The two writers also emphasized the role of the "false tutor" in the story, a teacher who betrays the young protagonist, Ivan, and consequently gets his head chopped off.
"Have you cut off the head of your false tutor, or are you still here at Harvard?" Bly cracked, provoking laughs from the crowd.
The lecture was followed by a question and answer period.
Asked to explain the pair's prior statement that "men must learn to work with matter," Woodman explained that American culture breeds materialism, addiction and the "horizontal life" demand for instant gratification.
The remedy, she said, is in "recognizing the wisdom that can come through the orifices of our bodies; senses, then, become our experiences of living."
Bly echoed the sentiment, stressing examples from everyday life of the need for direct sensory experience.
"They're talking about taking away recess for the kids," he said. "There are some already who don't want to go to recess, who stay with the computer until their teacher takes them away."
"There's a great crisis of people moving away from their bodies at tremendous speed," he said.
But Woodman's optimism for humanity resounded throughout the evening.
"Feminine is the energy that can save the planet," she said. "I have a great feeling that there's something from the other side. She's going to make herself known."
Woodman continued, "Many of us, through our addictions, are being forced to surrender, and out of that comes the new masculinity."
One audience member said she saw the potential for harm in differentiating masculine and feminine.
"Male-female is a code that does more damage than good," she said.
Bly responded half-jokingly that perhaps he and Woodman should use the terms "yin and yang" from now on. "But to deny that there are two energies is another matter," he said.
Bly and Woodman remained in the hall after the discussion session to sign copies of the book.
The event was one in an ongoing series of educational lectures sponsored by the Askwith Education Forum and Wordsworth Books.