A companion to this book, titled "The Odin House Harvest: An Analytical Bibliography of the Publications of Robert Bly's Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and Thousands Press" was published by Red Dragonfly Press in 2012 Includes bibliographical references (pages 303-346) and index
Contents:
Introduction -- Making a clearing in the forests of convention -- A beautiful crop of corn down the middle of Main Street -- Finding a new path -- Choosing the door to a secret life -- Wringing the swan's neck -- The voyage into the sea of the imagination -- Rude awakenings -- Reaching out to the universe with a gloved hand -- A rising flow of imaginative energy -- News to the universe -- The Vietnam War and a rainstorm of revulsion -- Agression and un-aggression -- Completing the first turn on the merry-go-round -- Feeding the new brain -- Letting the tortoise expire, prematurely
Summary:
"Long before Robert Bly became a cultural icon as a leading light of the Men's Movement, he was shaking up the world of poetry with a "little magazine," published from his farm in western Minnesota, that celebrated the deep imagery of European and South American poets while playfully mocking the often tepid and academic work of his American colleagues. This is the story of that literary revolution, the effects of which are with us to this day. Author Gustafson draws upon Bly's literary and personal correspondence, private papers, and the publications themselves to paint an indelible portrait of an artist driven by unusual ideas of expression rooted in earthiness, myth, open forms, and social conscience. Bly's iconoclastic tendencies bring plenty of spice to critical exchanges with James Dickey, Donald Hall, Denice Levertov, Tomas Transtr̀²mer, Gary Snyder, and many other eminent poets at a time when the more formal and concervative aesthetic of the Pound/Eliot cadre and the hyper-technical analysis of the New Critics were proving themselves inadequate to the changing times. Using the issues of The Fifties and The Sixties as guideposts, Gustafson explores Bly's courageous stance against the Vietnam War, his principled response to receiving the National Book Award, the technical challenges of financing and printing a "little" magazine from the prairies of western Minnesota, and other adventures, with flashes of humor brightening many turns in the path.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.