Masthead Logo Volume 7 Article 42 Issue 4 Fall

1976 Robert Bly's "Sleepers Joining Hands": and Self Michael Atkinson

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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 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. We talk all of the confusion in car morning of others, and daylight the slides off the I advice in as if I were road, give public mature, that night in a dream I see a a to the head a policeman holding gun of frightened girl, who is the talks of a blindfolded, priest easily death, and opening National sees an woman Geographic old lying with her mouth open.

Robert Bly's Sleepers Joining Hands: Shadow and Self / Michael Atkinson

In Sleepers Joining Hands, Robert Bly offers his readers a various weave of the and the the personal public, psychological and the political modes of Each mode illuminates the as I experience. other, though, hope to show, the collection is most and fundamentally formally psychological. The lay out of the book is indirect: two dozen pleasantly pages of poems, ranging from haiku-like meditation moments to longer poems of protest. Then there is the a short course in the Great an essay, Mother, analysis of the but of disturbing finally nourishing configuration feminine archetypes in the . we And finally have the oneiric title sequence: four and a written at different times poems coda, and published in differ ent but here as a a places, offered single structure, whole. The on either side of the seem to poems essay point back and forth to 135

University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org so we is each other. And naturally ask: what the relation of the earlier poems to the later sequence? what is the final shape of the book? most to The essay points the way. Like poets who pause explain them His on selves, Bly works obliquely. essay focuses the work of Bachofen rests on a and Neumann; yet the pattern of the book firmly the thought of successor to the first and the teacher of the second?. The essay anima our coordinates the variety of archetypes which inhabit subcon us sciousness: the Good Mother who gives life, the Death Mother who muse or takes it away; the Ecstatic Mother, of joy, and the Stone Teeth us Mother who reduces to the stupor of psychic annihilation. But the title on sequence, which is the key to the book's integrity, focuses two other Jungian dream archetypes?the shadow and the Self. resonance con The symbols of the earlier poems gain in the schematic text of the later sequence: imagist poems move toward plotted action, I to oracles toward ritual, archetypes toward myth. Here, would like pre sent the scheme of the sequence and show its relation to the shorter poems, delineating the system of archetypes that coherently applies throughout the to con book, linking Biblical allusions contemporary consciousness and necting dream images with myth. in warns we After sketching the profiles of the Great Mother, Bly that should not examine his "poems for evidence of them, for most of [the] were to poems written without benefit of them." And further guide us, he it lifts the penultimate paragraph of his essay from Jung: virtually dia our at grams the concern and shape of the "Sleepers" sequence, shifting tention from "the woman within" to the shadow and the Self.

our . . . It would be far better simply to admit spiritual poverty. The come . . . spirit has down from its fiery high places but when the spirit turns to water. . . . in becomes heavy, it Therefore the way of the soul search of its lost father . . . leads to the water, to the dark mirror that lies at the bottom. Whoever has decided to move toward the state of . . . soul that leads to water. spiritual poverty goes the way of the the [Bly's ellipses]

