Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 7 Article 42 Issue 4 Fall 1976 Robert Bly's "Sleepers Joining Hands": Shadow and Self Michael Atkinson Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Atkinson, Michael. "Robert Bly's "Sleepers Joining Hands": Shadow and Self." The Iowa Review 7.4 (1976): 135-153. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.2134 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Falling intoHoles inOur Sentences its This body holds protective walls around us, it watches us whenever we walk out. Each we take in conversation our step with friends, moving or the watches us into is slowly flying, body us, calling what possible, into what is not into said, the shuckheap of ruined arrowheads, or the old man with missing fingers. We take our first in words each and a step day, instantly fall into hole in our sounds. sane afternoons in a room our Overly during twenties come back to us in the form of a son who is mad, every longing another person had that we failed to see the returns to us as a body squinting of the eyes when we and no the ruthless talk, sentimentality, only body performing its each of our confrontations into our magic, transforming energy, changing labors over white-haired books into and scholarly certainty healing power, and our cruelties into an old man with missing fingers.