When I got the announcement in my inbox that 2024 would be the 40th anniversary of the Minnesota Men’s Conference, I immediately knew I had to attend.
The gathering, founded by the poet Robert Bly, has been on my radar for some time, as it carries a mythical aura as the original birthplace of the “mythopoetic men’s movement”, a lineage that has claimed me for the last 10 years.
Bly, who died in 2021, is also the author of Iron John: A Book About Men published in 1990 and spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. That book, alongside King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Douglas Gillette and Robert Moore, serve as the core texts of the mythopoetic lineage and has influenced two generations of men, mostly in North America, Australia and Western Europe.
When the 40th anniversary arrived, I reached out to the organizers and offered to cover the gathering, as a commemoration of this milestone as well reportage from my own perspective on the history of the movement as well as its future.
From the official announcement:
The conferences were built around the notion that the souls of men were atrophying in a culture that was essentially in the process of colonizing its own people and of de-animating the living world.
As an antidote to a culture of emptiness, of shallowness, and of disconnection from the web of being, men came together to work with mythic story, with images, with poetry. We placed ourselves into the mythic, into stories that contain traces of the old pathways to becoming a fully developed human being.
The work has continued for 40 years. At this conference, we will look at what has been done, where we have failed, where there have been sweet deepenings, and where the trail may lead.
Before the gathering, I recorded an interview with Walton Stanley and Ben Dennis.
Then in early October, I boarded a plane from Victoria, Canada and headed to Minneapolis.
As arranged, I’m picked up from the airport by Jonathan Stensland in his truck. Stensland is in his 50s, affable and unassuming, thoughtful and disarmingly poetic.
I learn that in his 20’s, he was a long-time collaborator and friend of Robert Bly, and intimately involved with his poetry and writing process.
"Robert would always come to me with whatever poems he'd been working on at that moment, even if I was in my toolbelt working on the property. He’d hit me with three or four or five poems, and I would come right back to him. We were communicating in the essence of the poem itself, working it toward manifesting, closer and closer to regular old: here it is. That poem could put its elbows on the table, lean in and look at you. And that’s how immediate he liked to make the poems."
Jonathan also had a direct hand in the crafting of Iron John, including typing and editing early drafts of the book.
“It was a little bit more than a typist role. Robert would meet me with the pages that he had handwritten, and then I would take those pages. And then he would meet me with the ones I had just given him the last time we met and have cut out a paragraph that he liked. […] So it was really, truly cut and paste kind of scenario, but with [actual] tape.”
I love hearing his stories, but our ride is over and drops me at my accommodation for the night. It’s an impressive home offered by one of the longtime attendees of the conference.
In the morning, he returns to pick me up. I’m scarcely settled in my seat before he asks “We have some time before the event begins. Do you want to go see Robert’s grave?”
I’m struck. Turns out, Lakewood Cemetery is on the way.
Robert Bly is a mythic figure, as if a character in a film or book. Clearly, he was also an ecstatic, towering, genious. Yet I know from tales of others, including Stephen Jenkinson and Martin Shaw, that he was also complex figure.
That is was possible to simply visit his physical grave stone, felt wondrous.
Of course, I had to go.
Jonathan drove us through the traffic, regaling me with further anecdotes about the early days of the Minnesota gathering and the impact that Iron John had. What was initially a close knit group of men, suddenly had to deal with national exposure and an influx of men eager to discover what the mythopoetic had to offer.
As always, there was something gained and something lost of a certain kind of intimacy.
We arrive at Lakewood Cemetery. It’s a sprawling place, and it’s been some time since Jonathan’s last visit, so he’s not immediately clear where to go. We visit the front desk, housed in a elegant modern building, and the clerk gives us a printed map and marks where to find Mr. Bly.
We head out and drive down the lane to the appropriate row.
We exit the car, and I feel vaguely altered, like a low-dose of psilocybin has heightened my perception.
The great dark stone comes into view. Jonathan holds back, offers me space to connect on my own, intuitively recognizing the significance for me.
I approach, my feet on holy ground.
“Robert Elwood Bly” is etched on the stone. Below that, his birth and death date.
