The Garden Entrusted To Me - Robert Bly

In 2026 White Pine Press will publish The Garden Entrusted to Me: Essays on Poetry & the Writing Life, by Robert Bly, a seminal figure who had a profound impact on the shape of American poetry. The book is a collection of Bly’s essential writings on his life and practice of poetry, revealing his approach to technique and the life experiences that helped form him as a poet. Edited by his longtime assistant and poet Thomas R. Smith the volume collects material long out of print and some appearing for the first time.

In order to publish The Garden Entrusted to Me we need your help and support. With the recent demise of the National Endowment for the Arts we need to develop new sources of support and are reaching out to the community of poets, editors, readers, and donors to bring this project to life.

The poet Jane Hirshfield, who contributes an afterword says of the collection” Robert Bly has become, over his several lifetimes of ink and words, a force of geological genius, transforming the landscape of poetry and culture in ways that set him beside the Old Masters and anonymous teachers whose praises his lines so often sing. This book carries its own lantern of bioluminescence, an alchemical music and knowledge, and Bly's ferocious thirst, needed now more than ever."