My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems

Readers have found Robert Bly’s ghazals startling and new; they merge wildness with a beautiful formality. The ghazal form is well-known in Islamic culture, but only now finding its way into the literary culture of the West.

Each stanza of three lines amounts to a finished poem. “God crouches at night over a single pistachio. / The vastness of the Wind River Range in Wyoming / Has no more grandeur than the waist of a child.”

The ghazal’s compacted energy is astounding. In a period when much American poetry is retreating into prosaic recordings of daily events, these poems do the opposite. My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy is Robert Bly’s second book of ghazals. The poems have become more intricate and personal than they were in The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, and the leaps even more bold. This book includes the already famous poem against the Iraq War, “Call and Answer”: “Tell me why it is we don¹t lift our voices these days / And cry over what is happening.” The poems are intimate and yet reach out toward the world: the paintings of Robert Motherwell, the intensity of Flamenco singers, the sadness of the gnostics, the delight of high spirits and wit.

This book reestablishes Bly's position as one of the greatest poets of our era. After many years of free verse in American poetry, years which have been very fertile, the inventive ghazal helps the imagination to luxuriate in a form once more. We are seeing a poetry emerge that is recovering many of the great intensities that modern art and poetry has aimed at and achieved in earlier generations.

A fresh, new volume by one of the premier living American poets

Readers have found Robert Bly's ghazals startling and new; they merge wildness with a beautiful formality. The ghazal form is well known in Islamic culture but is only now making its way into the literary culture of the West. Each stanza of three lines amounts to a finished poem. "God crouches at night over a single pistachio. / The vastness of the Wind River Range in Wyoming / Has no more grandeur than the waist of a child." The ghazal's compacted energy is astounding. In a period when much American poetry is retreating into prosaic recordings of daily events, these poems do the opposite.

My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy is Robert Bly's second book of ghazals. The poems have become more intricate and personal than they were in The Night Abraham Called to the Stars, and the leaps even more bold. This book includes the already famous poem against the Iraq War "Call and Answer": "Tell me why it is we don't lift our voices these days / And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed / The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?"

The poems are intimate and yet reach out toward the world: the paintings of Robert Motherwell, the intensity of flamenco singers, the sadness of the gnostics, the delight of high spirits and wit. Robert Bly is writing the best poems of his life, and this book reestablishes his position as one of the greatest poets of our era.

“Translations disrupt the American mind’s obsession with its own self-absorbed soul. We are suddenly taken abroad; other voices, soils, and smells. Light falls with another slant and darker shadows. An astonishing range of poets, styles, lands, and ken." - James Hillman, author of A Terrible Love of War

“Readers who miss the direct, daring Bly of the ‘60s...may rejoice to find that he’s back, in force.” - Publishers Weekly

“In My Sentence Was A Thousand Years of Joy, [Robert Bly] brings it all together—integrating erudition, moral concern, introspection and passion.” - John Calvin Rezmerski, Minneapolis Star Tribune