My Sentence Was A Thousand Years Of Joy

by Bly, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780060757182
• ISBN10: 0060757183
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-20
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

A fresh, new volume by one of the premier living American poets Readers have found Robert Bly's ghazals startling and new; they merge wildness with a beautiful formality. The ghazal form is well known in Islamic culture but is only now making its way into the literary culture of the West. Each stanza of three lines amounts to a finished poem. "God crouches at night over a single pistachio. / The vastness of the Wind River Range in Wyoming / Has no more grandeur than the waist of a child." The ghazal's compacted energy is astounding. In a period when much American poetry is retreating into prosaic recordings of daily events, these poems do the opposite. My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy is Robert Bly's second book of ghazals. The poems have become more intricate and personal than they were in The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, and the leaps even more bold. This book includes the already famous poem against the Iraq War "Call and Answer": "Tell me why it is we don't lift our voices these days / And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed / The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?" The poems are intimate and yet reach out toward the world: the paintings of Robert Motherwell, the intensity of flamenco singers, the sadness of the gnostics, the delight of high spirits and wit. Robert Bly is writing the best poems of his life, and this book reestablishes his position as one of the greatest poets of our era.

Excerpts

My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy
Poems

The Dark Autumn Nights

Imagination is the door to the raven's house, so we are
Already blessed! The one nail that fell from the shoe
Lit the way for Newton to get home from the Fair.

Last night I heard a thousand holy women
And a thousand holy men apologize at midnight
Because there was too much triumph in their voices.

Those lovers, skinny and badly dressed, hated
By parents, did the work; all through the Middle Ages,
It was the lovers who kept the door open to heaven.

Walking home, we become distracted whenever
We pass apple orchards. We are still eating fruit
Left on the ground the night Adam was born.

St. John of the Cross heard an Arab love poem
Through the bars and began his poem. In Nevada it was
Always the falling horse that discovered the mine.

Robert, you know well how much substance can be
Wasted by lovers, but I say, Blessings on those
Who go home through the dark autumn nights.

My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy
Poems. Copyright © by Robert Bly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems by Robert Bly
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.