Bly, Robert - Ian Tromp (review date 2000)

Ian Tromp (review date 2000)

SOURCE: Tromp, Ian. Review of Morning Poems, by Robert Bly. TLS: Times Literary Supplement, no. 5093 (10 November 2000): 3.

[In the following review, Tromp acknowledges the wisdom and delicate simplicity of Bly's Morning Poems, calling them the best the poet has written.]

In imitation of the practice of his friend William Stafford, Robert Bly took to writing a poem every morning. He has explained that he stayed in bed until he finished the poem, which on some days meant getting up at dawn, on others at noon. Morning Poems collects eighty or so of these “little adventures / In morning longing”. The adventure aspect came from Bly's practice of allowing an image or memory to arise and then following wherever it led. Stafford liked Blake's image of the golden string that, if you “wind it into a ball / … will lead you in at heaven's gate / Built in Jerusalem's wall”.

This idea...

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