cover image Born Under the Sign of Odin: The Life & Times of Robert Bly’s Little Magazine and Small Press

Born Under the Sign of Odin: The Life & Times of Robert Bly’s Little Magazine and Small Press

Mark Gustafson. Nodin, $19.95 trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-1-947237-33-9

Classics professor Gustafson (The Odin House Harvest) brings Robert Bly’s idiosyncratic literary magazine and poetry press to life in this nearly grueling “biography of a literary magazine and press run out of rural Minnesota that made a difference in the world.” In 1958, poet Bly and coeditor William Duffy put out The Fifties, a quarterly of “poetry and general opinion,” which evolved into The Sixties and, eventually, The Seventies. Gustafson’s deep familiarity with Bly is evident from his close reading of the criticism and poetry in Bly’s magazine as it evolved to reflect the decade it represented: he covers takedowns of mid-century literary lions in The Fifties, and reevaluations of such prowar poets as James Dickey in The Sixties. Bly’s own passion and humor come to life, and plenty of his own criticism and cantankerous rejection letters are on offer (“This poem is like lettuce that’s been in the refrigerator too long”). But Gustafson tends to assume the reader has his same knowledge of Bly and his literary circle, introducing contemporaries with little additional context. It’s a meticulous take on the work of a singular figure, but those with a less than expert handle on the mid-century poetry world need not apply. (Dec.)