Men's Health

Comment

Comment by RonPrice on January 16, 2011 at 5:40am

Perhaps that writer about men's issues Robert Bly puts his finger indirectly on the problem of the lack of men discussing men's issues, if this is in fact the case, in the following prose-poem I wrote 15 years ago.-Ron Price, Tasmania

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DOMESTICATION

 

Since I went travelling and pioneering in 1962 for the Canadian Bahai community there has been what Robert Bly calls “a domestication of poetry”. “That’s one metaphor” says Bly “to explain the amazing tameness of the sixty to eighty volumes of poetry published each year, compared with the compacted energy” of the poetry that came from the “wild knots of energy” of the poetry going back at least to the 1920s.  --Robert Bly, “Knots of Wild Energy: An Interview With Wayne Dodd”, American Poetry: Wildness and Domesticity, Harper and Row, NY, 1990, p.300.

 

We have never before faced what it’s like in the culture when hundreds of people w ant to write poetry and want to be instructed in it...We know how to instruct a hundred engineers, or computer technicians...We don’t know how to instruct in the area of poetry.    -Robert Bly, ibid., p.318.

 

Such a burgeoning, multiplicity,

everything happening at once.

But, you know Robert,

I’ve met a lot of engineers

who aren’t too happy with their instruction.

We’ve got much to work out in this

incredible planetary fertilization,

bifurcated merging, cross-fertilization,

exploding tempest, increased intensity,

desperately troubling times.

Wondrous leaps and thrusts cross-firing:

leaving people bewildered,

agonized and helpless.

 

Those knots of wild energy, we had them too,

as the great Order began to form back then

in the first two epochs of this Formative Age:

 

Our earliest pioneers¹ had what you might call

a conflagrant holy urgency.

I came in on the firey end

of that ninth stage of history

and caught the comet’s burning ice

and after thirty years I try to translate it

into a poetry of dazzling prospects,

a poetry of two more epochs.

Is it wild, Robert? Is it wild?

I was wild; I was.  And I, too,

have been domesticated.

 

¹ 1921 to 1961: 40 years

 

Ron Price

16 October 1995

Comment by amanda on November 18, 2010 at 11:47am

Hi everyone! Just added a new event to our Event page for the first ever Men's Health Night. It's a really interesting new take on the idea of memorial or candelight vigil: check it out here!

Comment by Joel on November 18, 2010 at 10:53am

Advanced Prostate Cancer Blog - www.advancedprostatecancer.net

Advanced prostate cancer on-line support group with over 550 members - for men with advanced prostate cancer and their support people - to join gp to:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/advancedprostatecancer/join

Comment by Arnon Krongrad, MD on September 4, 2010 at 12:09pm

Likewise, there is a prostatitis blog that stays away from cancer, an asymptomatic disease, and focuses on generally different issues from those of the links Mike has provided: Chronic pain, ejaculatory dysfunction, fatigue, irritable bowels, and the like. There is also a prostatitis social network and a prostatitis treatment site that has unusual content related to surgery for severe, treatment-resistant chronic prostatitis.

Comment by Mike on September 1, 2010 at 1:00pm

If you haven't come across the Men's Health Network, this is a men's health advocacy organization based in Washington, DC that is focused on things that include the formation of an Office of Men's Health within HHS (like the highly successful Office of Women's Health).

Comment by Mike on September 1, 2010 at 12:54pm

For those who are interested, Prostate Cancer International runs a major daily prostate cancer news service and a prostate cancer-specific social network with around 2,000 members that is open to all patients and other relevant participants.

Comment by Susan M. on June 8, 2010 at 11:31am

Hi all!  WEGO Health is holding another Health Activist Meetup and wants to know what you want to discuss.  Let us know what's important to Health Activists and to your community - leave a comment on our blog post!

Comment by RonPrice on July 31, 2009 at 10:40pm

As a 65 year old man who has had health problems for 65 years, I hope I can offer the occasional useful comment.-Ron in Tasmania