How did Robert Bly, a well-respected American poet, come to write a self-help bestseller?
Bly had been giving talks on mythology to supplement his income, and found that the brothers Grimm tale Iron John hit a nerve with men. His resulting book about this age-old story helped establish the men s movement, and his seminars inspired its drum-beating, tree-hugging stereotype. In early seminars, Bly asked men to re-enact a scene from The Odyssey, in which Odysseus is instructed to lift his sword as he approaches the symbol of matriarchal energy, Circe. Peace-loving men were unable to carry out the lifting of the sword, so fixed were they on the idea of not hurting anyone. These were men who had come of age during the Vietnam war, and they wanted nothing to do with a manhood which, to feel its aliveness, required an enemy. Instead of the single-mindedness of the 1950s male, they had a receptivity to different viewpoints and agendas. The world is a much better place for these soft males – they are lovely human beings, Bly admits – but such harmony-minded men are also distinguishe
