SOURCE: Molesworth, Charles. Review of The Man in the Black Coat Turns, by Robert Bly. Western American Literature 17, no. 4 (fall 1982): 282-84.

In the following review of The Man in the Black Coat Turns, Molesworth commends the work's structural variety and unity of persistent themes.

Robert Bly's new book of poems [The Man in the Black Coat Turns] has three untilted sections, each with a loose stylistic unity. The first section includes poems that will be familiar to readers of The Light Around the Body (1967) and Bly's eight other previous volumes. Thematically the section deals with blocked energies and institutional failure (“the Empire / dying in its provincial cities”), but there are also hope and “days that pass in / undivided tenderness.” An elegy for Pablo Neruda is included as well, perhaps Bly's most touching, scrupulous poem. Throughout, Bly tries to release the numinous qualities of everyday things, and to bring...