Rating: 
Summary: Wanna be a man? Knock out a tooth!
Review: A lot of reviews have already been written about this book. Why add another? Well, right now, I'm reading this book for the third time in two years and that has not happened to me with any other book I've read. Even when you feel, as I did, that Bly's style of writing is at times so suggestive that you start wondering if he can fully understand and grasp the meaning of everything he is writing about himself, and even if you agree that the quoted poetry is a bit out of touch with the rest of the text, this book is a real mind-grabber.Everytime I read it, I am bewitched by its strong images, its powerful, hypnotic rhythm and the beautiful horizon that lies ahead. The book is not very long, but it takes me several weeks to get through it. But that is because as soon as I find myself reading to 'get it over with', I close the book (and my eyes) and put it aside for a while. This "man's stuff" is hard work and you should take your time for it. Take a bath in the book and come out completely refreshed. As I come to think of it, Bly's occasional haziness probably is what makes this book so truly hypnotizing. And if you want to break the spell and get a 'how to' sequel to this book, you can always pick up the beautiful 'King, Warrior, Magician, Lover' by Moore and Gilette. They will put your feet on the ground again - at least until the next time you pick up 'Iron John', that is. And thus, for contributing this book to a field where valid generalizations are hard to make and, consequently, "facts about men" that every man could agree on are rare, and for writing it even though every sentence could cause all-out war between the sexes (or between Christians, schoolteachers, the Society for the Promotion of Harmless Books and the Military, for that matter), this book -and its author- really deserve each of the five stars.
Rating: 
Summary: AMUSING READ
Review: I gave this one four stars simply because I did enjoy the author's style. He is good, there is no doubt about it, even if some of the points he is trying to make take page after page after page after page.......you get the picture. These endless pages are indeed well done if you just enjoy the word craft. That being said, the overall premise of man finding his true self, via this story, is a noteworthy endeavor, I admire that, but this one is a bit over the edge for my taste. Like a couple of other reviewers, I simply missed the part where this could be applied to my life, or anyother life I could think of, for that matter. Now don't get me wrong, I love fairy tales and folk tales, have a large collection of them as a matter of fact. I must admit to being one of those who look with a jaundice eye at this sort of thing..I am probably much too meat and potatoes to be able to really get the point here. On the other hand, there are some very good points brought up here, some food for thought, so the book, overall, is well worth the read...on several levels and I do recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: OK if read from the point of a passive observer
Review: I really enjoyed his analysis of the story, and the practical applications he made. Unfortunately, this gets drowned in long winded Joseph Campbellesque tangents (very long winded and tiring at times-like the several pages on hair...ok! we get it!). I used these sections to practice my speed reading.
If he would have dwelled more upon the story in question and the direct application, making brief mention of mythological links when really needed, it would have been a much more powerful book.
All such soul-searching books should, in my opinion, be read with a grain of salt (hence, the title of this review). A point that may be truly inspiring for one person could be stunting for another. If you want to read it, read it passively and then take away any points that inspire you-otherwise, realize that no poet, historian, mythologist, etc., is the master of your soul.
Rating:
Summary: Better than I thought
Review: I remember reading an article about Robert Bly sometime around 1990, in which he was described as "looking like someone's grandmother," and then which proceeded to mock him as someone who took wackos and had them beat drums and howl at the moon. I figured he was getting a bum rap--but then, what can you expect from the media? Recently I picked up this book, and for all the poetic vagueness--hey, he's a poet, okay?--it was better than I thought it would be. Essentially, once you get past all the overwriting, Bly does have two good points--some fathers are too distant, or not there at all, and there are no male initiation rites, which most
cultures provided at about age 12. Unfortunately, he writes an entire book about one fairy tale--the "Iron John" of the title. There's also a bit too much self-pity and victimization. But besides that, it's a good book, one that I would certainly recommend. Just read it with a critical eye.
