Robert Bly

The American prose poem has a rich history marked by important contributions from major writers. Michel Delville's book is the first full-length work to provide a critical and historical survey of the American prose poem from the early years of the 20th century to the 1990s.

Delville reassesses the work of established prose poets in relation to the history of modern poetry and introduces writings by some whose work in the form has so far escaped mainstream critical attention (Sherwood Anderson, Kenneth Patchen, Russell Edson). He describes the genre's European origins and the work of several early representatives of a modern tradition of the prose lyric (Charles Baudelaire, Max Jacob, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce).

By applying a broad range of theory to the history of the prose poem, Delville adds evidence to its reputation as a norm-breaking form by writing within, against, and across existing genres and traditions. He shows that the history of the contemporary prose poem is, in many respects, the record of its efforts to question both the nature of the "poetic" or "lyric" mode and the aesthetic and ideological foundations of a variety of other genres and subgenres.

Warriors and Wildmen is a book about men and masculinity. Through an exploration of the complex issues of sex differences, the book presents a challenge to the predominant ideas of modern feminism. Contemporary studies of sex and gender have come primarily from the perspective of women's studies. In the 1990s, however, a growing body of work offers a male perspective. This book surveys that collection, and draws from a wide variety of popular and scholarly writers in support of its major points. This book will be of interest to anyone involved in men's studies, gender issues, and feminism.

Whether in crisis or not, whether in denial or not, all men go through a midlife transition. The mythopoetic perspective is a way for men to start an inward journey of introspection to seek personal transformation and healing. This may mean a new search for spirituality as opposed to organized religion. It may mean looking for a new meaning in life.

It is commonly assumed that the United States and Latin America, culturally so different, move artistically to very different rhythms. Also common is the assumption that, with rare exception, the literary figures on one side of the global North/ South divide have had little interest in the work of their counterparts. With Mutual Impressions Ilan Stavans dispels these notions by showing how solid the bridges between writers and across borders have been -- at least since the early days of this century -- and how crucial they are likely to become as we enter the next millennium.

Divided into symmetrical halves -- South reading North and North reading South -- the book presents essays by leading novelists, poets, and other writers that focus on the work of another literary figure from across the divide. Borges, for example, finds in Hawthorne the perfect precursor to his own interest in allegories; Katherine Anne Porter examines Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi as a rascal whose picaresque views of life in The Itching Parrot served to launch the Latin American novel; Cortazar's study of the plots and style of Poe show an affinity that left an indelible mark on the Argentine's short fiction; Susan Sontag views Machado de Assis as the ultimate mirror, a proto-postmodernist.

With other essays by Thomas Pynchon, William H. Gass, John Updike, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alejo Carpentier, John Barth, Robert Coover, Pedro Henriquez Urena, Grace Paley, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Mark Strand, among others, Mutual Impressions offers a remarkable view of the connections that comprise a literary tradition of the Americas. It is a book that will surprise and enliven its readers as it informs and awakensin them a sense of wonder.

In this deeply learned book, poet and translator Robert Bly offers nothing less than a new vision of what it is to be a man. Bly's vision is based on his ongoing work with men and reflections on his own life. He addresses the devastating effects of remote fathers and mourns the disappearance of male initiation rites in our culture. Finding rich meaning in ancient stories and legends, Bly uses the Grimm fairy tale ``Iron John,'' in which the narrator, or ``Wild Man,'' guides a young man through eight stages of male growth, to remind us of archetypes long forgotten-images of vigorous masculinity, both protective and emotionally centered. Simultaneously poetic and down-to-earth, combining the grandeur of myth with the practical and often painful lessons of our own histories, Iron John is a rare work that will continue to guide and inspire men-and women-for years to come.