a poet interleave his poems with essayistic bits. Unfortunately, there is not much enlightening here... vague, somewhat woo and mostly meant for people versed in this particular psychoanalytics-flavuoured new age-y humdrum.

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Aug 21, 2010 Chris rated it it was ok

I like Bly's little poem about the shadow I found in this book.

The Moon

After writing poems all day,
I went off to see the moon on the piney hill.
Far in the woods I sit down against a pine.
The moon has her porches turned to face the light,
but the deep part of her house is in darkness.

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Jul 07, 2017 Qiaochu Yuan rated it really liked it

I want to like this book more because I think the shadow is really important, but I just don't like the actual poetry in it very much.

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Mar 23, 2018 Jan Jilecek rated it it was amazing

"We can say that the witch corresponds to a force in us that wants to block our growth, yet we must say that the witch presents a very positive force also. Her value lies in the fact that she knows what she wants. I want you to separate these seeds by sunset, and I'am going to eat you up if you don't. The witch doesn't say, Well, let's just check the I Ching to see if you should separate those seeds.
- amazing. Men with too much yin and too little yang. Soft men generation. Stand up for yourself, ...more

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Nov 29, 2018 Peitsa Rautio rated it really liked it

So, Robert Bly is an american poet and this book deals on his thoughts on the jungian concept of the human shadow. While the significance of the first introductory chapter was lost on me as it was quite heavy on loose self interpretation of poetry I found the rest of the book very thought provoking. As a whole I'd describe the meat of the content as a condensed spiritual guide to analyzing your personal history, the effects of the world around you on your self and how to build a healthy mental r ...more

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May 08, 2018 Naciye rated it really liked it

A good introduction to the human shadow. I enjoyed most of the book, and found it easy to follow. I loved his description of the human shadow, being parts of us, that those around us have rejected. We then place those parts in a bag and as life continues, the bag gets heavier. We become less of the person we were originally, as the shadow parts of us, we continue to deny as we struggle to drag the heavy bag. I found it interesting that he says we must honour our shadow side by acknowledging it a ...more

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Feb 25, 2019 Anthony rated it liked it

Shelves: poetry, introspection

Part interview, part poetic exposition, A Little Book unpacks Bly's views on our relationship with the Jungian shadow, "the dark, unlit, and repressed side of the ego complex." I found Part 2 the most memorable, an extended allegory of a bag we carry behind us that holds all the parts of our self that we discard, remove, or negate, as we grow older. As a child the bag is empty, but eventually fills with all our natural attitudes, behaviors, and inclinations that invite scoldings from parents and ...more

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Jan 21, 2019 Infinidimincorp rated it liked it

Some great insights in this collection of lectures compiled into a text - but still a collection of lectures (and one interview), devoid of context and not really following on from one another. I suspect they were better if you were there!

Also, I appreciate that Bly is psychologist here, but there's something about the relentless focus on the interior and projection that is a little solipsistic.

Ah, maybe I'm being harsh. If most books had this much good stuff per 97 pages, I'd be a happy reader.

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About Robert Bly

Robert Bly

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Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.
Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota in 1926 to parents of Norwegian stock. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard and thereby joined the famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, which i Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.
Robert Bly was born in western Minnesota in 1926 to parents of Norwegian stock. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and spent two years there. After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard and thereby joined the famous group of writers who were undergraduates at that time, which included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes. He graduated in 1950 and spent the next few years in New York living, as they say, hand to mouth.
Beginning in 1954, he took two years at the University of Iowa at the Writers Workshop along with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, and others. In 1956 he received a Fulbright grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. While there he found not only his relatives but the work of a number of major poets whose force was not present in the United States, among them Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl and Harry Martinson. He determined then to start a literary magazine for poetry translation in the United States and so begin The Fifties and The Sixties and The Seventies, which introduced many of these poets to the writers of his generation, and published as well essays on American poets and insults to those deserving. During this time he lived on a farm in Minnesota with his wife and children.
In 1966 he co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body, he contributed the prize money to the Resistance. During the 70s he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations, celebrating the power of myth, Indian ecstatic poetry, meditation, and storytelling. During the 80s he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau,The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow.
His work Iron John: A Book About Men is an international bestseller which has been translated into many languages. He frequently does workshops for men with James Hillman and others, and workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. He and his wife Ruth, along with the storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, frequently conduct seminars on European fairy tales. In the early 90s, with James Hillman and Michael Meade, he edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems from the men's work. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures. ...more