Rating:
Summary: A Man's Bible, or: The Truth Your Father Can't Pronounce
Review: If you don't think this book applies to you, I'd bet dollars to pesos there's a troublesome area in your life that directly relates to it, but that you're too close, or too prideful, to recognize. Again and again, I've dismissed the more unsavory parts of this book (initiation by older men, emnity towards the dark feminine, the importance of discipline, etc.)--only to return the this seminal work and find its direct relevancy to my life. Robert Bly is not out to create a how-to book on being a man; The book is simply a kind of guide. Bly speaks plainly enough about what being a man is, and gives ample explanation as to why it is necessary if not for survival, then for living--to rival any but the most wise and hearty uncles. Today there are few who exemplify the kind of soulful, rich, loving, honest, clever, groundedness that is masculine. Bill Maher comments, and I believe, that our culture has been feminized to an unhealthy extent. If the idea of finally accepting masculinity on its own terms, and not berating yourself with society's contemptuous, feminine view of men--then this is the place to start. This book is also great for relationships. There will always exist a dynamic tension within a healthy male-female relationship, and I think this book clearly explains how these energies are equal but different. As part of a generation of closet misogynists, raised by women, I think this book is long overdue. If you wonder how your father occupies more space in a room than you, then you need this book. If you still don't understand your dad, have a son, or buy this book. The latter is certainly cheaper.
Rating:
Summary: A lexicon for the American Male experience...
Review: Mr. Bly, much maligned but terribly wise, outlines the pitfalls of the young man with expert insight. The most profound point that Mr. Bly makes is that the maturing process is not like puberty: it is not eventual but volitional. As emerging warriors, young men must make decisions that are painful in the short term in order to grow. The decision to recconnect with older men has made all the difference in my life. I have Mr. Bly to thank because I may never have come to it on my own.
Rating: 
Summary: Possibly Important, Definitely Flawed
Review: Poet Robert Bly takes the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale of the wild man and his foster son and turns it into an extended metaphor for an archetypal initiation into manhood, asserting that modern men are victims of a culture that fails to connect boys with older male mentors. The book is a mix of amateur pop psychology, ecumenical syncretism of the Joseph Campbell variety, and a heavy dose of '80's-era political-correctness. Together with Sam Keen's "A Fire in the Belly" it was one of the bibles of the short-lived 'Men's Movement' of the early '90's. A 'new' male model emerged in the '70's; 'sensitive guys', who painfully discovered that male sensitivity is not valued in this (or indeed any) culture, by either men OR women. The traditional male, confident, dominating and aggressive, continues to be the desired ideal. Why do so many men come down with sensitivity, and what can be done about it? According to Bly, in halcyon days of yore boys were initiated into the true nature of manhood either deliberately by cultural rites or incidentally by working alongside their fathers. He blames the industrial revolution for causing a disconnection ("Iron John" contains a great deal of digressive social criticism and liberal finger-wagging) and asserts that modern men are now raised by women without the necessary immediacy of bonding with older males. The book is full of symbolism and poetry conveying a bleak picture of male emotional wounds. Bly touches on issues many men obviously find important, but he offers no real solutions beyond the vaguely-sketched initiation process that emerges from his discursive interpretation of the title fairy tale. All men are victims in his view, especially those who think they aren't! He is fearful of offending feminists and tries to placate their presumed disapproval by qualifying his call for wildness with obsequious proclamations of allegience to feminist theory. He expends a good deal of blame on traditional conservative targets, and new-agers are also targets for scorn. If you find victimization theory attractive this book may have something to offer, but it's a view not exactly symbolic of strength and empowerment.
Rating:
Summary: From a UK woman
Review: So lads! What's going on in Boytown? (I mean that in the utmost back-slappin' hetero sense, you understand.) I've read 'Women Who Run With The Wolves', and this would seem to be the male equivalent. I love the fairy tales examined in both books and am a great devourer of Jung's work, so it's fair to say that I'm enjoying Iron John so far. Additionally, Bly's idea that men are missing fathers rings true. But this isn't anything new. Challenging your pops is all part of the course. (Until you change into him.) Bly's writing needs a bit of interpretation, given that he's a poet, and my little bro' would get through a couple of pages before going 'huh?' What's hard for me to envisage are any of the guys I know going off on an Iron John weekend, but then I live in the UK where men are a lot more uptight. Perhaps IJ trips are filled with guys who enjoyed summer camp, the odd hippy with a gong and nice guys who need to make the peace with their decent but different fathers. Tell you what, if you want male bonding, stick on an AC/DC album. They're probably as old as your dad, and you can drag him along to see them live. And give me a call when you do!