for full or In Jung's overall schema, the personality striving individuation are in our integration has four aspects, which personified dreams: (1) the we consider ourselves to be in ego (or persona), that person (or role) the that the same sex normal waking consciousness; (2) shadow, figure of as or the ego who embodies negative positive traits which might have been now woman conscious but which have been repressed; (3) the anima, the within the man, that feminine consciousness with which he has to come to man terms?or the animus, the within the woman, representing the male 136 woman must consciousness with which the reconcile herself; and finally, can (4) the Self, that perfect wholeness which the individual become, when he has reconciled himself with his shadow and anima (or she with own for her shadow and animus) and become his potentiality being. to The first poem of the "Sleepers" sequence hearkens back the time the is en ego became split from its shadow by repression, and appropriately titled "The Shadow Goes Away." It records the fragmentation of the ques must tor, chronicles his separation from that lost aspect which he again is come to recognize in himself. Until he incorporates his shadow, he pow to act as we him erless effectively. We feel his powerlessness gaze with upon "The woman chained to the shore," Andromeda-like, and hear him express ocean to to In his fear of going into the fight for her, liberate her. ( mythic woman compression, the is the ocean?la mer, la m?re?the womb from sea. which he must be reborn whole. ) He fears the Juxtaposed to his feel cause: ing of impotence is its his loss of the shadow. most in is a Often?perhaps frequently dream and art?the shadow figure that embodies the negative aspects of the personality; the negativity pro reason are Thus we Dim vides the they repressed. have JekylTs hidden Hyde, as mesdale's Chillingworth, Gatsby's Wolfsheim, and the like. But, Jung we as notes, may just easily deny parts of ourselves that?grown wiser?we would consider good. Because something about them threatens the fragile, or narrowly defined persona ego, they too may be repressed. But ultimately to our or they must be admitted consciousness and assimilated, the results will be disastrous. Ishmael's savage Queequeg, Willy Lowman's Charley, are Macbeth's Banquo: each contains "values that needed by consciousness, a but that exist in form that makes it difficult to integrate them into one's life." has a is consis The protagonist in Bly's poems shadow that protean but a tent. The dreamer first imagines himself brother (probably Judah) to Jos into eph of the many colored coat; he recalls selling his brother-shadow so to slavery. Joseph contains the qualities the dreamer desperately needs is sent complete his life. In Genesis (Chapters 37-50) Joseph into the moral consciousness the wilderness of Egypt, banished, repressed from the of Self who family (except the mind of the father, the wise old man, the yearns for Joseph's return). Despite (or because of) the banishment, Joseph over gains mastery the alien realm, understands its laws by understanding dreams both positive and negative, and eventually provides his brothers to at out. with what they need sustain their lives, when they last seek him Bly's shape-shifting protagonist repeatedly dreams of selling his brother, to into or out to sea notably be carried away the desert ( archetypal equiva which a and lents for the unconscious, may be realm of danger potential is into an death for the fragmented and brittle ego). Joseph transformed 137 is in American Indian: he "taken by travelling Sioux," and he learns to "glide about naked, drinking water from his hands, / to tether horses, fol the trail bent the low faint through grasses." The questor's shadow?and, poem suggests, ours?is the natural man, the primitive, at home in the nature the unconscious. world of and The pillagers of the tribal village and the Marines who appear late in the poem are intended to remind us how we our in have duplicated oppression of the Indian the bombing of Viet nam. seem and in Equations that both familiar strained political rhetoric are a connec here given greater coherence and vitality in psychological case we to or tion. In each have attempted destroy ( repress ) the people we most to who best exemplified the very qualities need acknowledge and cultivate in ourselves?positive shadows. a context a "The Shadow Goes Away" gives larger for number of the now other poems?poems, already integers themselves, resonate within the larger pattern. "The Condition of the Working Classes: 1970" is blamed not on on those above them, but those they have trod under?blamed not on on the oppression that workers might suffer, but the repression of their we shadows, inwardly and outwardly. Thus, eat "a bread made of the sound of sunken buffalo bones" and drink "a water turned dark by the shadows on of Negroes"; the "Sioux dead sleep all night in the rain troughs the Treas our sons ury Building," and because of this are "lost in the immense forest" of the unintegrated unconscious. As the so terror repression intensifies, does the of living with it. Denying the shadow drives us into the maw of "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last." an Here the horror hits its highest pitch and unfamiliar list toward stereo it is type and stridence appears. Maybe unavoidable?so many have spoken out war so even most against the for long that the telling analysis has de come rest can teriorated into formula and finally to in clich?. Bly's poem not even shake itself free of stereotypy, though it has considerable power. The power comes not just from its imagery?

If one of those children came near that we have set on fire,_ If one of those children came toward me with both hands in the air, fire rising along both elbows I to would suddenly go back my animal brain I on would drop all fours, screaming, my vocal cords would turn blue, so would yours. it two I own would be days before could play with my children again

cause ?but from the analysis of and effect that is given in the hard terms not of imagery which will allow the luxuries and niceties of rationalization. These cause-effect concatenations generate both the strengths and weak 138 nesses of the poem. I suspect each reader will find different equations ef fective. But when they work, they work; when they don't, they grate. a on The poem begins with deft and horrific picture of planes lifting off cause bombing missions. The first stated for the missions?Hamilton's plan a re for centralized bank. This is entirely too easy. And, though he does turn to eco such, fortunately Bly gets beyond the familiar accusations of a us. nomic materialism to perspective that still has the capacity to arrest us to save we He tells the tears shed for exploding children.

