The Spur

Issue date: 11/2/05 Section: News

Media Credit: Janam Bhaukajee Robert Bly speaks at the Marshall Festival as a featured author in the first evening session on Oct. 24, followed by a book signing. Bly also read on Oct. 25. on the "The State of American Poetry Now."

Award-winning author Robert Bly spoke on Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. and again on Oct. 25 at 9 a.m. in the Conference Center. He read poems from his own works including selections from "My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy" and "The Insanity of Empire: A Book of Poems Against The Iraq War."

In addition to reading poetry, he also lectured on the current state of American poetry and the new generation of writers.

"So few of [new generation writers] are reading that I don't think they are going to work hard because all of their life they've been able to get what they wanted very easily by turning on a television," said Bly.

Bly did concede, however, that there was still hope, and that events like the Marshall Festival are good for aspiring writers.

"You need to know people, and you can't know them by staying inside your room," he said. "The people that you meet here will give writing a human face and the context will help you for the rest of your life."

"I don't think they are very useful," Bly said of literary workshops. "What I tell people is to join a workshop, find two or three people you agree with, then take them home and have your own workshop; forget the rest of them."

At the end of his commentary, Bly closed with a few words about the hard work a lifetime of writing takes, and the pitfalls writers get caught in. "Writing is a lonely activity," he said. " You have to do it for a long time before you get any pleasure out of it, and if you have the TV to turn on, why not spend your life with that?"

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