I've been on a bit of a break, what with the folkses here and all. I return dismayed, but willing to blunder on.
Right before my parents arrived, I was careening through Robert Bly's Eating The Honey of Words. I like the deep image work, the sort of Americanization of light, Jungian surrealism. I've never really been able to do it, but I like it when I come across it. Frequently, the deep imagery gets pulled out of the landscape, usually in the Scandinavian deeps of Minnesota. At his best, Bly seems like a version of James Wright. At his worst, he reads like a weak mix of Seamus Heaney and Gary Snyder, which is to say: he's manly (god knows) with a little Zen thrown in, the lines wander like a passionate drunk, and his sense of place is so firmly part of his persona that he neglects to actually give you helpful, unique details. Moon on snow? Now where in the world can that happen? It's an almost Kooser-esque in its Midwestern default. But he's a darling of the ecopoetry movement, so we're stuck with him.
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