Don't cry at that? Do you cry at the wind pouring out of Canada? at at Do you cry the reeds shaken the edge of the sloughs?

us to our tears to see He asks hold and, Yeatsian but joyless, the terrible de as a out. struction natural law working itself The natural wind that shakes snow is not is inner the reeds and brings the just meteorological?it the wind of the spirit that blows where it lists.

seasons This happens when the change, to trees This happens when the leaves begin drop from the too early see "Kill them: I dont want to anything moving." This happens when the ice begins to show its teeth in the ponds water This happens when the heavy layers of lake press down on the fish's head, and send him deeper, where his tail swirls slowly, and his brain passes him pictures on of heavy reeds, of vegetation fallen vegetation... Hamilton saw all this in detail: tree "Every banana slashed, every cooking utensil smashed, mattress cut.'* every

is so The key here the aquatic imagery, which pervades the poem ( and the a book). Allegorically read, the passage limns in picture of repression?a on freezing of the sensitive living waters, the ice pressing down the fish, our denizen of the unconscious, evolutionary precursor. And the dying, sees descending fish the pictures of previous repressions, impressions from the coal age, compressed, petrified, transformed, ancient, yet still leaving, of their in layer upon layer, the imprint repression deep the lake floor, be neath the now frozen surface. not see in we Though it is pretty clear that Hamilton did all this detail, can see are natural laws we are This is that these psychic following. why 139 we lie to others and to ourselves (section II)?to cover with further layers we on so the skin have already put things, and to mask the mask. And from a is mean wants to this, further equation posited. "These lies the country our die"?self denial is self denial is self denial. Killing shadows betokens our own hunger for death. seen in The poem's other analyses?economic primarily?look best when light of this larger pattern of repression.

It is because the aluminum window shade business is doing so well in the United States that we roll fire over whole villages

to fortunately cedes

we so women It is because have few sobbing in back rooms, we so torn because have few children's heads apart by high velocity bullets, we so on our own because have few tears falling hands screams that the Super Sabre turns and down toward the earth.

is comes: And it from this analysis that the poem's final prayer

Let us drive cars up the light beams to the stars ...

And return to earth crouched inside the drop of sweat that falls from the chin of the Protestant tied in the fire.

If we have become cruel it is because we cannot remember our own suffer our we our Our lies in ing: in righteousness have forgotten pain. only hope remembering. rivers not At a "The Marines think that unless they die the will move." we we are a des conscious level, believe fulfilling chosen, compr?hensible we are the to a not tiny; but at the unconscious level following path destiny so much more certain. We are nearly manifest, though powerfully rushing to sea as rush toward the cliff" driven our own the edge of the "pigs by us we see our our demons and there below history and destiny, balanced: 140 ocean the waters underneath part: in one luminous globes float up (in them hairy ecstatic men?) in the other, the teeth mother, naked at last.

She is naked and terrible. But at least we can see her now, as our forebears not. terror of Vietnam has become clear to our perhaps could In the she us, own in his Mother for creation. As Bly explains essay, the Teeth "stands torn to numbness, paralysis, cataton?a, being totally spaced out, the psyche arms bits, and legs thrown all over." For the alternative path?the path that ocean leads down into the where "luminous globes float up (in them hairy a ecstatic men)"?we must wait until "Sleepers Joining Hands" outlines map is it to recovery. Though the outrage of the poem certainly justified, looks as a better in the context of the book whole than it does standing alone. a a "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last" offers diagram of despair, brittle a to anatomy of agony with only gesture indicate the possibility of healing, of wholeness. a at our most Here, then, is picture of the U.S. culturally destructive, our own annihilating shadows?Indians, Blacks, Vietnamese?with whom we we are to must be reunited if have psychic fullness and dimensionality; we are cast our if to be solid enough to shadows. Concern for oppression of it is a shadows pervades the book, essay and poems. But neither continuing nor an mea as to accusation extended culpa that Bly chants, "Calling the like all on is Badger" shows. This poem, of Bly's work the shadow, pervaded a is a by "sadness that rises from the death of the Indians," and that sadness for our own loss. "We are driven to Florida like Ger?nimo" because our a imaginations cannot function fully with such large psychic space blocked we out, repressed. Or, in the imagery of "Pilgrim Fish Heads," the Indian into water. . . . is in have displaced "vanishes / The Mattapoiset league with rotting wood." Thus the denied shadow softens and rots whatever we structures might consciously build. over can This backward look the shadow poems that begin the book help as define the conditions that apply the title sequence opens. As in most the or myths (whether the king be impotent, land waste, the virgin guarded a more or as we return by dragon?all of which conditions less obtain to to a the opening of the "Sleepers" sequence) the call the quest begins with a an perception of lack, imbalance. Whereas the earlier, shorter poems at mainly expressed despair the loss, "The Shadow Goes Away" proceeds to Our are from recognition restorative action. fugitive imaginations per to sonified in the protagonist who, too, calls the badger and otter, animals waters still in touch with the renewing of psychic life, the stream that emerges from beneath the ground. 141 in in Bly's seeker goes search of his shadow, which hides all dark peo ples, Negro, Eskimo, Indian, Asian. He enters the inner and outer desert sees in or and the Sioux "struggling up the mountain disordered Unes" opens a a drawer, compartment of the unconscious, and sees "small white horses in retreat. gallop away toward the back" He links the destruction of his woman shadow with his inability to recognize and unite with his anima, the own and intuition: within, his gentleness

