The Worker Poet

 

 

 

A Little Book on the Human Shadow

Robert Bly 1988

Harper

San Francisco

 

 

   "What do you mean , 'I am not creative '? 'Let experts do it'-isn't that what such a person is saying? ...The audience wants a poet, a hired gun, to come in from out of town. Everybody in this audience should be writing their own poems."
-Bly

   "...our psyche in daily life tries to give us a hint of where our shadow lies by picking out people to hate in an irrational way."
-Bly

   "Culled from taped interviews and lectures of the 1970s by Bly archivist William Booth, these meditations focus on what Bly calls 'the long bag we drag behind us,' otherwise known to Jungian psychology as 'the shadow.' Bly's vivid and colorful disquisition on the shadow is so lucid that many consider this 'little' book to be the ideal introduction to its subject. Includes Bly's stunning essay 'Wallace Stevens and Dr. Jeckyll.' "
-robertbly.com