SOURCE: Review of Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems, by Robert Bly. Publishers Weekly 246, no. 13 (19 March 1999): 97.

In the following review of Eating the Honey of Words, the unsigned critic laments the lack of subtlety and development in Bly's poetry.

Heeded in the '60s as the head apostle of the “Deep Image” school of poets; known for “read-ins” against the Vietnam War; and heralded again recently as the author of the men's movement guide Iron John, Bly has been famous several times over. But this broad set of poems [Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems] from his whole career reveals how detrimentally little his style has changed. Fond of would-be archetypal terms like “the darkness,” “fields,” “stones,” and “the body,” Bly seeks simplicity, knowledge of the collective unconscious, solidarity with nature and confidence in his desires: these projects entail, usually, a drastic...