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.

"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.