It’s interesting when the real personality emerges from behind the hero’s carefully constructed persona or façade. I mentally spit on the thought of Robert Bly‘s grave whenever he is mentioned. He was a poet I admired until he let the social veil slip and attacked me in public. I had produced a big poetry reading event honoring a Calliopea Press art book for his Rilke sonnet translations at Sonoma State. Since I was a singularity, I worked like a dogsbody navigating the bureaucracy to rent the room, raising the speaker fee, setting up the stage, I did mike and sound check, placed chairs, was emcee, etc., and at the end, I politely asked him to autograph my hard-earned copy of the hand-letter-press book, with a gorgeous embossed imprint of a purple iris on the cream cover. I guess he was done with his Mr. Nice face. He ripped me a new one in public and refused to sign my copy. Not a clue as to why. Carol Denison, the broadside artist and pressowner, who witnessed the tirade, was equally mortified, and gave me her signed copy. I was completely humiliated and devastated, not to mention exhausted. I am not one to cry, but that evening he made me cry, and that is unforgivable. I have never been able to even read the book. I heard the book is worth a bomb. I need to sell it to exorcise the bad juju. To this day, I curse him. That night, I got to see the real Bly, mysogenist and ogre that he was, in his dandified cravat and knitted vest. Iron John, my ass.
ok, I confess this was from a fragment I never finished, so I posted it on the day of his death tho it was written in situ 7/21/22.
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