New Poem - "I Have Daughters and I Have Sons"

Robert Bly has published a new poem in the April 19, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. Entitled "I Have Daughters and I Have Sons," the poem is comprised of seven numbered, unrhymed quatrains. Here is the first:

Who is out there at 6 A.M.? The man
Throwing newspapers onto the porch,
And the roaming souls suddenly
Drawn down into their sleeping bodies.

I'm a longtime subscriber of The New Yorker, and I read the poems in most issues. What strikes me about Bly's poem is how it stands in contrast to much of the other poetry in the magazine. The poem is vivid and "alive." It not only has a strong and distinctive voice; it possesses -- to use a general word -- "personality." In this, it achieves the quality that Bly values in other poetry, what he has sometimes termed "liveliness."

Bly is sometimes looked down upon, or criticized, for his forays into the worlds beyond poetry: his involvement in the men's movement, his politics, even his persona. A poem like Daughters and Sons reminds us how much the senior poet has to offer -- and what's missing from much contemporary poetry.

I've always loved Yeats's fierceness
As he jumped into a poem,
And that lovely calm in my father's
Hands as he buttoned his coat.