I AM WILDMAN, HEAR ME BOND!

MAYBE IT WAS TURNING 40 that forced me to take stock of my friendships, making me realize they were mostly with women. Not that I didn’t enjoy their company. From female friends I’ve learned about feelings and intimacy, how to feel vulnerable around women, even cry in front of them- though never on the first date.

But where were all the men in my life? Whatever happened to my old boyhood pals, the guys I double-dated with, got drunk with, felt genetically predisposed to pick up girls with? Gone are those hot summer nights when a knock on my window might lead to an incredible adventure-sneaking out after hours, joy riding in my parents’ Chevy while smoking Swisher Sweets, drinking Southern Comfort, and testing the boundaries of what we thought it meant to be a man.

These days we don’t live each other’s lives the way we once did. Only an occasional party or wedding brings us together, The love is still there, the old memories, but time, marriage, and divorce have softened the glue that once bonded us one to the other and made us such fiercely devoted friends.

Maybe that’s why I am sitting in a circle of men this Wednesday night, feeling tentative, a bit foolish, as 30 men, strangers all, beat drums, tell ancient tales, and try to bond with each other by getting in touch with a “deepened masculinity.” Many of these men are followers of he Men’s Movement, which believes that deep inside every man lurks this spontaneous, passionate “Wildman” who for too long has been buried under thick layers of corporate clutter, false machismo, and feminism. To free the Wildman, these devotees believe, men must return to the myths and legends of the ancients, using the rituals and ceremony of pre-modern man to redefine masculinity for postmodern man.

We are heeding this call to the wild at an office park in Richardson, drumming in the gray-carpeted, fluorescent-bulbed offices of the newly christened “Men’s Gathering Place.” Even though the Men’s Movement calls for men to take pride once again in their masculinity, there seem to be few John Wayne clones in attendance, few men still addicted to the rush of their own testosterone. Maybe some are machos in recovery, but most seem to be the sensitive guys of the Seventies-Alan Alda types who have been struggling to get in touch with their feelings since the Women’s Movement made them think they didn’t have any.

When the drumming slops, the talking starts as each man explains why he might be interested in joining a men’s support group. Several men say that they don’t know what it means to be a man anymore; all that macho stuff didn’t really work for them, so they tried to change, to give fuller rein to the feminine, nurturing side. Yet something was sadly missing-something unexplainably male.

Some say it’s the absence of men in their lives. Like me. they long for the camaraderie of men, men they don’t have to compete with, feel threatened by; men who are interested in becoming better fathers, better sons; men who won’t rebuff another man”s attempt to share his feelings with the obligatory, “How “bout those Cowboys?”

Only recently has the troubled male psyche been placed at the forefront of what many now see as the emerging Men’s Movement. No one has yet burned his jockstrap and there has been no national boycott of Rambo videos, but across the country, men are suddenly becoming aware of issues that they share with each other. Thousands of these men are gathering in the woods together, attending “Wildman Weekends” and workshops, forming Men’s Councils and support groups, and desperately trying to figure out how to be a man in the Nineties without eating quiche or dipping snuff.



AT 47, CARL QUINONES. A Dallas restaurant supply salesman, still shudders when he recalls how he got his image of masculinity. His father wasn’t just a drunk-he was a mean drunk. He would come home from work all liquored up and punish each childhood wrong with the same severity. His leather belt would find Carl hiding under the bed or in the closet. There was no escaping its reach.

Only in the fantasyland of television did Carl find any safety. There, he met “real men”-John Wayne and James Bond, fighting men in uniform and plainclothes FBI men, cops who were bursting with the same machismo as his dad, but who used it for good, not bad.

Small wonder Carl later joined the Los Angeles Police Department, working as a beat officer in Watts, stopping riots, fighting crime, and hardening. “I could watch somebody die and then eat a sandwich,” says Carl. “It seemed normal somehow.”