Underneath, his wife’s name Ruth Counsell Bly awaits, for when it’s her time to join her husband in the soil.
A spirograph design takes up the upper half of the stone. (I learn later it’s a symbol of Sufism, a path that claimed Bly in his later years).
Along the top of the stone are the words: What we have loved is with us ever, ever, ever! which come from a poem published in his book Loving a Woman in Two Worlds:
What we have loved is with us ever, ever, ever! So you are with me far into the past, the oats of Egypt . . . I was a black hen! You were the grain of wheat I insisted on before I agreed to be born.
I sit in silence for a time, taking in the scene.
It’s a lovely early Fall morning. The low hum of traffic can be heard in the background, but also the fluttering of the leaves.
I speak words of gratitude to Mr. Bly, for the trail he blazed before me and for the mythopoetic lineage that has inspired me. I say that I’ve come here, to this conference to discover the roots and that whatever I receive, I’ll do my best to carry it forward.
Jonathan joins me when I step back and offers to snap a picture.
Now complete, we depart the cemetery and head for the conference.
YMCA Camp St. Croix is perched on the banks of the St. Croix River and would our home for the next six days.
The Minnesota Men’s Conference will host about 80 men, fairly typical these days, though previous gatherings have ranged up to 120 during the Iron John heyday.
The setting resembles what I imagine most classic American summer camps to look like. There are numerous log cabins scattered throughout the property, as well as a basketball court, a large mess hall where meals will be shared, and a formidable Lodge that will be the main assembling place for the men.
By mid-afternoon, folks begin arriving. We choose our dorm beds, engage in light conversation, anticipating what’s to come. A number of the men know each other, some having attending the conference for a decade or more, and it’s good to feel the camaraderie of old friends re-uniting.
That night, an opening ritual is orchestrated by musician and facilitator Miguel Rivera.
Strips of colored cloth are tied and hung to create a threshold and barrier of protection between the world “out there” and the work that will be done in the Lodge.
There are prayers & pleas invoked, and each man is invited to cross the threshold.
Once in the Lodge, the men are seated in chairs, and a blaze roars impressively in the massive stone fireplace.
The main facilitators Walton Stanley, Ben Dennis, Timothy Young and Miguel welcome us with poetry, drumming and song. I notice a contrast to most men’s events I’ve attended - this one contains a lot more silver hair.
I realize this is one of the main reasons I came - to be amongst men with more tree rings in their souls, who have been steeped in this mythopoetic way for decades.
I want to see what my future might look like.
As is tradition, there is always storytelling at the gathering.
In honour of the 40th anniversary, they announce the first story would be… Iron John. Initially I felt a little disappointed - having taught the book on multiple occasions as well sharing the story myself at our men’s weekends. A fresh story felt more exciting. But then I quickly realized how perfect it would be to hear Iron John in this setting, on this mythic ground.
The tale, originally gathered from the Brother’s Grimm collection, was resuscitated by Robert Bly through is book, as he saw it as an men’s initiation story from adolescence to adulthood.
The opening scenes in brief:
Once upon a time, there is a castle and a King, and a dark forest and mysterious presence in the woods. After numerous hunters disappear in the forest, a young huntsman arrives to take on the task -and heads into the dark with his dog and discovers a Wild Man at the bottom of a pond. He returns with more men to bucket out the pond, bind and chain the Wild Man, and throw him into a cage in the castle courtyard. Eventually a young prince loses his golden ball to the Wild Man, who let’s him out with the key that is under the Queen’s pillow. Fearing punishment, the boy asks to be taken upon the Wild Man’s shoulder and they leave the castle and return to the dark woods…
Listen to the full telling of Iron John.
After hearing the story, it’s customary to “feed the story” by harvesting how each of us was stirred by an image or feeling we experienced.
In this way, the story begins to have its way with us. It comes alive, stretches its wingspan, and appears among us, anew with each telling.
That evening I attempt to fall asleep in my dorm.
Unfortunately, the snoring was far too invasive (I’m a light sleeper, even with ear plugs) and so I dragged my sleeping mat into the field outside. The weather was warm for early fall and it was a clear night.