I have been divorced five hundred times, six hundred times yesterday alone.

even now to Yet he has begun incorporate the shadow's consciousness and no in sees values. He will longer participate the repression, for he where it me. me leads: "The Marines turn to They offer money. / I turn and leave." sees With the consciousness of the shadow resuscitated, he the disfugra race returns: transis tion of his land. "The suppressed [it sees] snakes and tors are Tran filling the beaches." Even the planets despoiled: "The Sea of quility scattered with dead rocks / and black dust resembling diesel oil" moon in Beneath this polluted "pilots armored cockpits [are] finding their way home through moonlit clouds." The equation between past and present Indian Asian is now clear to betrayals, between and wars, complete, the as as to protagonist well the reader. Refusing continue the old path of inner denial and outward oppression, he turns from the zeal of battle to view the littered land with primitive consciousness and compassion. He can now con has begun to assimilate the consciousness of the shadow, and tinue his journey of integration. The second poem of the sequence finds the dreamer momentarily awake, not on noting but yet comprehending the femininity of the earth which he finds himself: "fragments of the mother lie open in all low places." But his task here is "Meeting the Man Who Warns Me," and the substance of the is not not warning that he may understand, may proceed further without a realizing from transcendental viewpoint where he has already been. Dreaming again, the sleeper experiences everywhere the death of the father:

are I dream that the fathers dying. Jehovah is dying, Jesus' father is dying, man is the hired asleep inside the oat straw. on Samson is lying the ground with his hollow hair.

Even the father's emissary, the Christlike visitor whose circumcising touch 142 into a is seen as extra puts the protagonist back dream, inhumanly remote, terrestrial. The dreamer experiences absolute separation from the presence seen as not of the father because he has the father only external; he has yet as a to recognized the father-energy part of himself, waiting be actualized. now can But that vision change, for in the paradoxical logic of myth, once seen. the shadow figure has become visible, the light may be

My shadow is underneath me, in in floating the dark, his small boat bobbing among the reeds. A fireball floats in the corner of the Eskimo's house It is a comes nearer light that when called! turn A light the spirits their heads for, over suddenly shining land and sea! I taste the heaviness of the dream, curve the northern lights up toward the roof of my mouth. .... The energy is inside us

is of This energy, this Ught, the Ught the Self, that truly integrated individ near to ual, that divinity which each human being has the potential become. notes that the Self can sorts a Jung be symboUzed by many of things: a a or geometric figure, radiation of light, tree, stone, well, any number of But most "world navel" configurations. the prevalent Uterary and mythical are representations of the Self the babe and the wise old man. It is ap Self be propriate that the could represented by youth and age, since it is that nuclear source of energy within us at birth (or reborn in self-discov we our comes ery), which, if integrate Uves, to the fullness of its wisdom our as in maturity. Quite strikingly, the protagonist of the poem csees the "The is encoun light' and realizes that energy inside us," he immediately a ters personification of the Self:

an man. I start toward [the light], and I meet old

And the old man cries out: "I am here. Either talk to me about your life, or turn back."

to When the protagonist pauses for breath and begins account for his ex most comes a perience, the rendering is startling; for it from greater com a awareness or pleteness, and greater mythic than either reader dreamer his own knew he had. He begins by announcing shadow-including nature to recount a and proceeds mythical journey which neither we nor he knew he had taken. 143 am "I the dark spirit that Uves in the dark. Each of my children is under a leaf he chose from all the leaves in the universe. When I was alone, for three years, alone, I passed under the earth through the night-water I was a for three days inside warm-blooded fish. is to one 'Purity of heart will thing.' I saw the road."