Sometimes Carl would use excessive force, swinging his baton to subdue a prisoner long after he had given up. One night, while working a burglary call, Carl confronted a suspect, still inside the house and armed. It was just like television. They both went for their guns. Carl outdrew him and had his gun cocked, leveled, ready to fire. He had every right-legal or otherwise-to blow the man away. Carl made him drop his gun instead.

Later that night, Carl got “stone ass drunk.” He realized that by being a cop, he was just providing himself with a socially acceptable way of being his dad. Maybe that’s why he didn’t kill the burglar-because he knew his dad would have.

The next morning Carl woke up, went to church, and decided to quit the force.



THE MEN’S MOVEMENT PROCEEDS FROM the premise that the traditional American male, the one at the top of the food chain, is an endangered species-fortunately, He’s the strong, stoic Marlboro man who prefers riding off into the sunset to bringing up baby; the guy who thinks feelings are women’s business, that emotions tag him as a weakling or a sissy. Real men, he believes, are all cut from the same celluloid.

My own picture of masculinity was never quite so clear. My father was a traveling salesman, tough, well intentioned, but just not around that much when I was growing up. Boy Scouts tried to show me the way to manhood, teaching me how to survive in the Great Outdoors. But 1 always seemed to be two, not one, with nature.

Of course, there was always high school football, the true testing ground for budding maleness in Texas. One boy pitted against another in a battle of power, speed, and agility-little of which I possessed. 1 should have known I wouldn’t make varsity when the coach told me I had “hands like feet.” But how else was I supposed to get a girlfriend?

I guess I should be grateful that the Women’s Movement has tried to liberate us from our chauvinistic ways, encouraging us to get into our feelings, into therapy if possible. Sensitive guys, the feminists have said, don’t abuse women and children, don’t destroy Brazilian rain forests.

Those men who didn’t see feminism as some kind of perpetual PMS began to listen. Their response to the Women’s Movement was to purge themselves of their overt sexism, to become kinder, gentler men.

Maybe it took getting kicked in the teeth by life a few times, getting divorced, losing a job, giving up their dreams.. “But when they finally got into their feelings,” says Dallas counselor, sociologist, and psychologist Greg Jacobs, “what many men felt was a lot of shame about being male.”

Some of these men became actively profeminist, forging the earliest faction of the Men’s Movement, “While they continue to urge men to gel in touch with their feminine side,” says Jacobs, “they aren’t happy with masculinity at all.” For them, the old ways of proving masculinity-sex, power, money, cars-just don’t work anymore.

Some men, seeing the key element of masculinity in our culture as the oppression of others, formed the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS). Only by doing away with the patriarchy, they believe, can we truly combat racism, sexism, and classism.

Although most men stayed away from NOMAS in droves, a separate “mythopoetic” wing of the Men’s Movement began taking shape in the early Eighties under the tutelage of Robert Bly. an internationally acclaimed poet (i.e., an almost total unknown) from Minnesota. Many men heard something different in his message, something that didn’t shame maleness. but celebrated it.

Bly teaches that there is “not enough father” in our culture. Before the Industrial Revolution, fathers and sons lived together, farmed together. Fathers taught their sons a trade. Just being in each other’s presence created an emotional exchange of masculine energy, says Bly, and satisfied “a deeper longing for the son’s body to be closer to the father’s body.”

Came the Industrial Revolution and fathers were off to the factory, the office, working far from home and late into the night. “Not seeing your father when you are small.” writes Bly in Iron John, “having a remote father, an absent father, a workaholic father, is an injury. . .perhaps the most damaging wound of all.”



BRIAN JOHNSTON* GREW UP A DYED-IN-THE-wool good ol’ boy, played football at Garland High, worked summers for his daddy’s construction company, went cruising for girls at the Jack in the Box.

Brian would seldom show fear or tender-ness-it just wasn ’t done. A willowy walk, a limp wrist, or any feminine gesture brought instant jeers of “fag” or “queer.” To the fledgling macho man, there could be no worse insult.

