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. In this profound collection, Bly rediscovers the power of form to explore the great dualities of a rich inner life: The Ghazal Form: Discover the compact, startling energy of the ghazal, where each three-line stanza stands as a complete, resonant poem. - Sufi Poetry Influence: Experience a modern master channeling an ancient tradition, where the praise poems of Islamic mystics find a new home in the American West. - Poems about Nature: 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. - Philosophical Poetry: 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. “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 Readers have found Robert Bly's ghazals startling and new; they merge wildness with a beautiful formality. 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 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." 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. Robert Bly's books of poetry include The Night Abraham Called to the Stars and My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy . His awards include the National Book Award for poetry and two Guggenheims. He lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy Poems By Robert Bly HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 Robert Bly All right reserved. ISBN: 0060757191 The Dark Autumn Nights Imagination is the door to the raven's house, so we are Already blessed! The one nail that fell from the shoe Lit the way for Newton to get home from the Fair. Last night I heard a thousand holy women And a thousand holy men apologize at midnight Because there was too much triumph in their voices. Those lovers, skinny and badly dressed, hated By parents, did the work; all through the Middle Ages, It was the lovers who kept the door open to heaven. Walking home, we become distracted whenever We pass apple orchards. We are still eating fruit Left on the ground the night Adam was born. St. John of the Cross heard an Arab love poem Through the bars and began his poem. In Nevada it was Always the falling horse that discovered the mine. Rober