And when the Self urges him?"Go on! Go on!"?he continues:

A me we air ... whale bore back home, flew through the was a never seen Then I boy who had the sea! was a own It Uke King coming to his shores. I feel the naked touch of the knife, I feel the wound, at sea this joy I love is Uke wounds ..."

in own not Suddenly he has discovered his experience, only the reaUzation we had a of the shadow (which shared with him) but also the shape of with a immersion in of a quest?complete three-day the belly whale, the for a into most traditional typological symbol descent the terrifying aspects of the unconscious (viz. Jonah, Christian iconography, Pinocchio, et al.). a Until now, he had, Uke child born again, forgotten his Unks with the sea; was a to own he Uke king, stranger his shore, suddenly realizing the extent is as as as as of his right and rule. His realization sudden it is complete, as tounding for the dreamer for the reader. Having thought all the fathers own now were dead (i.e., having felt the lack of his origin) he discovers encounters a the Ught of illumination within himself, and fatherly wise old man to in outer who corresponds that light the world, only to reaUze that he, is both and the dreamer himself, father child, "dark spirit" and "boy." Wounded, that is, born and circumcized into the adult male world, the to protagonist stops reflect. a moment to We, too, might take stop and reflect?to consider the poem's In I method of proceeding. the last few paragraphs have been concerned so to estabUsh and outUne the continuity of the poem?a continuity which is as to The far from obvious be truly problematic. obscurity arises, primarily, with which was from the high degree of compression the poem written. was was (The sequence, I told casually, originally five times its present not so unusual in is length.) The epiphanic mode, itself, further compli a outer event cated by reversal of the usual relation between and psychic are in response; here the changing phenomena dictated by shifts psychic 144 states as in ( dream ) rather than the other way around. In order to manage this an material, Bly replaces the conventional narrative structure with im and continuous to plicit parallelism Jung's schema of dream imagery in the individuation process. of is Though Jung's way reading the language of dreams enormously in is a sightful, it legitimate to ask whether it is so essential part of our cul ture that it be alluded to as a as uses may structural principle, Joyce, say, the Odyssey. Following archetypal patterns, of course, produces neither merit nor in or ex defect poems, novels, situation comedies. But requiring ternal of is is re knowledge patterns problematic, especially when what is not a sense quired just general of the quest, but Jung's interpretation of it. For without the and a fair amount time to Jungian frame, of apply it, most will some no readers find real problems of coherence; and matter how the individual or telling images how striking the poem's particular emotion al effects, difficulties with coherence will diminish the final effect of the various readers will count cost in poem. Clearly, the differing ways?based I on largely, suspect, the ways they have already decided to handle matters such as Eliot's classical eclecticism, Yeats' esotericism, Rothke's Emersonian a some ism, Kinnell's magic, and the like. But problem that feel worth over is a coming problem nevertheless. The synoptic recollection of the journey of the protagonist, which ap in last lines of the Man is pears the "Meeting Who Warns Me," expanded in in the is a "Night Journey Cooking Pot," which flashback composed of on reflections the experience and meaning of his immersion, of the dark, of his a still uncomprehended part quest. Here, again, problem of contin confronts and uity us; but the apparently confused confusing emotional can once we see swings of "Night Journey" be understood that the poem di into two two vides itself movements, describing phases of the mythic jour ney: the departure into the realm of mystery and also the return to the ordinary world. As the seeker begins to reexperience and rearticulate his we a familiar "I was journey retrospectively, hear pattern: born during the sea warm night journey." That he "love[s] the whale with his organ pipes" is consonant: an less expected, but perfectly for Bly, this going-out is ec a an stasis, standing-outside-of the ego, ecstasy; it is the return to the world of men and affairs ordinary that proves the difficult leg of the journey. The into water is a into a departure the journey ego-dissolving solitude, to a of effective action in necessary prelude finding path the ordinary world: "I float on solitude as on water . . . is a there road" (Bly's el?psis). The first movement his poem's explores privacy, which for Bly is sister to not Here we see word privilege, privation. the rejuvenating exhilaration a of going little crazy in private, deprived of human contact in the "woman less loneliness." The enthusiasm for isolation in expressed "Night Journey" 145 is reinforced and clarified by several of the book's earUer poems. Because it a a rejuvenates, soUtude itself becomes welcome state, well-captured "In one comes us Mountain Cabin in " where "No to visit for a week." The short which in poems begin the volume deal frequently with solitude its as a out as a as ec both aspects, going and coming in to center. Ecstasy stasis animates "SixWinter Privacy Poems":

There is a solitude like black mud! in Sitting this darkness singing, I can't tell if this joy is or or a from the body, the soul, third place."

a on Conversely?as gloss "Night Journey's" oracular exhortation "inward, inward"?the "Shack Poem" to a inward, muses, "How marvelous be thought entirely surrounded by brains!" Finally, of course, this privacy is the solitude of the womb, for the voyage he recalls in 'The in the is sea Night Journey Cooking Pot," the night journey in the womb of la notre m?re. The mer, cooking pot of the title, like the oven as in and hearth Bly explains his essay, is the province of the woman and of the womb. In movement symbol the opening of "Night Journey" of rebirth abound: "I feel . . . images / the baby whirling in the womb," and "Nuns with faces smoothed by prayer peer out from holes in the earth." When he sees and realizes the possibilities brought by the visitants from the realm of snow in and death ("sleeping anguish Uke grain, whole, blind in the old intuits grave"), when he the chants of the shamans "with large ones shoulders covered with furs, / Holy with eyes closed," then he comes to in all rejoice signs pointing toward the death that precedes rebirth:

own Leaves slip down, falling through their branches. tree The becomes naked and joyful. Leaves fall in the tomby wood.