Brian always had this vague sense that someone might beat the hell out of him at any moment. Stag fights were a daily ritual, a challenge to prove you were a real man. Sex was something you knocked off or got a piece of-something you lied about.

Brians father hollered as much as he spoke, although he wasn’t really around enough to do much of either. He completely intimidated Brian’s mother, tried to do the same with Brian. Nothing Brian did was ever good enough, went far enough, or made enough money. Of course, his father didn ’t care much for women, blacks, or Jews either.

Although college in the Sixties forced Brian to rethink many of his father’s prejudices, Brian still married the girl of his father’s dreams, someone just like Brian’s mother. But after 12 years and two kids, Brian realized he wanted his wife to be more independent, more the liberated woman of the Seventies. His wife resisted the change, wanted a more traditional life. One day she got so fed up, she packed up and left-took everything but the two boys.

Brian panicked. How was he supposed to mother his two sons when he was having enough trouble being their father? Long before, he had rejected the portrait of manliness drawn by his father. But how could he become the nurturing father, the teaching father, the “always here when you need me” father? For this model, Brian didn’t have a clue.



“WE LIVE IN A father-hungry culture,” says Bly, “so how can a boy imagine what it’s like to be a man?” With his own lather too remote, too abusive, or gone altogether, the boy looks either to his mother or the media to define masculinity for him.

The effect of the “remote father,” Bly told me during a March visit to Dallas, has been to create the post-Sixties man-passive, naive. On the outside, these men appear powerful-doctors, lawyers, captains of industry-but inside, they are lost, don’t know what they want. Unable to get in touch with the deep masculinity within themselves they become “flying boys,” fleeing relationships and jobs, confusing women and themselves with their indecisiveness. “Their idea of a long-term commitment,” quips Greg Jacobs, “is staying to watch Dances with Wolves for a second time.”

With fathers gone, loathed, or both, says Bly, some boys cling long and hard to their mothers. Their initiation into the world of men is delayed-even denied-yet they still long for some semblance of Father, are desperate for his acceptance, no matter how abusive or remote he really is.

Flying boys seem to relate better to women, have few male friends, don’t really trust them. Bly calls these men “soft males,” and from their millions come many of the Men’s Movement rank and file, men who turn 35 or 40 and begin looking for their fathers in order to find themselves.



TIMOTHY RITCHIE, A 49-YEAR-OLD Dallas account executive, was raised by women. His mother, grandmother, aunt-each in her turn tried to control his boyish energy, which was forever pushing him into trouble.

It took both the fear of the devil and a switch from a nearby oak tree, but they eventually wore him down. Timothy became a good “little man” who did not roll in freshly plowed dirt anymore-or even so much as wiggle. His job as a kid was to please, to give comfort to his mother when she had one of her blinding headaches, to do what others expected, only better, quicker, faster. His father went to war; after that, he went to work. Yet even with two jobs and two paychecks, there was barely enough to get by.

There was never enough love-none shown anyway. No time to play catch, to go to ball games; no time to learn whatever it is that fathers teach their sons. “My father was never a spokesman for masculinity,” says Timothy, “He gave my mother his balls-obviously he didn ’t know what to do with them.”

The new, tamer Timothy was teased by other boys. He was the kid who got his pants pulled down at the bus stop, the one who was picked on and beaten up, considered a sissy because he wouldn’t fight back.

As an adult, Timothy found himself drawn to the human potential movement in California, where he plumbed his own personal depths. Doing Gestalt, aikido, bodywork, he seemed on some endless, spiritual search, always looking for a way to fill the empty spaces inside. But only last year, when he attended a Texas Wildman Weekend, did he finally figure out what was missing: the company of men.



WILDMAN WEEKENDS ARE FAST BE-coming a staple of the Men’s Movement. Gatherings of men across the country are digging for their deepened masculinity by communing with nature and each other, The most notable of the Wildman Weekends are those sponsored by the Austin Men’s Center and situated on some ranch land just outside of Cleburne, Texas.

