Soul Is Here For It's Own Joy

Rating:
Summary: "Life is a stone in you, and the next, a star."
Review: "Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains," Kabir writes in "The Clay Jug" (p. 90), one of nearly two hundred poems included in this anthology compiled by celebrated poet, Robert Bly. I have returned to this inspiring collection many times since first reading it in 1997. In exploring the spiritual path linking these poems, Bly draws from many traditions, integrating East and West, male and female, old and new, spirit and flesh. He includes memorable poems by Rilke, Mary Oliver, Hopkins, Blake, Rumi, Jane Kenyon, Dante, Tagore, and Mirabai, among others. "What dreamwalkers men become," Dogen observes in "This Cloud;" a poem encouraging us to pay attention to the black rain on the temple roof. "Wake up! Wake up!" Kabir writes in "The Flute" (p. 79), which is also the call of this highly recommended anthology.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: "Life is a stone in you, and the next, a star."
Review: "Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine mountains," Kabir writes in "The Clay Jug" (p. 90), one of nearly two hundred poems included in this anthology compiled by celebrated poet, Robert Bly. I have returned to this inspiring collection many times since first reading it in 1997. In exploring the spiritual path linking these poems, Bly draws from many traditions, integrating East and West, male and female, old and new, spirit and flesh. He includes memorable poems by Rilke, Mary Oliver, Hopkins, Blake, Rumi, Jane Kenyon, Dante, Tagore, and Mirabai, among others. "What dreamwalkers men become," Dogen observes in "This Cloud;" a poem encouraging us to pay attention to the black rain on the temple roof. "Wake up! Wake up!" Kabir writes in "The Flute" (p. 79), which is also the call of this highly recommended anthology.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Bly returns us here to the emotional stew.
Review: I first read Robert Bly's earlier anthology, 'News of the Universe : Poems of Twofold Consciousness' (1980), many years ago and often find myself returning to it, not only to re-read my favorites from its 150 poems, but also to re-read Bly's full, informative, and extremely interesting introductions to the six Parts into which the book is divided.

'News of the Universe' is a tightly knit and beautifully assembled whole, and is built on a powerful thesis. Basically what the essays and poems set out to do, and they do it very effectively indeed, is to demonstrate that what Bly calls the "Old Position," the "pride in human reason" and "the conviction that nature is defective because it lacks reason" has had the effect of "deforming all poetry and culture" (page 3). What we must learn to realize and to fully embrace is the notion that human consciousness is only one of the many kinds of consciousness operating in the universe.

Since 'News of the Universe' had such a profound influence on me, and has remained one of my favorite books, I had very high hopes for the present book. After all, its title - 'The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy' - is very promising. Although the statement is perfectly true, there aren't many today who are telling us we are here for our own joy. More often than not what we are being told is that we are here to be good citizens, or good workers, or good party members, or good whatever - but not that we are here to actually enjoy life, though anyone who has observed animals at play ought to suspect as much. So if Bly had succeeded in assembling a whole collection of poems dealing with this vitally important message, it was something I was definitely interested in reading.

You may imagine my disappointment when, on receiving the book and turning to its mere 2-page 'Introduction' (which isn't really an Introduction at all), I found Bly confessing that he had originally intended to name the anthology 'Baskets that Hold God' (page xviii). So why didn't he?

But even worse was to follow, for not only are the Introductions to each of its parts skimpy, and altogether lacking the solid intellectual content of those of his earlier anthology, but I noted that Part X is named : 'THE SPIRIT - WHO IS A GUEST OF THE SOUL - WILL NEVER BE AT HOME ON THIS EARTH.' Gulp! Readers will at once see the glaring contradiction. If the soul is here for its own joy, how can it possibly joy if it will never be at home on this earth? Bly, so far as I can see, seems to want to have his cake and eat it.

The present book, I'm sorry to say, doesn't seem to me to be a particularly well-conceived project at all, and its title is certainly misleading. It contains a number of fine poems. It also contains a lot of flowery God-intoxicated Sufi writing - Kabir, Rumi, etc., - which will appeal to those who find that sort of thing appealing. Frankly I found the book rather monotonous. Perhaps it requires a more 'spiritual' type of reader. It certainly lacks the thrust and excitement of Bly's earlier anthology.

Readers who may be simply looking for an international anthology of 'spiritual' poems, poems about humans and their involvement with what they take to be 'God,' will probably like it. I see Bly as having reneged and fallen into the very anthropocentrism that his earlier anthology provided such an eloquent testimony against. Bly, in short, returns us here to the emotional stew, and seems to have completely forgotten the wonderful news of the universe that his earlier anthology brought.

Rating:
Summary: A masterful collection
Review: Robert Bly's compilation of sacred poetry is best read to the music of Loreena McKennit or Hildegard of Bingen. Lights should be low, or natural, and a blank journal should be nearby, ready for you to record your revelations and insights. Bly's assortment is remarkable in that it lifts the reader to divinity by celebrating humanism. A book that positively radiates light.