Minnesota poet, teacher and men's movement founder Robert Bly was a major figure in American literature for decades who drew adulation and controversy. Bly died Nov. 21. He was 94.

Born in 1926, he grew up on a farm in southwest Minnesota near Madison. He had a cabin in Carlton County, on Moosehead Lake in Moose Lake.

Bly studied writing at Harvard University with poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish. His classmates included Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, George Plimpton and his lifelong friend Donald Hall, who admired Bly's ability to conjure analogies.

Hall s...