I found myself resting beneath a great oak, the wind rustling the leaves and the tapestry of stars overhead.
I felt like the young prince, carried off by the Wild Man to the woods, finding a bed of moss to rest as he wonders what the mysterious future will hold.
Each day unfolded, the session’s blending into another.
The facilitators opened by delivering a raft of poems, mostly given without context, no explanations needed. True to Bly’s influence, poetry was so much a part of this gathering, not as adornment but the lifeblood to the culture.
Ritualist, musician, and longtime attendee, Miguel would often invite the men into song, raising our voices together, a rare experience for most men in the dominant culture of North America. But the potency of men singing together is stirring, primal, and undeniable.
"I first saw Robert Bly in 1989, when he and Michael Meade led a day for men in Los Angeles at the height of the Iron John mania.” I learn from Miguel when I sit down to interview him.
“A few years later, out of the blue, the phone rang: ‘Hello, this is Robert Bly, I’m inviting you to the Great Mother Conference [an early conference started by Bly] to teach drumming.’ That invitation carried me into a community I’ve been part of ever since."
On the power of the book ‘Iron John’ he says:
“What Robert did with the book in particular was open up a way for us to really be connected with archetypal energy. Everybody was searching for that connection […] which didn’t really exist anymore. Robert was filling a void, one that our religious and cultural institutions no longer fulfilled, or only did with conditions. He reminded men that there was another way to belong, one that touched the soul rather than just the roles society handed out."
Listen to full interview with Miguel below:
The special guest at this year’s conference is Robert Bringhurst, esteemed Canadian poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo, alongside his own impressive poetic body of work.
He offers a few keynote sessions, including a long creation myth from the Navajo that remains true to the indigenous vernacular, where every sentence is finished with “they say…” delivered in Mr. Bringhurt’s deep and intoning voice.
He confesses its his first experience at a “men’s gathering” and while unfamiliar, he’s enjoying himself. The men welcome him and his substantial years with reverence and respect.
Listen to an interview with Robert Bringhurst
On one of the early afternoons, the men are harnessed by Miguel to construct a sweat lodge, a tradition that would be offered for multiple nights throughout the conference. Having sat for years in sweats, I have come to appreciate the medicine of this ceremony.
As Miguel says:
“The healing energy in community is multiplied; what might take years in a therapist’s office can happen in a few hours when people are cracked open together. Ceremony gave us a way to turn pain into belonging, to remember that we are not alone.”
Back in the main Lodge, a table has begun collecting various artifacts, such as books and flyers from previous iterations of the Minnesota conference.
I find some that feature speakers as Robert Bly, Malidome Somé, Michael Meade, Martín Prechtel, Robert Moore, and many others. For me, it’s like seeing a hockey roster of the great stars all assembled at the same time, and I’m envious.
I can’t help but wonder - was that the “Golden Age” of the mythopoetic men’s movement? Will any “great teachers” rise again, or have we, in fact, collectively moved beyond the need for great teachers?
Yet, I shift the metaphor, and consider instead these men as great trees, who some of them now fallen, have become soil for the generations, like me, to come.
When I sat down with Jonathan, we explore the question and the impact of these gatherings on the wider culture:
"Some of what we were doing, I have a feeling, was psychically contagious. It wasn’t just the men in the room - it radiated outward. […] something invisible and pervasive that seeps into everything.
You began to notice it in places far from the conference: men hugging each other, fathers hugging sons, gestures that had been almost unheard of before the 1980s. Something was definitely being blown off of us because of the attention and the media—writers, TV shows, even sitcoms—picking up sparks and scattering them.
What we had formed here became like a cultural comet’s tail, lighting up the sky in a way that anyone could glimpse, even those who had never read Bly or sat in one of these circles.”
Listen to my full interview with Jonathan:
My notes from remaining days are a smattering of phrases and sentences, each one a key to a moment or insight that mattered to me:
the wound is the crack in everything, this is how the light goes in and out
if you’re not interested to hear a story on its own terms, you’re not ready.
stories are alive, and they have to change.
poetry is a way to give language to what we feel
in society, we have confused wounding with tempering
I do notice there is a conspicuous absence of conversation around sex and the wider theme of eros. (Since it’s largely the main focus of the work I explore and offer, it’s easy for me observe).
