Robert E. Bly

Writes nonacademic poetry, based in the natural world, the visionary, and the realm of the irrational. Profoundly affected American verse, introducing many unknown European and South American poets to new readers. First widely acclaimed collection was Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962). Second book, The Light around the Body (1967), won the National Book Award. In Iron John: A Book about Men (1990), he argues that men are greatly damaged by an absence of intergenerational male role models and initiation rituals. Throughout his career, he has maintained his devotion to translating the world's visionary poetry, often in an attempt to counteract what he has seen as the dry or lifeless qualities of high modernism.