Robert Bly: News of the Universe

Before I ever read a word of Robert Bly's, I heard his voice. Firm, sharp, and maybe even a bit rushed, out of excitement, or perhaps urgency. I was in Connecticut for a hiking trip with my friend Eric, riding along the back roads (there seemingly isn't any other kind in that state), and Robert was reading to us, telling the tale of the boy and Iron John.

The audio book crackled on the tape deck. Robert took us through the stages a man might go through in life, if he's lucky, and every now and again he would punctuate a point with a mad little swipe at his guitar.

Here, we thought, was a fellow who knew something.

Later that year, I read the book, and then read it again. The next year I attended a poetry retreat in Massachusetts led by Robert and Coleman Barks. The year after that I made it out to the Minnesota Men's Conference and joined the wasters, rhymers, minstrels and other vagabonds cavorting in the woods by a lake. I am a different and better man because of Robert's work.

Robert Bly: News of the Universe is a new film-in-progress by Haydn Reiss. I encourage you to have a look and consider supporting this crowd-sourced work. There's also a fine article about Robert and the project here.

Bridgeport: Tales from the Park City

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. — Sun Tzu

Good news: friend and frequent Holy Embers commenter Eric Lehman has a new book out. His first published book, Bridgeport: Tales from the Park City is a collection of stories about the adventurous, even heroic, characters that helped bring their small Connecticut town to prominence in the 19th century. A few chapters in, however, and it’s apparent that Eric’s written not a cultural history of Bridgeport but of the country as a whole: a history of America in miniature.

The book, available here, is an engaging, entertaining account of figures grand (P.T. Barnum) and small (General Tom Thumb). I’ll leave you with the end of the book’s prologue, a fitting summary of the initiative and ingenuity which marked Bridgeport during its golden era and for which America became famous.

. . .

[The Marquis de] Lafayette did not foresee it, but this small town would become a center of creative industry and would one day evolve to be the largest city in Connecticut. Its people would watch the sea and take to the sky. Its inventors would transform the fields of metalwork, sewing and dental hygiene. There would be famous colonels and famous cartoonists. Two of its citizens would go on to become the most popular entertainers of the nineteenth century. Thousands of others would help America win both World Wars. But first, those people needed a little elbow room. Twelve years after the famous hero of the Revolution passed through Bridgeport, the townsfolk asked for a charter from the state of Connecticut. They would become their own city at last, and live proudly in the inspired vanguard of the possible.