Undivided Tenderness

A person who discreetly farts in an elevator is not a divine being, and a man needs to know this. -- Robert Bly

“I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.”
“Every noon as the clock hands arrive at twelve,
I want to tie the two arms together,
And walk out of the bank carrying time in bags.”
“It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.”
“It is not our job to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.”
“I knew this friendship with myself couldn’t last forever.”
“Wherever there is water there is someone drowning.”
“The candle is not lit To give light, but to testify to the night.”
“Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.”
“I want nothing from You but to see You.”
“What does it mean when a man falls in love with a radiant face across the room? It may mean that he has some soul work to do. His soul is the issue. Instead of pursuing the woman and trying to get her alone, away from her husband, he needs to go alone himself, perhaps to a mountain cabin, for three months, write poetry, canoe down a river, and dream. That would save some women a lot of trouble.”
“The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years. "I am a victim," he says, over and over; and he is. But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions. Most American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses. And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors would look like, or feel like.”
“In ordinary life, a mentor can guide a young man through various disciplines, helping to bring him out of boyhood into manhood; and that in turn is associated not with body building, but with building an emotional body capable of containing more than one sort of ecstasy.”
“I was unfaithful even to Infidelity.”

~ Robert Elwood Bly is one of America's most celebrated poets, easily the most controversial, who has for over a half century crisscrossed the cultural landscape through poetry, translation, activism and social commentary. Best known as the author of the bestseller, Iron John, which launched a million men drumming in the woods, Bly has been celebrated, vilified, but above all persisted in championing the power and importance of poetry in today's America.