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The hugely influential international bestseller which has been acclaimed as the male equivalent of The Female Eunuch

About the Author

Robert Bly is a poet, storyteller, translator and worldwide lecturer. His poetry has won many awards, including the National Book Award. This is his first full-length book of prose. He lives with his wife in Madison, Minnesota.

Reviews

This book needs to be read, I believe, not as a dry work of scholarship to be judged coolly by the mind, but as the work of a poet struggling to convey an emotional experience and lead us to what he has found within himself
*Guardian*

Eclectic and unclassifiable. Iron John is a work whose mentors are the prophetic poets and crazies, William Blake and Walt Whitman
*Sydney Morning Herald*

Important. timely. and powerful
*New York Times*

This book needs to be read, I believe, not as a dry work of scholarship to be judged coolly by the mind, but as the work of a poet struggling to convey an emotional experience and lead us to what he has found within himself * Guardian *
Eclectic and unclassifiable. Iron John is a work whose mentors are the prophetic poets and crazies, William Blake and Walt Whitman * Sydney Morning Herald *
Important. timely. and powerful * New York Times *

Today's sensitized male may be in touch with his ``feminine'' side, but, writes poet Bly, this ``soft male'' possesses little vitality and is hobbled by grief and anguish. To achieve real masculinity, Bly argues, men must cultivate a fierce tenderness to be found neither in the macho/John Wayne model nor in the ``interior feminine.'' Taking as his starting point the Grimm fairy tale ``Iron John,'' the author sets forth an eight-stage initiatory path whose steps include remembering one's psychic wounds, communion with a mentor or ``inner King,'' becoming a lover, reviving one's inner warriors and receiving a ``second heart.'' Bly avoids cant as he ransacks Jung, Freud and Reich; referents include Greek, Egyptian and Celtic myths, the Parsifal legend, Blake and Amerindian ritual. A wise and healing book full of fresh insights, Bly's odyssey will help men grapple with identity, fatherhood, relationships and such crises as addiction and divorce. (Nov.)