October 10 - 12, 2003
This will be a chance to meet men I already know and to be with other men whom I do not know. It will be a place to hear the stories and the grief of men. Recently I read Iron John again after twelve years. I was surprised at the number of good anecdotes and insights that men had shared with me during the writing of that book. It helped with its substance. Hearing other men's stories, especially the painful ones, is a blessing. The gifts of the stories of other men helped me tremendously in coming toward my own father before he died.
We'll have time to hear how men are doing these days and to hear some interchanges between younger men and older men. We'll talk about the difference between a fully developed Wild Man, capable of grief, such as Abraham Lincoln, and the half-baked Wild Man from Texas. We'll talk of the danger of trying to live out your father's unfinished life. We'll also talk about new thought that has been done in the field of men's work, particularly the work of Malidoma Some and Martin Prechtel.
We'll also explore the new ideas of Robert Moore around Grandiosity and its twin, whom we could call Utter Worthlessness. Each of us, boy or girl, had a sense of being a grandiose, almost divine person. Many of us remember that sensation. What happened to it? Sometimes our parents or teachers move very quickly to squash it, and even if our grandiosity has survived into adulthood, it doesn't get much support. Grandiosity's Twin, Utter Worthlessness is waiting in the hall, ready to accept every bad thing said about us.
Facing the Dragon, Robert Moore's book, is helpful in describing the danger men face in a culture like ours. He reminds us that Beowulf, after defeating Grendel, died trying to kill the grandiose dragon in the water. We'll discuss other good tales as well, including the Grimm Brothers' story "The Devil's Sooty Brother." Bring personal stories, poems, and questions.
Robert Bly is one of American's foremost poets. The Light Around the Body won the National Book Award and he has published many other poetry collections, as well as translations of Kabir, Rilke, Lorca, Jimenez, Jacobsen, Vallejo, Neruda, and more. His prose book Iron John: A Book About Men, was a runaway bestseller that galvanized the men's movement in the early 1990s into a major social force. An outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam, and well as more recent American invasions, Robert Bly is mentor to the men's movement, its best-known spokesman, and an advocate of the centrality of myths, stories, and poetry in our lives. We have been asking him to Rowe for twenty-five years and this is only the third time we've been able to get him to come, so we hope men will take this rare opportunity to gather with this distinguished, gentle, and tough man.