Robert Bly, Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

William V. Davis (Baylor University)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2011

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United States (Country of Origin)

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Poem collection

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Robert Bly is up to most of his old tricks in

Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

(2011). These new poems have his fingerprints all over their pages and the themes that surface or resurface here are largely old themes revisited, or subtly alluded to, or added to. As such, this book is, in essence, a kind of a ‘new selected poems’, following up on Bly’s more comprehensive and more inclusive

Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems

of 1999. Indeed, in revisiting and revising “The Donkey’s Ear”, the final poem in

Eating the Honey of Words

, to “Talking into the Ear of a Donkey”, his title poem here, Bly tightens and focuses the earlier poem by cutting five lines and eliminating most of the discursive material to concentrate on the conversation between the speaker and the…

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964 words

Citation: Davis, William V.. "Talking into the Ear of a Donkey". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 October 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34204, accessed 31 October 2024.]

Robert Bly, Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

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