It was the 1970's. My department chairman had strongly suggested that all of us in the English Department familiarize ourselves with Jungian psychology. The C. G. Jung Institute in Chicago held an annual "convention" in Evanston, and thus I first came across Robert Bly at one of these events.

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Among the Jungians he was a heretic. He once told the Jungian men that they stood so erect because they had a stick up their ass, or maybe it was the Rolfing. But they kept asking him back, year after year.

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He never read a poem the same way twice, and he often read it three or more times. His free and inventive renderings of other poets' work was my introduction to Rilke, Lorca, Jimenez, Machado, and others.

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Looking over his life's work, I see I have much reading to do.

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Later he started drums beating for "the men's movement."

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Let us beat the drum for Robert Bly.