SOURCE: Hall, Donald. “Notes on Robert Bly and Sleepers Joining Hands.” Ohio Review 15, no. 1 (fall 1973): 89-93.

In the following review, Hall offers a series of observations on Bly's poetry and particularly on the final section of Sleepers Joining Hands, which he calls “the best of Bly's work.”

This is not a “review,” partly because transitions are fatuous; transitions and order translate “notes” into “review” or “article.” And partly because I have no objectivity. This poet has been my friend for twenty-five years.

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Bly is the most systematic poet in the United States. Gary Snyder is second. Both men are learned, eclectic priests. Both are born teachers, neither teaches at a college. Synder is more accurate than Bly, in his learning; Bly is wilder in his weddings of the unweddable. Bly is more inclusive; Snyder only recently approaches the west, by way of cave paintings; Bly moves like a...