The Garden Entrusted to Me: Essays on Poetry & the Writing Life

Robert Bly (1926 - 2021) had a profound impact on the shape of American poetry. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry and essays. As the editor of the magazine The Sixties (begun as The Fifties), Bly introduced many unknown European and South American poets to an American audience. His honors include Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as The Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. His recent books include Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life, Looking for Dragon Smoke and Collected Poems.

Thomas R. Smith is an internationally published poet, essayist, editor, and teacher living in western Wisconsin. He worked as Robert Bly's personal assistant from 1990 until the time of Bly's death in 2022, editing three earlier books on Bly's work, Walking Swiftly, Robert Bly in This World (with James P. Lenfestey), and Airmail: The Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer.