SOURCE: Zavatsky, Bill. “Talking Back: A Response to Robert Bly.” In Of Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly, edited by Richard Jones and Kate Daniels, pp. 127-39. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981.

In the following essay, Zavatsky addresses a number of theoretical problems in Bly's work in relation to the poet's thoughts on narrative, the feminine, confession, and other significant element of modern poetry.

In his own poetry, his many translations, in his magazines, anthologies, essays and interviews, and in his public talks and readings, Robert Bly has given more to American poetry in the last two decades than any other writer who comes to mind. Beyond his considerable literary influence, the issues to which he has addressed himself—the unconscious, the masculine and the feminine, our relationship to animals and growing things, our search for a spiritual center, war—place him beside those very few of his contemporaries...