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profile/robert-bly.md
Published: Tue Oct 15 1996
Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convirtiéndose en characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
With a Friend at Bennington

He wakes, reads some Frost, and soon is ready
To leave. “See you tomorrow.” A long line
Of feeling follows him out the door. His shoulders
Slope as usual in their way, carrying on them

Deaths and stories, a divorce, marital love
As pertinacious as a bulldog’s mouth. Jane gone,
Who will hear the thin cough in the morning,
Hear the milk hitting the pail as his grandfather

Sings poems in the old barn, who will see
The forty drafts on yellow paper? Or notice him
Reading Francis Parkman till long after midnight.
“Stay, friend, be with us, tell me what happened.”

See what's inside AGNI 44

Robert Bly is the author of numerous books of poetry, nonfiction, and translation. A collection of his new and selected prose poems, Reaching Out to the World, was published in 2009 by White Pine Press. He is widely attributed with sparking the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement in America. (updated 6/2010)

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