Poet Robert Bly: Shaman of the Dark Side

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University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9005292 Poet Robert Bly: Shaman of the dark side Bowman, Lynne Elise Martin, Ph.D. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1989 Copyright ©1989 by Bowman, Lynne Elise Martin. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 POET ROBERT BLY: SHAMAN OF THE DARK SIDE by Lynne Elise Martin Bowman A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1989 Approved by Dissertation Adviser APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation Adviser *>> ^ Committee Members April 29, 1989 Date of Acceptance by Committee April 26. 1989 Date of Final Oral Examination ii (c) 1989 by Lynne Elise Martin Bowman BOWMAN, LYNNE ELISE MARTIN, PhD. Poet Robert Bly: Shaman of the Dark Side. (1989). Directed by Dr. Steven Lautermilch. 418 pp. While Robert Bly suggests that the poet's role is rooted in the shaman's, critics have not yet looked at his poetry in light of the shaman's role. Often seen as divided between the private poems and the public, political poems, Bly's work displays not division, but rather the holism of the twofold shamanic vision where mystical journey into dark realms is publically performed in order to heal the tribe. In his shamanic vision of the dark side, Bly displays a kinship with D. H. Lawrence. In Lawrence's BIRDS, BEASTS AND FLOWERS poems and in many of Bly's poems, deep and detailed images of animals and plants portray attunement with nature and the dark side. Embodying the apparent differences of Bly's poetry, SLEEPERS JOINING HANDS uses the rhetoric of the shaman's performance to persuade the American tribe that the dark energy and horror of the Vietnam War was an effect of an underlying spiritual imbalance, an over-emphasis on the rational. Bly often depicts the journey in the image of the speaker "going out" into nature to find the spiritual. The journey movement structures the poems. Leaping and deep images depict the energy of shamanic ecstasy and the connections of nature, body, and tribal past. The structure of LOVING A WOMAN IN TWO WORLDS (1986) embodies the lover's journey toward his beloved "ayami" or shamanic tutelary spirit who enables him, through dark, instinctual desire, to find ecstasy and balanced union. In the union of the "two worlds" of flesh and spirit, man and woman, the lover finds healing. While some of Bly's poems may fail to journey in their leaping and deep images, the shamanic vision provides Bly with a way to depict the healing he feels his culture needs. In the rhetorical power of journey imagery, persuading by its attunement with nature, spirit, and tribe, Bly engages his readers in the performance of his healing vision of unity. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank ray dissertation adviser, Steven Lautermilch, for his efforts. I also wish to thank my committee members for their assistance. Mary Ellis Gibson, Keith Cushman, Walter Beale, and Roch Smith were all kind and helpful. Here, too, I must thank my parents, Lealon and Lucile Martin, for their enduring encouragement. Elizabeth Hunt provided invaluable assistance with the difficult details of manuscript form. Finally, I thank my husband, Jim, for his tireless support during the entire process and his delivery service in the deadline days. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I. THE SHAMAN AND THE POET 10 The Role of the Shaman 11 The Calling 14 The Initiation 18 The Journey 20 The Performance 29 The Shaman and the Poet 33 Robert Bly and the Shamanic 37 Conclusion 61 II. INFLUENCES AND IMPROVISATIONS: THE SHAMANIC POETRY OF D. H. LAWRENCE AND ROBERT BLY . 65 Mutual Influences: Blake, the Romantics, and Whitman 67 The Influence of War and the Shamanic Solution: Improvisations 75 Shamanic Healing and Myth 80 Shamanic Doorways: The World Tree as a Poetic Image. 94 Dark Imagery and Spoken Form 121 Conclusion: Shamanic Healing 124 III. THE SHAMANIC PERFORMANCE: BLY'S RHETORIC IN SLEEPERS JOINING HANDS 127 SLEEPERS: Section I 131 "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last": Part I. 152 "Teeth Mother": Part II 164 "Teeth Mother": Part III. 177 "Teeth Mother": Part IV 182 "Teeth Mother": Part V 188 "Teeth Mother": Part VI and VII 190 SLEEPERS: Section II: "I Came Out of the Mother Naked" 201 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Page CHAPTER III. (continued) Section III: "Sleepers Joining Hands," a Long Poem 208 "The Shadow Goes Away" 209 "Meeting the Man Who Warns Me 211 "The Night Journey in the Cooking Pot". 212 "Water Drawn Up into the Head" 217 Conclusion 221 IV. THE SHAMANIC JOURNEY IN BLY'S POETRY 223 Journeys in SILENCE IN THE SNOWY FIELDS . 230 THE LIGHT AROUND THE BODY 243 THE MORNING GLORY AND THIS BODY IS MADE OF CAMPHOR AND GOPHERWOOD 261 THIS TREE WILL BE HERE FOR A THOUSAND YEARS 279 THE MAN IN THE BLACK COAT TURNS 291 Conclusion 307 V. BLY'S LOVING A WOMAN IN TWO WORLDS: THE SHAMAN AS LOVER 310 Part 1 316 Part II 341 Part III 373 Conclusion 400 CONCLUSION 402 BIBLIOGRAPHY 410 v 1 INTRODUCTION Recently, the poet Robert Bly has come of age, so to speak: he has received the hallmarks of acceptance in the academic world. In 1986 alone, Columbia University Press published an introduction to his work by Howard Nelson; Twayne Publishers added a discussion of his work by Richard Sugg to their author's series, and Harper and Row published his SELECTED POEMS. At age sixty, Robert Bly certainly has not longed to receive this acceptance. While holding degrees from Harvard and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Bly, like poet Gary Snyder of the Beat Generation, chose not to stay in the academic world, in part because of what that world represented to him--western, rational, materialistic, male-centered values. For Bly, the inner, meditative self which might be in touch with other values and worlds or states of being could not be explored in an academic environment. Finishing his degree at Harvard, Bly went to New York City to live, supporting himself with various part-time jobs. There, isolated and alone, he discovered his purpose as a poet (Froiland 35). He had a vision of what he calls the "inward journey" (Sugg 3). From New York, he went on to Iowa to get his master's degree in writing. Upon graduating, he spent a year in Norway on a Fulbright Grant. In Norway he further solidified his purpose. During this return to familial roots (Baker A7-A8), Bly read for the 2 first time the poetry of Georg Trakl, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Pablo Neruda, and other non-English modern poets. In these poets and in ancient myths, Bly found new methods to express what he saw as missing from most American poetry. He found ways to voice the dark, hidden side of things not lit by Apollonian consciousness. For Bly, the dark side is not essentially negative, although it may seem to be. In his Vietnam War poems, it is horrific and deadly, but even in those poems, Bly shows that it is ultimately a necessary, balancing force. He depicts the dark or instinctual realms in his poetry as a part of a whole. Exploring those realms enables him to investigate the whole: light and dark, masculine and feminine. In this study of Bly, my purpose is to look at his expression and his vision of this terrain. I suggest that in both expression and vision he is like a shaman on a journey. His New York experience most clearly suggests that his poetic vision is shaman-like. Another manifestation of his approach is that he stands outside the academy and outside of the new critical and neo-classical traditions.

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