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The Night Abraham Called to the Stars
by Robery Bly
HarperCollins, 2001
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Accepting the powerful models that Islamic poetry, including the poetry of Rumi and Häfez, provide, the National Book Award-winning poet Robert Bly transmutes the ghazal from into a stunning series of poems.
In The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, Robert Bly offers Western readers the opportunity to experience the thrilling leaps that the ghazal form allows. In the ghazal, each stanza is an independent poem, so the writer is able to shift landscapes. One stanza may be biographical, the next may have a reference to myth, the next a meditation on conscience.
In these poems, the reader will find many references to our own cultural past, as in Sir Isaac Newton, Gustav Mahler, Lord Tennyson, Francis Bacon, and Madame Bovary, figures who belong to our intellectual history. The poems bring something startling and new. Merging wildness and a beautiful formality, The Night Abraham Called to the Stars is Robert Bly's greatest volume of poetry and ensures his reputation as one of the major poets of our era.
About the Author
(From poets.org) Robert Bly was born on December 23, 1926, in Madison, Minnesota. He attended Harvard University and received his master's degree from the University of Iowa in 1956. As a poet, editor, and translator, Bly has had a profound impact on the shape of American poetry.
He is the author of more than 30 books of poetry, including The Night Abraham Called to the Stars; Snowbanks North of the House (1999); What Have I Ever Lost by Dying?: Collected Prose Poems (1992); Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (1987); Mirabai Versions (1984); This Body is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood (1977); and The Light Around the Body (1967), which won the National Book Award.
As the editor of the magazine The Sixties (begun as The Fifties), Bly introduced many unknown European and South American poets to an American audience. He is also the editor of numerous collections including The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures (Ecco Press, 1995); Leaping Poetry (1975); The Rag and Bon Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men (1992); News of the Universe (1980); and A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War (1967).
Among his many books of translations are Lorca and Jiminez: Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1997); Machado's Times Alone: Selected Poems (1983); The Kabir Book (1977); Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Three Swedish Poets—Martinson, Ekeloef, and Transtroemer (1975); and Neruda and Vallejo Selected Poems (1971).
Bly is also the author of a number of non-fiction books, including The Sibling Society (Addison-Wesley, 1996); The Spirit Boy and the Insatiable Soul (1994); Iron John: A Book about Men (1990); and Talking All Morning: Collected Conversations and Interviews (1980).
Bly's honors include Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He lives on a farm in the western part of Minnesota with his wife and three children. |
