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What you feel in Japanese poetry is always entirely longing.

Robert Bly

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Robert Bly
Age: 97
Born: 1926
Born: December 23
Linguist
Poet
Translator
Writer
Madison
Minnesota
Robert Bly
Robert Elwood Bly
Japanese
Longing
Entirely
Poetry
Feel
Feels
Always

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In the society that has replaced the paternalistic society, women are able to develop their independent and social energies much more. That is good.
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In some Mayan villages they even have a stage beyond the elder that they call the Echo Person. They say that when an Echo Person, whether a man or a woman, speaks, the words echo both in this world and in the other world. That's why they are called Echo People.
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The door to the soul is unlocked you do not need to please the doorkeeper, the door in front of you is yours, intended for you, and the doorkeeper obeys when spoken to.
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I saw Sophia Loren - the Italian woman with those wonderful cheekbones - in a movie the other day. She must have had 24 face-lifts, and she looks like an alien, as if she weren't from this world at all. Her Italian wrinkles would have been a thousand times more beautiful.
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There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.
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I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.
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There is no hierarchy in Japanese Buddhist poetry.
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Those of us who make up poems have agreed not to say what the pain is.
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Every breath taken in by the man Who loves, and the woman who loves, Goes to fill the water tank Where the spirit horses drink.
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One could say the higher the spirit goes, the more deeply the soul sinks down into the waters of melancholy and tragedy. Drowning in that water is as sweet as rising.
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The older I get, the more beauty I see in the word renunciation.
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Poetry keeps longing alive.
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Grief is the doorway to a man's feelings.
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Siblings tend not to care much about boundaries and borders. Having worn each others' T-shirts, it's unlikely that they'd go to war over a border.
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One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture that is why suburban children want rap music.
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Every part of you that you do not love will regress and become hostile towards you.
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A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
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Be careful how quickly you give away your fire.
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