Iron John

Robert Bly, a poet and translator, sets out to redefine masculinity. His ideas grow out of years of working with men and out of his own experience. He examines how distant fathers can damage a son's development, and he laments that our culture has largely lost the rites that once marked a boy's passage into manhood.

Bly turns to the Grimm tale "Iron John" as a map of male maturation. In the story, a figure called the "Wild Man" leads a young man through eight stages of growth. Through this tale, Bly recovers older archetypes of masculinity that are both protective and emotionally grounded.

The book moves between poetic reflection and plain, practical speech. It joins mythic material with the hard lessons drawn from personal histories. Written for men and women alike, it considers what manhood can mean and how it might be lived.