Sunday, February 17, 2013

Robert Bly to receive Poetry Society of America's Frost Medal


American poet also known for the book Iron John, which helped inspire 'the expressive men's movement', and his translations

Robert Bly, poet, his office
Robert Bly's The Light Around the Body won the 1968 National Book award for Poetry. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

The American poet Robert Bly is to be awarded the Frost Medal for a "distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry" by the Poetry Society of America.
Bly, who joins former recipients of the medal including Allen Ginsberg and Wallace Stevens, is known for introducing American readers to "the riches of European and Latin American poetry" through his translations, the society said, as well as for his own collections. He has published more than 30 books to date, from The Light Around the Body (1967), winner of the National Book Award, to Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey (2011).

A major voice against the Vietnam war, Bly is also known for being one of the leaders of "the expressive men's movement", which aspires to reconnect men with their masculinity. In 1990 he published a controversial bestselling examination of the parable Iron John, in which he suggested men are suffering from a lack of initiation rituals and male role models.
Bly has won Guggenheim, Rockefeller and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in the past, as well as the Tranströmer poetry prize in Sweden. He will be awarded his Frost Medal on 5 April in New York.

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