I decided to attend one of their Wildman Weekends, leaving the comforts of Dallas for conditions that seem pretty primitive. Still, there is something strangely appropriate about men searching for their masculinity while braving freezing temperatures, prickly pear cactus, and abundant cow patties.

Marvin Allen and Allen Maurer, two therapists at the Austin Men’s Center who lead these gatherings, are also considered pioneers in the mythopoetic Men’s Movement. Their video with Robert Bly has sold more than 30,000 copies. The Men’s Movement was featured on PBS with Bill Moyers, and Hugh Downs went on a Wildman Weekend for ABC’s “20/20.” I find a certain safety in knowing the silver-haired Downs survived the weekend.

Despite 40-mile-an-hour winds, I pitch my tent in just under two hours. We go to dinner-130 men, most of whom scarf down spicy buffalo chili. I eat a salad, figuring I’ll already have enough trouble sleeping in a tent.

Suddenly the drumming starts, summoning us to the Sacred Grove, a thick cluster of trees surrounding a large, open campfire. Most men have brought their own drums-Indian tribal, African, snare-even bongos. Without thinking, all join in the drumming, pounding out powerful rhythms that sound like rolling thunder, aimed at summoning up the Wildman, I suppose. The drumming gets faster, more frenzied, energizing the men around me, who begin to holler and yelp. Then suddenly it stops, almost as spontaneously as it started.

Marvin Allen, a slight man with a bearded, angular face, stands next to his counterpart, Allen Maurer, who looks softer and gentler despite his Indiana Jones attire. Both men. in their turn, speak of the limited choices open to men-the soft male who doesn’t know what he wants; the hard male who abuses what he gets. “What the Men’s Movement is about.” says Marvin Allen, “is finding something in between that works.” In defining this new image of masculinity, he says, “we use ancient myths and archetypes like the Wildman to see what worked for the primitive man.”

Actually, Robert Bly found the Wildman image in the Grimm fairy tale about Iron John, According to legend, many hunters fail to return from the forest because some hairy creature who lives under a pond has been killing them. So the pond is drained; the Wildman is caught and caged in the king’s courtyard. One day. a young prince agrees to free Iron John, then rides off into the forest on the stout shoulders of his new mentor. The Wildman shows him the ways of this forest, teaches the boy how to be a man.

“The myth teaches us what the primitives have known throughout time,” says Allen Maurer, “that it is the job of older men to introduce us to the world of men.” Most ancient cultures had some rite of passage from boyhood to manhood-an initiation where boys were taken from their mothers, sometimes forcibly, and brought to the tribal elders to be taught the ways of men, “Our culture has lost that initiation.” Maurer tells us. “Our mothers can love us, but they can’t initiate us, No woman can. We have to get that from other men.”

It seems as if the Wildman Weekend is its own modern initiation-an attempt to give us back what we have lost. If we get into the woods, out among men, and are filled with myth and mischief, maybe our own stunted masculinity can somehow flower. Yet, for a culture of men whose primary exposure to ritual is watching Monday Night Football while drinking Lite beer and burping, asking us to embrace some kind of midlife initiation seems a bit specious.

Robert Bly would argue that the drumming and storytelling, what he calls “the original therapy,’ work well because they delve into our unconscious, stimulate ancient archetypes of manhood, and “wake us from an emotional slumber.”

“That’s why these gatherings work so much on feelings.” says Marvin Allen. “If there is anything we have been robbed of as men. it’s our ability to feel.”

The men I speak with late in the evening seem eager to feel, primed for it. Many are men in recovery-alcoholics; workaholics; drug, food, and love addicts. Their 12-step programs have taught them to share their feelings easily with each other. Here at the Wildman Weekend, their stories draw the other men out, gel them to talk about their childhood wounds, the isolation they feel from other men.