And it is out of the experience of the retreat, the death, the hibernation that he sings his song of joy.

Suddenly I love the dancers, leaping in the dark ... start I to sing.

But this song is not an easy one, and he knows it In the second move ment of "Night Journey" he faces the difficulty of returning to the world of Like was ordinary experience. Buddha, whose ultimate temptation simply to stay in the oceanic trance of nirvana, like the silent Lazarus and other 146 such questors, this seeker sees how difficult it will be to communicate the our joy of going beyond the ego, the personaUty, the boundaries of daily us to rea round. But like Whitman in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," he urges we are a common lize that not separated from him, but united by experi ence we sometimes forget.

am I not going farther from you am I coming nearer, green rain carries me nearer you, I weave drunkenly about the page, I love you, I never knew that I loved you was Until I swallowed by the invisible.

in his seem that we Here, protagonist's plea for understanding, it would own in have Bly's apologia for his method. By writing the language of remove our dream and vision, he does not hope to himself from experience, we are can our for all dreamers, and eventually intuit the scheme of dreams. If we not see our as do immediately waking and sleeping Uves whole and is waters one, it because the of sleep's deep well give the illusion of dis continuity.

For we are like the branch bent in the water ... out it is was .... Taken whole, it always whole [Bly's elUpses]

that the seem Though he acknowledges poem's oracular words may skew assures us and difficult, he that when he emerges from the water (night, as mother, chaos, unconscious, dream) his speech will be straight the as we to branch?a promise, have seen, difficult fulfill. What he hopes for in an is a in in (as he said earlier poem) day which "if only the fragments as as in . . . the unconscious would grow big the beams hunting lodges, / we in our would find holy books beds, / Then the Tao Te Ching would across come running the field!" If only. a or But such conclusion is far too optimistic, else many would have re men. re turned and spoken, and redemption would be daily for all Bly in movement alizes that?and the second of "Night Journey," the questor to ex suffers the inexorable difficulty of returning the realm of ordinary to perience while preserving his vision. Used mental trave?ng, he finds himself constricted by the physical limitations of waking reaUty: "I think I am in ties me new the body / the body rushes and up." Aware of his clumsi at a ness, he is "ashamed looking the fish in the water," for he is fish out. 147 new born in The being inside him?the "child the old moonlit villages of the brain"?is threatened with execution by that Herod, the waking ego and as or a the social system of which, ego persona, he finds himself part. He discovers himself in a nascent role that his deeper, Self had not intended. to Hearkening back the imagery of the early West which characterized 'The Shadow Goes Away," he realizes

I am run at Suddenly those who large railroads dusk, who stand around the fallen beast howUng, who cannot get free,.... is not saints. This the perfect freedom of the

one Having become of the very people he would fight against, he realizes action after the difficulty of vision, the dichotomy between what he knows in the absolute realm and the position he occupies in the relative realm. With a fuller he has at at understanding arrived the point which he began we have shared with him in the journey "The Shadow Goes Away." is The personality divided against itself: with fuller vision now, he sees how he has become his brother's vendor, betrayer of the shadow:

I fall into my own hands, fences break down under horses, cities towns women starve, whole of singing carrying to the burial fields the look I saw on my father's face, own I sit down again, I hit my body, see I shout at myself, I what I have betrayed. is not What I have written good enough. Who does it help? am on I ashamed sitting the edge of my bed.

is into He ashamed looking the limpid pool of his dreams. The poem has moved fully from the ecstasy of the journey to the restrictions of the return. And those restrictions include the of difficulty making the poem "good enough." In the fourth out the nature of as poem, Bly spells the journey explicitly as possible:

