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For Bly is certainly not alone in this trait of withering away his talent with the years. Most poets have a prime of 35-50 years old. It takes a couple decades or so to ramp up your talent, shed your imitations, & gain the maturity to formulate a POV that is unique & not generic. After 50 youthful desire wanes, success weakens what age does not, & the mind loses its elasticity a bit, in most. Rare is the poet that improves with age (usually it’s stagnation, then regression)- among big-name English language poets only Wallace Stevens, W.B. Yeats, & Robert Hayden stand in contrast. Bly’s company includes Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, Quincey Troupe, Carolyn Forche, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Gary Snyder, & dozens of recognizable names (at least among those who had some talent to begin with). Yet, that still does not absolve the individual, nor his/her work. For this Bly stands accused, tried, convicted, & sentenced to a slow fade away from any lasting import in American poetry.
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But it highlights the frequency with which Bly falls into didacticism- a trait he always displays with audiences- reading & rereading the most inconsequential images, lines, stanzas, & poems as if of cosmic import. It’s also the dead giveaway of a man unsure of himself, his talent, & in need of constant reinforcement. But then he’s always played the “insecure liberal”, wasting time & energy in politics that should go to art, who needs to show his/her innate goodness, go to a [3rd World country/rehab center/orphanage/social activist group] to see how the other ½ lives, translate 5th rate poetasters into English, & leach bad poems from the transformative period so crucial to their growth as a poet/person.
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