Other men look more uncomfortable. I figure it’s the buffalo chili.



LAST CHRISTMAS, MIKE GROBLEWSKI, A 36-year-old Austin computer technician , made his wife a promise. He agreed to seek out some new male friendships, maybe rekindle some old ones.

Four years had elapsed since Mike had heard from Craig, his best friend since the fifth grade. A corporate relocation had sent Craig to another city. Time and distance had simply pulled them apart.

Mike finally sent Craig a Christmas card-it seemed an easy way to make contact Within a week Craig had written back, and not the usual ’I’m fine, family’s fine” kind of letter. “I didn’t know his mother had died,” says Mike, “and he really shared some of his grief with me.”

At the end of the letter, Craig reminded Mike about an incident in high school. Several boys were playing on the blacktop outside when, for some reason, Craig wet. his pants. Two other friends just pointed ami laughed, but Mike stepped in front of Craig. screened him front the others, ami marched him inside, away from further humiliation.

Craig would always love Mike for that, and years later, he told him so the night before Craig’s wedding. It took him until 4 a. m., after both men had gotten drunk.

“But I couldn’t say it back,” says Mike, “and I know it really hurt him.”

Only when Mike wrote back did he manage to tell Craig how he felt; how he had always loved Craig, was just afraid to tell him. It made Mike feel vulnerable, opening up like that-so vulnerable that it took him a week to mail the letter. But once he did, he saw how courageous it was to finally express his feelings-and how manly.



IT’S SATURDAY MORNING, THE SECOND day of the Wildman, and the drumming has already started. Although a bright sun is trying to charm me into a better mood, I got no sleep the night before. The cold ground was so hard even Iraqis would think twice before digging. As I amble to the Sacred Grove, something else is bothering me, something I can’t quite figure.

Robert Bly wants the post-modern male “to touch the Wildman within him.” so he can be passionate and full of resolve; aggressive, not abusive; life-giving, not life-threatening. A man who, when touched by his feelings, feels like a man. But how can a man feel like a man when the traditional roles that once made him feel manly can now also be filled by women? When women can go into combat, raid corporations, deplete sperm banks, it’s clear that the demand for hunters and gatherers isn’t what it used to be. Yet the Men’s Movement doesn’t consider itself some reactionary backlash to the Women’s Movement.

“True masculinity is not about having power over women but finding a power from within,” Allen Maurer later tells me. “It’s finding the courage to feel your feelings, to cry and be intimate with men as well as women.” The rest of the weekend seems dedicated to this kind of masculinity-as feminine as it sounds.

To get in touch with our feelings of anger and grief, we begin with some movement exercises, bending and stretching, doing some yoga, a little taichi, all meant to get us “out of our heads and into our bodies-the place where we hide our feelings.” We are instructed to form two large circles, for each man to massage the back of the man in front of him-130 men engaged in one great communal rubdown.

“Guys in our culture are afraid to put their arms around each other, afraid to touch each other,” says Marvin Allen. “What we want to do is to break through all that so each of us has a full range of feeling, both male and female.”

The mythopoetics rail against homophobia, not so much because it is politically incorrect, but because it keeps men locked out of their feelings. If men were more secure in their own masculinity, they could laugh, cry, get emotional, without worrying that they might start cross dressing.

Most Wildman Weekends focus on the father-son wounds, but this weekend, we are told, has been reserved for Mom. Marvin Allen tells us that the Men’s Movement is not about women-bashing, but “if Dad wasn’t there, Mom was the only place you had to go. And what if she doesn’t want you to cry because it upsets her? What if she doesn’t want you to get angry because it brings up her anger’.’.. .To get her love,” he says, “we lose a piece of our own souls. So she doesn’t abandon us-we abandon ourselves.”

All the men are invited to go out into the woods and have a talk with Mom, to get in touch with their anger and rage, all those feelings boys were not allowed to have so they would be loved. “And let’s hear some noise,” says Marvin. ’”Shake the trees if you want-and, by God, be who you feel like.’”



