Morning Poems

by Robert Bly

Overview

"Morning Poems is a sensational collection — Robert Bly's best in many years. Inspired by the example of William Stafford, Bly decided to embark on the project of writing a daily poem: Every morning he would stay in bed until he had completed the day's work. These 'little adventures/In Morning longing,' as he calls them, address classic poetic subjects (childhood, the seasons, death and heaven) in a way that capitalizes fully on the pun in the book's title. These are morning poems, full of the delight and mystery of waking in a new day, and they also do their share of mourning, elegizing the deceases and capturing the 'moment of sorror before creation.' Some of the poems are dialogues where unconventional speakers include mice, maple trees, bundles of grain, the body, the 'oldest mind' and the soul. A particularly moving sequence involves Bly's imaginative transactions with a great and unlikely precursor, Wallace Stevens. The whole is a fascinating and original book from one of our most fascinating authors."

 — David Lehman

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060928735
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/23/1998
Series:	Harper Perennial
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,059,255
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.29(d)

About the Author

Robert Bly's books of poetry include The Night Abraham Called to the Stars and My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy. His awards include the National Book Award for poetry and two Guggenheims. He lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Read an Excerpt

Morning Poems

Early Morning in Your Room

It's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasplike
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water—
It seems you've travelled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least;
Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over.

Now you have a room. Those light-hearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter
To His Father, are all here. You can dance
with only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That's what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

Morning Poems. Copyright © by Robert Bly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

What People are Saying About This

Kenneth Rexroth

"Bly is today one of the leaders of a poetic revival which has returned American literature to the world community."

Editorial Reviews

"Bly is today one of the leaders of a poetic revival which has returned American literature to the world community." — Kenneth Rexroth

"A sensational collection....A fascinating and original book from one of our most fascinating and original authors." — David Lehman

"There is a lot of human knowledge in this book, and at the same time it has the vigor of youth. How can that be?" — Galway Kinnell

From the Publisher

"Bly is today one of the leaders of a poetic revival which has returned American literature to the world community."

Kenneth Rexroth

"A sensational collection....A fascinating and original book from one of our most fascinating and original authors."

David Lehman

"There is a lot of human knowledge in this book, and at the same time it has the vigor of youth. How can that be?"

Galway Kinnell

The Morning Poems are the best Robert Bly has written...This book offers much that is touching and wise, and these poems seem a culmination of a journey away from the cant of so many of Bly's early poems, a journey towards humility, simplicity and ease, culminating here in verse of unusual grace and humanity.
—Times Literary Supplement

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