C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

My experience with Robert Bly was decidedly mixed. On the one hand, I enjoyed (for a while) the whole classic “men’s movement” thing that became the butt of so many jokes on late night TV. What I experienced had all the classic components: the men in the forest, the drumming, the inevitable stories about bad relationships with dad and how that affected one’s masculinity. I went to several of these multiple-day events at camps in the woods. Each one had a slightly different theme and a slightly different cast of teacher/characters, including Michael Meade, James Hillman, and various shamans and “drum masters” to round out the staff.

Cliques
My problems with the group revolved around the inevitable “high schoolness” of groups, that is, how quickly we create hierarchies (“in crowds”) and how oppressive that is when you’re not in the in-crowd. The in-crowd called him “Robert”—the rest of us were stuck. We couldn’t call him Mr. Bly, or anything weird like Elder Poet, so we didn’t call him anything. We just raised our hands to ask our questions, the most common communication for the non in-crowd. I couldn’t see anything the in-crowd did to “earn” their in-crowdness, but I suspected it had to do with parties, bars, drinking and a hip version of fawning behavior. Maybe some kind of alumni thing?

The Canon
What also evolved over time was a curious way in which Bly’s likes and dislikes became a sort of canon. Bly liked Rumi, for example, so everyone else did. One couldn’t dislike Rumi, or one would be snickered at because that was one of the signs that you didn’t “get it.” The other problem with the canon, was that it was limited to poetry, the art form Robert practiced. Yes, there were “dances” but they were based on our interpretations of what wild men in the woods might do. [No nudity please, we’re Minnesotans]. There was mask-making, a sort of half psychological exercise, but there was no room for the graphic arist (the painter, the sculptor). It was as if these art forms were, by omission, someone lesser or unimportant. He did try to revive some “lost arts” however, like name-calling (you stand there and trade insults like real men in the ghetto instinctively know how to do. Under the circumstancdes, I struggled to re-ignite my poetry-writing self. Accolades in small group would be distributed according how “Bly-like” or maybe “Rumi-like” your writing was. God forbid you should rhyme something! (Unless you were black, because then you instinctively…)

The Enemies
Bly created enemies, some of them the usual suspects (Bush, warmongers, Republicans, the old men in Washington…) and some new enemies. He was, after all, a survivor of the 60’s anti-war movement. That was where he first got national fame. The cleverest new enemy, I thought, was the “naïve male.” This was a man (a type of man) pulled from within our own ranks, the countercultural liberals. We were asked to identify him but not be him. I don’t care to try to reconstruct what all he meant by this, but it had to do with a man who was beaten down by the ‘bad’ feminists (vs. good feminists, we’ll get to them later) to the point where their masculinity was negated, deadened, harmed, in need of work. You could also laugh at them, just like you laughed at nerds in high school. It wasn’t like they’d find one and bring him to the front of the group, but you were asked to identify them in your friends or family and, I guess, feel sorry for them, or better, give them a book of Robert’s or drag them to a men’s meeting (and a new life). The other enemies were tendencies, such as the tendency to create a peer culture that de-valued the aged. This was probably a good idea, though not particularly original. Bly made everything sound original by putting it in “mytho-poetic” language, part revelatory (to the initiated), part inspired rant, and part just personal opinion.

Feminism
Good feminists. This was a tricky point. Most heterosexuals (we’ll talk later about homosexuals) who went to a Robert even probably lived with women who considered themselves feminists, so he couldn’t very well demonize them (ala ‘feminazis’of the right), so characterized a woman who instinctively understood and supported men becoming more manly while at the same time standing her ground as a woman who was changing the world from ‘bad patriarchy’ (see ‘old men in Washington’) to something better. These women Bly called two-headed women, which sounds strange out of context, but the context is lost to me. It was probably from some poem (maybe ancient, maybe Celtic), something revelatory and mythopoetic. People asked him about homosexuality in relationship to “the movement” and he had a rather creative, though not particularly brave response. He’d say, “I don’t know anything about that.” In a way, it meant the revelation might still be coming, though it implied homosexuals were so far from “the movement” (farther even than naïve males who could be saved?) that Bly had nothing to say about them. The other problem, given the countercultural liberal base of the group, you couldn’t very well have a negative opinion about gay people. That would like expressing a negative opinion about ‘people of color.’ It would not be tolerated even among the most initiated. But, it still said something. Bly also had another movement that involved yearly retreats, The Great Mother. These retreats were for men and (apparently two-headed) women, so he couldn’t totally lose that “market” if you will.

Other Teachers
I don’t have much to say about the other teachers. Meade never impressed me that much, though I perked up when he (carefully) seemed to disagree with Bly. They’d always work that out, though. Some kind of semantic thing, don’t you know. Hillman was interesting. I liked that he stood up there and said, “I’m not going to apologize for being difficult and academic.” At least he seemed to sense that any difference from what was usually offered might require an apology. Also, during the dancing celebrations, he once came out in red tap shoes and did a number. Again, his “art” (more show tune bar than Wildman in the forest) seemed to defy the dominant aesthetic. Maybe that’s why (and I could be wrong on this) he didn’t say in the inner circle indefinitely. Neither did Meade, but maybe it was just time to move on.

Small groups
After the retreats, I got even deeper involved. Bly encouraged us to join small groups of men who would meet regularly during the months were there might not be any Bly events. I was invited into one, The Mud Lake Men (name has a mythopoetic story behind it) and I was honored. It had guys in it that could call our leader Robert. Wow. It was OK for a while. I always liked the drumming. And when I could produce a Bly-like poem, preferably with approved themes (wounded masculinity, betrayal by fathers, the gulf between men and women, hatred of…well, you get it), I would enjoy praise. I remember one moment when I began to question the subtle forms of intimidation in the group. One guy made a statement that if you were a ‘true man’ you’d know ‘in your heart’ that Jerry Brown should be president. Jerry Brown, ok. Let’s all feel that. There seemed to be some confusion about what the movement thought about intoxication and/or carousing with women of the night. On the one hand it was what bad men (as opposed to naïve men, home doing the dishes) did, so that was bad. On the other it might have been part of recovering our “wildness” (a vague concept all the way through) and therefore, even if it offended us, was probably good. It seemed the leaders of the Mud Lake Men wanted what used to be called having your cake (ie. being “new men”) and eating it, too, (ie. being connected to the wildness of the tradition of maleness, ie. drunken sots and philanderers). I suspect a recovering alcoholic might be worried he’d be seen as a naïve male, so best to keep that sort of thing to yourself. I sort of made my exit before all this was either resolved or forced the movement to crash into a tree.

My Last Contact: The New Warriors
My last contact was a tentative outreach toward an organization called the New Warriors by the Mankind Project. To my understanding this was a sort of non-profit (the kind run by the charismatic leader who had a nice car) based roughly on many of the Bly principles: men should get together, in the forest, drum, etc. I knew quite a few guys that went into this, though none I knew well enough to find out what it “really was.” The journalist in me was curious and I signed up for a rather expensive weekend. I think they used some justification that you wouldn’t value it unless it hurt (financially?). Something. I thought I’d drive up and if I hated it, I’d just leave. When a guy called me up and said I couldn’t drive up, but that my “first assignment” was to contact two other guys and work out a carpool, I freaked. No way I was going to this without a vehicle. So I dropped out. Done.