Minn. poet Bly celebrates friend's Nobel

Acclaimed Minnesota poet Robert Bly is helping celebrate the Nobel Prize for Literature claimed recently by his longtime friend, Sweden's Tomas Transtromer.

Bly read selections of Transtromer's work Monday night at a church in Minneapolis. Bly helped expose Transtromer to American readers in 1970 when he prepared the first English translation of a book of Transtromer's poems.

Transtromer received his Nobel Prize at a ceremony Saturday night in Stockholm. He suffered a stroke in 1990 and has had trouble speaking or writing ever since.

Bly has been publishing poetry regularly since the 1950s and won the National Book Award for poetry in 1968. He's also well-known for his 1990 book ``Iron John,' about the men's movement, and for translating the work of nearly two dozen international poets.

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