I mention it around the lunch table to some men who have been attending for years and there are nods of acknowledgment. It’s not something that has typically has gotten much airtime and I wonder why.
Perhaps it continues to remain a vulnerable and edgy subject. I wonder how it might be something to offer in the future.
With the telling of Iron John complete, Walton and Ben offer a second story for our gathering: Unktehi’s Seventh Spot.
In this tale, attributed to the Dakota people, two brothers, one blind, set out to slay the monstrous water serpent Unktehi, whose only weakness is the mysterious “seventh spot” on her body.
With the guidance of a shape-shifting old woman and a pair of magical arrows, they strike true, kill the monster, and gain gifts of power. The blind brother’s sight is restored, and the serpent’s heart offers them supernatural strength. In the end, however, they choose to relinquish the heart’s power, returning to ordinary life after their heroic deed.
Listen to the full recording of Unktehi’s Seventh Spot
At one point in the story, the shape-shifting woman initially appearing quite old and ugly, requests that one of the brother’s connect intimately with her. The brother who can see is revolted, and invites his blind brother to take the hit instead. After all, he reasons, my brother can’t even see - so why does it matter what she looks like?
The blind brother agrees, and when he engages with the woman, under his own fingers he feels the young supple feminine. She is vital, erotic, and their pleasure ensues. She has indeed shape-shifted into a beautiful young woman.
During this moment, an insight came to me that feels true in long-term partnership. As a couple gets older, and their youthful vitality ebbs, the task of loving each other grows deeper. In this story, it’s as if the order is reversed. I hear the old woman saying “If you can’t love me when I’m old, then you don’t deserve me when I’m young.”
As the telling unfolds, the conference begins to shift towards a ritual orchestration, a tradition influenced in the past by teachers such as Malidome Somé and Martín Prechtel.
On a large sprawling sheet of paper, artist Matt Faulkner has been conjuring the beast of Unktehi, the scaled serpent, along with the old woman and the two brothers.
We spend two afternoons crafting masks that are shaped to our own faces. We adorn them with paint, color, wild craft, leaves, bark, anything we are called to harvest and use.
Outside the Lodge, ritual gates are constructed with branches, cloth and shells. Each gate mirroring the journey of the two brothers in the story.
Everything is ready by the final evening and closing ritual.
In the deepening dusk, the men gather in the Lodge. The fire is out in the hearth, though one crackles downstairs in the basement.
We have brought our masks, each now veiling our faces. Men have become strange creatures, some beastly, menacing. It’s as if the monster inside has been made visible.
Below us, a heartbeat of drumming has begun.
My blood quickens.
Silent and single file, we make our way out the side door into the night. We are instructed to approach each altar, three in total, that have brought the story of Unktehi alive. Candles are flickering, giving the entire scene an otherworldly glow.
The experience is altering and psychedelic. The drumming carries us forward.
I make my way through the first two altars, paying my respects with my breath and silence. Finally I arrive at the great beast Unktehi, the image hung across a wood scaffolding and fearsome now in the darkness and light.
Before the beast, a hole has been dug in the earth, so I may peer down to its “shining seventh spot.”
After a moment, I return to my feet. The drumming grows louder as I enter into the basement.
The fire roars, blistering, and the growing throng of men in masks are dancing ecstatically to the trance of the drums. There is hollering, screaming, yelping.
The energy grows as the full chorus of men enter the space.
I am awash in the energy, yet also uncertain of what’s to come. The air feels electric and somehow…sacrificial. I wonder what will be offered.
Suddenly, the great beast of Unktehi is brought into the room. The hollering grows louder, and there are calls to shred the monster and deliver it to the flames.
The energy is wild, bacchanalian with spirit. I’m certain Dionysus in the room with us now.
Behind my own mask, it’s powerful. Inhabiting. I feel at once veiled and liberated to release an energy that has felt hidden.
My own shadow within.
The shredding begins. The beast is torn into strips, a piece given to each man. The drumming and dancing is fever pitch.