Here is some prose Once there was a man who went to a far country to get his inheritance and then returned. 148 is and This, of course, (in the phrase of James Joyce the system of Joseph in its briefest form: the of the hero who is Campbell) the "monomyth" story called from the ordinary world of experience into the realm of the myster or a ious, where he battles various foes, conquers converts them, and gains a recrosses boon, his "inheritance," life-restoring elixir with which he the some threshold and with which, after readjustment, he transforms the world or his vision of it. uses water to an Bly his imagery suggest intriguing relation between the realm of mystery and the boon snatched from it. The pool, the lake into sea has in which he has gazed, the night through which he traveled dream now vision, all become "Water Drawn Up Into the Head." The questor now once same encompasses what encompassed him. In the way that, in on now the Judaic tradition, the redeemed feast the dehcious flesh of the monsters so ocean devouring Behemoth, Leviathan, and Ziz, the very of the sea night journey becomes the elixir which nourishes the poet, granting him the serenity of the final poem and the joy of the "Extra Chorus" which follows it. in This liquid optimism has already found voice "Water Under the we is . . . water Earth": "everything need buried , it's under the guarded on by women." (And in "The Turtle," "huge turtle eggs / Ue inland the can floor of the old sea.") The promise of the water is that consciousness to be bathed in, nourished by and brought rebirth via the fluid world of sea can the unconscious. If tapped, the subterranean yield the heaUng man balm that unites the diverse aspects of fragmented within his Self and men. joins him with all other Progression begins with regression, conscious realization with a descent into the unconscious.

a There is consciousness hovering under the mind's feet, advanced civiUzations under the footsole, a climbing at times upon shoelace! It is a willow that knows of the water under the earth, I am a as over father who dips he passes underground rivers, can who feel his children through all distance and time!

a water The mind, like funerary willow, draws the from beneath the earth and manifests it in leaves and swaying branches: water drawn up into the vision the head produces that fluid and protean of poems Bly has created, nourishes his vision of himself and all men. in "When alone," when privacy with the wellspring of the unconscious, "we see that great tomb [the material world] is not God," and "We know of Christ, who raised the dead, and started time. / He is not God, and is 149 to not called God." Trying find God outside ourselves, Bly suggests, is to water deny the inner springs, the drawn up into the head. "Best is to let in a to immerse in them lose themselves river:" best yourself the energy of the unconscious, energy of the Self, and learn from your dreams, visions are and intuitions that you yourself the transcendental; and then to drink from that knowledge continuously.

or So rather than saying Christ is God he is not, it is to better forget all that and lose yourself in the curved energy. one ... I entered that energy day

a no The God he discovers himself to be part of has name, because he is beyond the pairs of opposites, good and evil, kine and predator:

We have no name for you, so we say: he makes grass grow upon the mountains, to and gives food the dark cattle of the sea, he feeds the young ravens that call on him.

a nascent a new There is realization, Self, "another being Uving inside" the I poet: "He is looking out of my eyes. / hear him / in the wind through the bare trees." It is the wind in the barren trees that alerts him to his own birth, it is the death of the old self that so confidently presages the new. I am so in And "that is why glad fall." The poet beside the bare and naked come as as tree trunk waits for true nakedness to to him well. And Jung a observes, the tree is often symbol for the developing self, bringing forth to energy from the invisible underground reservoir of the unconscious be manifested in the world of light and form. a as a As Ginsberg ended Howl with joyous footnote?not palinode, but to affirm the divinity of the horror he chronicled?so to this strange and often painful oneiric journey, Bly appends "An Extra Joyful Chorus for Those Who Have Read This Far." In several ways the chorus alludes heav to ily Whitman. Its closing Unes (and indeed the very title of the entire "Sleepers Joining Hands" sequence) bear strong resemblance to the open ing of the last section of Whitman's poem "The Sleepers":

are as The sleepers very beautiful they Ue unclothed, over east They flow hand in hand the whole earth from to as west they lie unclothed.

uses on a And, chiasmatically, Unes that Whitman to close his poem cycli cal note 150 I a rise will stop only time with the night.... and betimes. return I will duly pass the day O my mother and duly to you

a Bly transforms into paradoxical opening for his "Joyful Chorus":

I love the Mother. I am an enemy of the Mother.

are The allusions clear. Yet, though both poems record psychological night sea journeys, and though both close with affirmations, the similarities be are not tween the poems continuous. Bly borrows from Whitman for his own ends, as we shall see. And so with technique. The "Joyful Chorus," Bly's chant of polymorph ous identity which echoes and goes beyond bis handUng of the protean shadow in "The Shadow Goes Away," also recalls Whitman's chants of uni are some versal identity. Here again, there important differences to balance are the similarities. Whitman's sympathetic identifications usuaUy directed toward the commonplace and the possible, encouraging the reader to fol low along:

I am the actor and the actress .... the voter and

the politician....

