Bly, Robert - Peter Stitt (review date 1980)

Peter Stitt (review date 1980)

SOURCE: Stitt, Peter. Review of This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years, by Robert Bly. Georgia Review 34, no. 1 (fall 1980): 661-67.

[In the following review, Stitt deems the collection This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years uneven, viewing it as further evidence of a duality in Bly's career that allows the “teacher, preacher, and reformer” to overshadow the poet.]

Robert Bly is an important figure in contemporary American poetry, but not because of the strength of his own poems. The position he occupies is rather like that occupied by Ezra Pound early in the century—one hears about Pound as an influence on the practice and careers of other poets much more often than one hears of Pound as a poet in his own right. And when one does look at Pound's work, the reason is clear: there is the brief, clear lyricism of Personae; the flirtation with Imagism and Vorticism: the dense...

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