The strips are fed to the fire, the flames licking higher as it feasts.
I offer a piece myself, the heat formidable against my skin.
A voice calls out: if we wish to offer our own masks to the flames, now is the time.
The monsters assemble, and begin unmasking, revealing the men beneath.
I feel called to do the same.
I place both hands to each side of my mask and remove it from my skin. The mask carries some kind of energy with it.
I offer it to the fire and the heat surges hungrily.
The drumming and dancing continue for eternity.
Later, once the men have dissolved and I’m again resting in the field under the stars, I reflect on the ritual.
Something about ‘the nature of the beast’ that lives in myth and also in men.
It’s just true that most physical violence is committed by men on women, children and other men.
My colleague Matt Sturm says all men must come into right relationship with the energies of sex and violence - “primal drives” he calls them.
If we don’t steward men in the right way, these energies will emerge regardless and create havoc, mayhem, and bloodshed.
There is an alchemy to the power of myth & ritual to bring forth the beast within, and offer the appropriate sacrifice, lest we sacrifice our humanity.
That night I dream of Robert Bly.
He appears on the pathway towards the men’s lodge, dressed in finery that was his style. He looks to be in his 70’s, a time when he was still an active force of nature, eyes shining with his shock of white hair.
He smiles, touches his forehead in a gentle salute, then turns and walks away from the Lodge, as if to bless the men gathering.
The vision touched me.
The final day the men gather once again, this time in the sunshine.
The question of “what now?” is in the air, especially as many of the older men stewarding the conference have crossed into their 60s and 70s.
I see this as a reoccurring theme for any organization or community. The charismatic founders that kick the whole thing off sustain a momentum that needs to survive the transition of leadership to the next generation.
Many don’t survive this transition.
This relies on the delicate balance of holding onto the traditions that make up the heart and soul, while relinquishing the elements that may no longer be relevant or effective.
Archetypally speaking, this is the balance between the energies of the puer (youth) and the senex (elder). James Hillman says this dynamic is not to be resolved but continually held in dialogue.
For the youngers present at the gathering (mostly men like me in their 30s and 40s) it remains to be seen what the future will bring, and whether the Minnesota Men’s Conference will successfully thrive, reimagined for men in the coming generations.
Jonathan, who began his own journey with the conference as a younger, tells me:
"After forty years, the question is whether what we’ve done in the wilderness can now take root in the wider culture - without grandiosity, but as a way of welcoming men home to earth, to belonging. The future depends on elders giving what they carry, creating spaces where wisdom and story can be passed on, and finding new forums where men can meet not only in grief and ritual, but also in song, poetry, and practical mentorship.”
I wonder about the wider culture, which seems even more fragmented and frenetic than in 90’s when Bly first published Iron John. In the age of AI, social media, intense polarization, and the growing spectre of fascism worldwide, how might the current renaissance of men’s work serve the rise of regenerative masculinity?
Would it survive fully “going mainstream” or is it best occupying the fringe, where a mycelial network of men can find sanctuary for the work of their soul?
For myself, I feel grateful to have made the trek across the continent, to pay my respects to the mythopoetic soil and lineage that has given me so much.
I came to witness what it looks like for men to serve life, beauty and the maturation of masculinity.
And I came because I wanted to see what it looks like for men to love each other in such a way.
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To end this essay, I leave you with Robert Bly’s poem that accompanied his celebration of life.
Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat
So many blessings have been given to us
During the first distribution of light, that we are
Admired in a thousand galaxies for our grief.
Don’t expect us to appreciate creation or to
Avoid mistakes. Each of us is a latecomer
To the earth, picking up wood for the fire.
Every night another beam of light slips out
From the oyster’s closed eye. So don’t give up hope
that the door of mercy may still be open.
Seth and Shem, tell me, are you still grieving
Over the spark of light that descended with no
Defender near into the Egypt of Mary’s womb?
It’s hard to grasp how much generosity
Is involved in letting us go on breathing,
When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.
Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for
Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat
When so many have gone down in the storm.
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You’re welcome to learn more about the Minnesota Men’s Conference as well as upcoming gatherings on their website.
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