CHARLIE HENDERSON*, A 47-YEAR-OLD Dallas attorney, tried to do what was asked, to go into the woods away from the other men and converse with his mother. He grabbed a stick, drew a circle, even envisioned his mother inside the circle. But when it came to emotion, to dredging up any anger or rage, even sadness, nothing happened. If he had any anger, it seemed more appropriate for his father, who was always too tired or sick to do anything but work. Oh, he would be there all right, but never with any firmness or guidance, always as a spectator, someone on the back row. Without structure or limits, Charlie and his brother grew up incorrigible, too hard to handle, one time cutting school for three months before anyone took notice.

When Charlie turned 10, his mother became ill. was diagnosed schizophrenic and sent to a mental hospital. With each year, her condition grew worse. Charlie and his brother would visit her on weekends and holidays, but toward the end she could barely recognize them. She denied they were her sons.

At the Wildman, Charlie only pretended to get angry with her, still protecting her memory, still blaming himself for being the bad boy and driving his mother crazy. Then, he heard other men in the distance, screaming out their rage; “Where were you.. .You bitch.. .Get off my back… What am I supposed to do now… No more free rent ’-men uttering deep, guttural, primal sounds.

Slowly, Charlie’s pretense gave way to his anger. “Why did you leave me?” he kept repeating. “It’s not my fault!” he yelled, beating his stick against the ground. But the anger didn’t last, shifting easily to grief, as Charlie wept openly for his mother and her loss.



IT’S DUSK AT THE WILDMAN AND A CER-tain sullenness hangs over the proceedings. We are talking about grief, which Robert Bly describes as “the door to men’s feelings.”

“There are a lot of male myths about grieving,” Allen Maurer tells us. “Men going down to heal themselves, deep into the earth, into the belly of the soul.” Only if men are willing to go down into their grief can (hey truly get in touch with their Wildman, Mauer says.

Again, we form two circles of men, one standing, one seated-grief work, we are told. Each man is to rotate around the circle and repeat to the man then in front of him those things that he, as a boy, needed to hear from his father, but didn’t. “Welcome to the world, son. I’m so glad you came. . .I will always be there for you. . .Your mom and I love you,son.. .You’re so special to me.. ,I can’t wait to teach you how to.. .”

For some men, the crying is nearly immediate. This is not the typical male lump in the throat, not the single tear that escapes unseen in a darkened movie theater. This is full-bodied sobbing, funeral-sized keening- communal grieving. Those men who aren’t weeping quickly console those who are by offering a firm hug, a strong shoulder-comrades in each other’s arms.

“See there,” says Marvin Allen, once things settle down, “you just got nurtured, and there’s not a woman within two miles of this place.”

Now that we have done the dirty work, going down into our grief, we are told it is time to cleanse ourselves, so we can rise from the ashes as new men. A ceremonial sweat lodge has been prepared for us. an Indian ritual that attempts to purify our spirits without singeing the hair on our legs.

Throughout the evening, groups of 20 men strip naked, then enter a moist, dark tent. All are seated around an open pit while red-hot rocks are carefully placed into the pit and sprayed with water and sage to give off a fierce steam.

With each hot rock, the air grows thick with a moist heat, and breathing becomes more difficult. Soaking in our own sweat, we offer prayers to the universe-saying the first thing that comes to our mind-praying for world peace, for inner peace, for this sweat lodge to be the hell over.

Forty-five minutes into the ritual, I begin to doubt my own masculinity, feeling weak from (he heat and ready to call it quits. I move to leave, but before I do. the man next to me. John, says he needs to get out. He’s having flashbacks of Vietnam, where he was pinned down for three days in a jungle foxhole with two of his buddies lying dead beside him. Several of us try to talk him out of his fear, holding his hands, telling him he is in a safe place now, that he’s among friends. Carefully, we calm him down, and he decides to stay. I remember what Allen Maurer told me earlier-that true masculinity is finding the courage to be intimate with men. I decide to stay also.