Rating:
Summary: A ground breaking work for the masculine psyche
Review: Ten years ago when I was first told about Iron John, I remember buying the book, scanning a few pages only to put it on the book shelf. I just didn't get it. Nearly 2 years later I picked it up and began reading. Now I couldn't put it down. I suppose my time had come and now everything Bly described was deeply felt. I suspect some young readers-both male and female won't truly understand the gravity of what Robert Bly is saying. But as is the mark of a truly great work, the reader can go back again and again, gleaning a little more understanding with each reading. Robert Bly has a firm grasp of Jungian psychology and uses metaphor throughout the book as large brush strokes on a blank canvas. I will go as far to say this is a "must read" for all men over 35. A "should read" for anyone wanting to better understand the male psyche, the events leading to the appearance of what Bly calls the "50s male" and the following retreat into the "soft male" of the 70s and 80s.
The alternitive the author describes can be then a man who has centered himself between these two polar opposites, needing not to act out old macho stereotypes nor carry the wounds of the feminine psyche. I suspect this is a man who has found his own way and a man that women can trust as well.
Rating:
Summary: Lyrical and resonant....
Review: The poet Robert Bly published what is still the Men's Movement's central text in 1990. It's abstract and discursive, but one can discern a lot of real feeling in Bly's pleas for warm fathering and meaningful male rites of passage. Essentially, Bly uses a Grimm's fairy tale called "Iron John" and extrapolates from it sentence by sentence. The book was a bestseller, but the Men's Movement it spawned sputtered out in only a few years, resurfacing in Christian form by the mid-1990s as Promise Keepers and then fading almost entirely. Unlike second wave feminism, whose radical ambitions brought about change we're still reeling from 40 years later, the Men's Movement was hampered and compromised by a time of Anglo-American political centrism. "Iron John" was not the radical text it needed to be to launch a sustained and meaningful social movement. One would not need to read deep in between the lines of the Iron John fairy tale to see it as a man-boy romance, but Bly's beautiful observations seem blind to this subtext. First of all, wilderness is a very erotic symbol in Grimms' stories as in the wolfishly sexual "Little Red Riding Hood." The kidnapping of a boy by a man is a charged event when it's reported on the six o'clock news. We expect to hear the word "sodomized" in the next sentence. But in Bly's Disneyworld universe the man-boy romance of the "Iron John" story remains utterly chaste. Even back in 1960 the literary critic Leslie Fiedler complained about the Puritan American tendency to expurgate homosex from its male love stories (such as "Huckleberry Finn," "Moby Dick," "Of Mice and Men," and "On the Road"). Rather than a radical break from this tradition, Bly writes firmly within it. He doesn't see the wild man's outcast status as a hint at pederasty. His doesn't see the wild man's causing the boy to view his young body parts as golden as the result of admiring or even desiring glances. Even when the lovers run off to the privacy of the wilderness' dark heart, Bly suspects nothing untoward. The Wild Man lavishes his chosen boy with gifts, a commonplace generosity in Greek and samurai pederasty. In fact, many cultures all over the world have linked male rites of passage to man/boy erotic bonds. Police were raiding Michael Jackson's woodsy Neverland compound in the early 1990s as Bly was promoting "Iron John." By the year 2001, stories of priestly pedophilia would be splashed all over the media; some of these tales involved adult mentors taking adolescent boys to wilderness locations for bonding which included sex. Through it all, Bly never mentioned the parallels to the story he analyzed in "Iron John." Bly's "father hunger" parallels that of Christ, who imagined a Father in the sky to ease his heartache over failing to find a father here on earth. These are beautiful fantasies. As a poet myself, I love them. But a radical Men's Movement that actually takes off and matters wouldn't dodge the fact that it's up against a powerful taboo called homophobia.
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