Silence in the Snowy Fields: Poems - Tapa dura

"Mr. Bly's poems name delicate, humble things, and at the same time describe man assuming his existence, beginning over again the test of illusions. At the end of each poem there is silence, without complaint." --Wallace Fowlie, New York Times Book Review

"Bly has pared his images (most of them stemming from a life close to natural phenomena) down to the bone and used them with charm and ingenuousness."--Beloit Poetry Journal

"Bly writes of silence, sleep, moonlight and snow in Minnesota . . . It is lively and beautiful. For what interests Bly in silence is the articulate quality of it, its creative noise"--John Logan, The Critic

"This is poetry which springs out of an uncommon vision of nature...The poems are frequently epiphanies of man-in-nature without any fuss." --Thomas McGrath, National Guardian

The poems of Robert Bly are rooted deep in the earth. Snow and sunshine, barns and cornfields and cars on the empty nighttime roads, abandoned Minnesota lakes and the mood of America now--these are his materials. He sees and talks clearly: he uses no rhetoric nor mannered striving for effect, but instead the simple statement that in nine lines can embody a mood, reveal a profound truth, illuminate in an important way the inward and hidden life. This is a poet of the modern world, thoroughly aware of the complexities of the moment but equally mindful of the great stream of life--all life--of which mankind is only a part.