The Night Abraham Called to the Stars
Poems
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
“The poems of The Night Abraham Called to the Stars mark the ripening of a new current in Bly’s career: Now in his mid-70s, he is writing with tremendous energy and clarity and force, and producing some of the best work of his long career.” — The Nation
A volume of poetry with an emphasis on spirituality from the National Book Award winner.
Drawing on the profound influence that Islamic poetry, such as Rumi's, has had on his work, Robert Bly transmutes the remarkable ghazal form into a stunning series of poems. In this form, the poet can change the landscape in each stanza, ranging from a love poem to wisdom literature to a complaint about the poet's private life.
A cultured form with many references to other poems and poets, ghazal poetry challenges and involves the reader. In this volume, Bly's poetry resonates with deep spirituality while sounding the major themes of modern life. Merging wildness and a beautiful formality, this collection assures the reputation of one of the major poets of our era.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Iron John: A Book About Men took off in the early '90s, Bly's poetic reputation was instantly eclipsed, though he had long embraced mythic precedents and close examination of masculine feelings in his work. Bly has also worked in collaboration with linguists to translate Islamic religious poetry, and this eighth collection reflects these and other varied and sustained interests. The book's 48 lyrics are written in a single (here terceted) form, the ghazal, used by such great Islamic poets as Ghalib, and harness high points of Western art and literature to draw general, biblically backed conclusions about the human condition out of the mire. The three poems inspired by Rembrandt are probably the best here, simple in diction and understated in effect: "Titus receives a scattering of darkness./ He's baptized by water soaking in onions;/ The father protects his son by washing him in the night." But too many lines veer from the prosaic into the clunky in their quest for universal imagery: "My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping,/ Abandoned woman by night," notes the speaker of the title poem. After a series of mentions of animals in "The Wildebeest," a reference to "The Moses of the beaver" is unconsciously comic at best. The cultural references follow one another at a fast and furious pace, and while the initial surprise of finding Chekhov and Blake or Kierkegaard and Cezanne in the same poem can be pleasant, there is little holding them there beyond Bly's will-to-form. No one will doubt Bly's sincerity, but the poems fall short of the heady figures they invoke.
