The Power of Shame

In this discussion, Bly talks of four sources of shame, including shame inherited from parents, grandparents, and ancestors, and shame over our bodily and creative instincts. It opens with a Russian fairy story on the Frog Princess and the shame we feel over our interior "Frog Bride." Bly and host Michael Toms discuss the new work in America on shame, most of it done during the last 10 years.

Poet, translator and teacher, Bly is the author of many books including Light Around the Body (Harper & Row 1967), Loving a Woman In Two Worlds (Dial 1985), Man In the Black Coat Turns (Harper & Row 1982), The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations (Harper Perenniel 2005), My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems (Harper Perennial 2006). He is also author of Iron John (Addison-Wesley 1990) and The Sibling Society (Addison-Wesley 1996).