Bly then began to organize 10 day conferences for men, often held in the woods, "in which the main study is mythology, and the light it sheds on relationships with women, and with fathers," he writes. "It's just older men talking to younger men and by the middle of the week everyone's crying."

And while Bly takes his work seriously, these conferences have often been the targets of ridicule.

Bly defends his work by explaining his theory on the two kinds of men: corporate men and human men. The corporate men fear change and were threatened by the idea of exposing emotion, so they were unable to take the idea of a men's movement seriously.

"It's not the women who were the enemy of the men's movement--it was the corporate men," he says.

Despite the criticism, Bly says, the book holds lessons that can even apply to college-age men.

"The young man simply won't make it without a father or an older male to look up to," he says.

He encourages students, then, to find mentors in their professors or older students.

"One good thing is that in college you have a chance to find a mentor. The older men and the veterans were the mentors who shaped my college experience," he says.

Vendler explains Bly's involvement in the so-called "men's movement" as a natural outgrowth of his career as a writer.

"It comes from the introspection every poet engages in," she says. "[Bly] is interested in the soul and the balance between different aspects of the soul."

Sartorial Style

In addition to men's conferences, Bly, now in his early seventies, still gives frequent poetry readings. His poetry readings are a performance, as Bly often brings along masks or finger cymbals.

"He wants to bring back the aspects of chanting and ritual into poetry reading," Vendler says.

And Bly adds not only acoustic style to his readings, but sartorial flair as well.

"I'm best known for vests," he says. "You can get a lot of different colors in vests that you can't in a suit," he says.

For Bly, even his varied wardrobe choice reflects his particular worldview--one needs to constantly be changing.

"The road to being a poet is a very long one," he says. "As a writer, new things need to come along all the time."

And, more playfully, he concludes that poets--and men, for that matter--should not be constrained by traditional boundaries.

"After all, I ask myself, why shouldn't men be a little more colorful?"