Robert Bly writes that it is clear to men that the images of adult manhood given by popular culture are worn out that a man can no longer depend on them Iron John searches for a new vision of what a man is or could be drawing on psychology anthropology mythology folklore & legend Robert Bly looks at the importance of the Wild Man (reminiscent of the Wild Woman in Women Who Run With the Wolves) who he compares to a Zen priest a shaman or a woodman ' This book needs to be read I believe not as a dry work of scholarship to be judged coolly by the mind but as the work of a poet struggling to convey an emotional experience & lead us to what he has found within himself' Guardian' Eclectic & unclassifiable Iron John is a work whose mentors are the prophetic poets & crazies William Blake & Walt Whitman' Sydney Morning Herald' Importanttimelyand powerful' New York Times