Silence in the Snowy Fields: Poems - Paperback

by Robert Bly (Author)

Striking and moving poems that are rooted deep in the earth

The poems of Robert Bly are rooted deep in the earth. Snow and sunshine, barns and cornfields and cars on the empty nighttime roads, abandoned Minnesota lakes and the mood of America now--these are his materials. He sees and talks clearly: he uses no rhetoric nor mannered striving for effect, but instead the simple statement that in nine lines can embody a mood, reveal a profound truth, illuminate in an important way the inward and hidden life. This is a poet of the modern world, thoroughly aware of the complexities of the moment but equally mindful of the great stream of life--all life--of which mankind is only a part.

Back Jacket

'Robert Bly writes of silence, sleep, moonlight and snow in Minnesota....It is lively and beautiful. For what interests Bly in silence is the articulate quality of it, its creative noise.'--John Logan, The Critic

Author Biography

ROBERT BLY, poet, translator, editor, lives on a farm near Madison, Minnesota, in the region where he was born. He has been dedicated to poetry even before his student years at Harvard. Silence in the Snowy Fields, his first book of poetry, was published in 1962. His second, The Light Around the Body, won the 1968 National Book Award for poetry. Among several translations is Time Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Wesleyan 1983).