Sunday, the final day of the Wildman, is reserved for our initiation, the ritual marking our ascent to manhood. “A boy cannot change into a man,” Bly teaches, “’without the active intervention of older men.” But since we live in a throwaway society, elders have lost their venerated status as wise men and mentors. The Men’s Movement wants older men once again to assume their rightful place as male initiators-men who with Dad, or in spite of him, help to move the boy along to manhood.

Yesterday the elders (men over 50) among us were honored and celebrated for their wisdom, for the life lessons they have to teach. Today, those same elders celebrate the rest of us, welcoming us into the world of men with drumming and dancing, hugs and kisses.

As I speak with the men around me, some seem genuinely moved by the ritual, seeing the initiation as some sort of rebirth-men being born from men. Others say the ceremony has connected them with a deep ancient maleness that for them transcends both time and culture.

But I’m just glad to be among friends, glad to have met some men I can trust and open up to. It feels good just to hang out with the guys and feel more manly as a result.



ROBERT BLY BARELY APPEARS IN DALlas. yet no one seems certain if people will turn out for him this evening. Tonight is also the night for the Academy Awards. Still, Iron John has been on (he best-seller list for 18 weeks and Robert Bly has been crisscrossing the country, playing to sold out, men-only crowds wherever he goes.

But tonight is different. The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture is sponsoring the event. Bly is only to read his poetry. There will be no buffalo chili on the menu.

Yet 500 men show up. some just curious about the Men’s Movement, others passionately involved with it, members of the newly formed Men’s Councils of Dallas. About 300 women are also in the audience, some to hear good poetry, others to find out why their men are suddenly spending so much lime with each other. Some may also share the worries of feminists who criticize Bly’s Men’s Movement for being a kind of warmed-over “post-chauvinism,” who don’t see it changing the world or the position of women in it.

Robert Bly enters the stage. He is carrying a Greek lute by his side. His brilliant white hair glows in the orange lighting. He looks like a cross between Zeus and Garrison Keillor-part shaman, part showman. His rapport with the audience is immediate, and he reads poems telling us about “the pain of fathers not talking to their sons,” about “older men not doing their jobs.. .The time of grief has begun.” He speaks in a voice so full of gruff you might think the Wildman himself has taken center stage.

The audience appears quite taken. Although there may be some critics amongus, 1 figure anything that can get 500 men tosit in a room and listen to poetry for threehours has every possibility of changing theworld.

THE CALL OF THE WILDMAN: Women Respond “I hope that after this adult rite of passage experience, the men will be better fathers, husbands, lovers, and mentors for children without father figures in the home. Hopefully this rite experience mill help deter men from their fast-forward position to not only destroy themselves but our world’.” -EmmaRodgers

Black Images Book Gallery



I think drumming in office buildings isgreat-as long as the noise levels don’t exceedEPA standards” -Jan Hart

City Manager

“As long as they don’t hurt anybody, I think it’s wonderful. The truth is, we are devoid of male rituals. We need constructive avenues for power, and this is one.” -Dr. Lynn Weiss

Psychotherapist



“What I want to know, though, is if they’regoing to go naked. where are they going tohang their beepers?” -Judy Truesdell

Comedienne

“This big effort to put men in touch with their warrior selves is the wrong direction. What you really want for heroes are people who have achieved on the strength of their convictions-people like Candhi, King, Sakharov, Mandela, Havel They didn’t Sambo their way through life.” -Molly Ivins

Dallas Times Herald

“/ have a real understanding of the need these men feel to hate an authentic experience of connecting with each other, and even connecting with the earth. But I fear that the whole movement takes us away from men- and women-finding a sense of harmony in their male and female internal selves. It’s like ’I don’t know how to honor both. so. let’s just go to the other extreme.’” -Charlotte Taft

Routh Street Women’s Center