Criticism > Poetry > Bly, Robert - Victoria Harris (essay date 1981)

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Victoria Harris (essay date 1981)

SOURCE: Harris, Victoria. “‘Walking Where the Plows Have Been Turning’: Robert Bly and Female Consciousness.” In Of Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly, edited by Richard Jones and Kate Daniels, pp. 153-68. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981.

[In the following essay, Harris explicates Bly's poem “Walking Where the Plows Have Been Turning,” emphasizing its “feminine” principles of intuition, empathy, and integration.]

Our epoch is filled with the resurrection of the woman. In a variety of disciplines—politics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics, literature—apartheid features of patriarchy are giving way to a spirit of inclusiveness, the proper context for the female spirit. In a cohesive gesture, we increasingly mend a world divided by maps, categories, “objectivity,” and a strict adherence to logic. Cohesiveness results from a participation in the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Ralph J. Mills Jr. (review date 1963)
   2. David Ray (review date 1963)
   3. Norman Friedman (review date 1967)
   4. Herbert Leibowitz (review date 1968)
   5. Anthony Libby (essay date 1972)
   6. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 1973)
   7. Donald Hall (review date 1973)
   8. Charles Molesworth (essay date 1975)
   9. Alan Helms (review date 1977)
   10. Charles Molesworth (review date 1978)
   11. Robert Bly and Wayne Dodd (interview date 1978)
   12. Charles Molesworth (essay date 1978)
   13. Philip Dacey (review date 1978)
   14. Eliot Weinberger (review date 1979)
   15. William V. Davis (essay date 1979-1980)
   16. Peter Stitt (review date 1980)
   17. Bill Zavatsky (essay date 1981)
   18. Victoria Harris (essay date 1981)
   19. Marjorie Perloff (review date 1982)
   20. Charles Molesworth (review date 1982)
   21. Howard Nelson (essay date 1984)
   22. Peter Stitt (review date 1986)
   23. Richard P. Sugg (essay date 1986)
   24. William V. Davis (essay date 1988)
   25. Walter Kalaidjian (essay date 1989)
   26. William V. Davis (essay date 1994)
   27. Publishers Weekly (review date 1999)
   28. Tom Hansen (essay date 1999)
   29. Ian Tromp (review date 2000)
   30. Publishers Weekly (review date 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. How to Analyze a Poem
2. Poetry