{"product_id":"my-sentence-was-a-thousand-years-of-joy-poems-isbn-9780060757199","title":"My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eReaders 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEach 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.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this profound collection, Bly rediscovers the power of form to explore the great dualities of a rich inner life:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eThe Ghazal Form:\u003c\/b\u003e Discover the compact, startling energy of the ghazal, where each three-line stanza stands as a complete, resonant poem.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eSufi Poetry Influence:\u003c\/b\u003e Experience a modern master channeling an ancient tradition, where the praise poems of Islamic mystics find a new home in the American West.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003ePoems about Nature:\u003c\/b\u003e From the Wind River Range in Wyoming to the cry of the crow, Bly grounds the spiritual in the raw, observant details of the natural world.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cb\u003ePhilosophical Poetry:\u003c\/b\u003e Intimate poems that wrestle with life’s great themes—love, mortality, art, and war—finding, as the title suggests, a thousand years of joy even in a sentence of sorrow.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e | \u003cp\u003eReaders have found Robert Bly's ghazals startling and new; they merge wildness with a beautiful formality.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMy Sentence Was a Thousand Years\u003c\/em\u003e of Joy is Robert Bly's second book of ghazals. The poems have become more intricate and personal than they were in \u003cem\u003eThe Night Abraham Called to the Stars\u003c\/em\u003e, and the leaps even bolder. 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.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“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.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJames Hillman, author of A Terrible Love of War\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Readers who miss the direct, daring Bly of the ‘60s...may rejoice to find that he’s back, in force.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In My Sentence Was A Thousand Years of Joy, [Robert Bly] brings it all together—integrating erudition, moral concern, introspection and passion.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJohn Calvin Rezmerski, Minneapolis Star Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44887662166245,"sku":"NP9780060757199","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780060757199.jpg?v=1730227184","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/my-sentence-was-a-thousand-years-of-joy-poems-isbn-9780060757199","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}