Robert Bly’s departure wounds me. I have spent so many hours with his voice and his words. His poems were some of the first I read apart from an assignment, and among the first to hum at my soul’s frequency; in his writing I found validation for my weirdness, and for my short poems.

I’ve read Iron John and Little Book on the Human Shadow each 4-5 times through with countless revisits. The times I have found myself in a crisis, these books and associated lectures have been a roadmap to recovery and growth–to honor my wildness, to find comfort in my own body and sex, to enjoy friendships with other men, to reconnect myself to the parts I’ve been missing.