.... A shroud I see?and I am the shroud I wrap a .... body and lie in the coffin

in am man .... Most typically, the words of "Song of Myself," "I the I .... on suffered I was there." Bly, the other hand, opts to include the fan en tastical and folkloristic along with the ordinary and credible, which to or courages the reader relate these elements to other symboUc quests to his own not to translate them into terms, but engage directly in the pro own tagonist's identification:

I am the ball of fire the woodman cuts out of the wolf's stomach, I am the sun that floats over the Witch's house, am I the horse sitting in the chestnut tree singing.

tradition is While both poets work within the of the psychic quest, Bly also to the to to referring it, and asking reader refer it, schematically. 151 use Like Whitman, Bly makes of the transcendent power of the aggre gate. The catalogue of beautiful and ordinary and terrible beginnings which dominates the first sixty Unes of section 15 of "Song of Myself" yields the aggregate exhilaration of Beginning; in "The Sleepers" the catalogue of stammerer in an actor, nominee, and criminal averaged aggregate of sleep ing humanity allows Whitman to say

is The soul always beautiful universe .... The is duly in order every thing is in its place_

no The diverse shall be less diverse, but they shall ... now. flow and unite they unite

is the of the For Bly's protagonist the transcendent aggregate experience its no matter be completed quest: component parts, how painful, finally come redeemed because of their place in the whole. Even "fleeing along a beast" or last out the ground Uke frightened being "the inheritor crying matter a in deserted houses" become fit for "Joyful Chorus" when the pro is at moment "an tagonist realizes that he every eternal happiness fighting act all and of the in the long reeds." Each contains the imprint of others, his at once and completed sequence. Bly's questor images Ufe everywhere most is man at all stages simultaneously. Perhaps summatively he "the out on locked inside the oakwomb, / waiting for lightning, only let stormy is core in tree of drawn from subter nights." He that of life the the Self, now to ranean waters and waiting, that the old foliage has died, manifest one at himself in the new spring. He is everyone and "no all" simultaneously, in to for he is prior to personality. Thus, the womb, aching deliver himself, can he paradoxically say:

I love the Mother. am an me I enemy of the Mother, give my sword. into her full of I leap mouth seaweed.

For he honors the womb of the unconscious and arational which he has re as honors and masculine desire to entered embryo, and he the rational into articulate world of forms translate that primeval wholeness the water to leaves, sea to sword. Further, he sees and feels the archetypal nature and universal possibility and new for all men who of his experience?new incarnations Bethlehems attend to their dreams: 152 Our faces shine with the darkness reflected from the Tigris_ The panther rejoices in the gathering dark. Hands rush toward each other through miles of space. All the sleepers in the world join hands.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

an at MICHAEL ATKINSON is associate professor of English the Univer is sity of Cincinnati. He the author of several works of Uterary criticism. a MARVIN BELL is using Guggenheim Fellowship to stay at home. A new Stars Do Not book of his poems, Stars Which See, Which See, will be pub in lished by Atheneum February. ROBERT BLY's next book will be The Book: Forty-Four of the Ec static Poems of Kabir, which Beacon Press will pubUsh in December. in is VANCE BOURJAILY's selection, "See Sato the Funny Papers," from his new novel Now Playing at Canterbury (Dial Press). HENRY CARLILE is the author of The Rough-Hewn Table (University of at Missouri Press, 1971). He teaches Portland State University and is the a recipient of 1976 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. a STEPHEN DIXON has just completed novel, Work. at NORMAN DUBIE teaches Arizona State University. His work has ap In was peared in several national publications. the Dead of the Night pub lished by the University of Pittsburgh Press. RUSSELL EDSON's most recent book is The Intuitive Journey & Other Works (Harper & Row ). won PETER EVERWINE the Lamont Award for Collecting the Animals. is in at in DONALD FINKEL Poet Residence Washington University St. Louis. His most recent book is A Mote in Heaven's Eye (Atheneum). House on was LOUIS GL?CK's The the Marshland published by Ecco is at Press in 1975. In 1976-77, she teaching the Writers Workshop. at STEVEN GOLDSBERRY teaches English the University of Hawaii. 's most recent book is The Town of Hill (Godine, 1976). was DANIEL HALPERN's Street Fire pubUshed by Ecco Press in 1975. at MARK JARMAN teaches Indiana State University at Evansville. His poetry is appearing in Kayak, Field, and Poetry Northwest. He is in search a of publisher for his book of poems, Go Back to Your Bairns, Mr. Knox. 153