Sleepers Joining Hands by Robert Bly
"Sleepers Joining Hands" by Robert Bly is a significant poem from his 1973 collection that represents a shift from his earlier, politically charged works to a more introspective and personal style. This piece employs Jungian psychology as a central tool for exploring the self, delving into the conscious and unconscious layers of the psyche. Bly's imagery draws directly from his own life experiences, encompassing memories of solitude, family relationships, and the influence of literature, particularly the works of Rilke. The poem is characterized by a dreamlike quality, featuring fragmented thoughts and vivid imagery that reflect the complexities of human memory and emotion. Critics have interpreted it as an epic quest for selfhood, emphasizing the integration of personal and collective experiences. The nocturnal imagery underscores a journey into the depths of the unconscious, culminating in a sense of unity with others. Ultimately, "Sleepers Joining Hands" seeks a communion with the collective unconscious, positioning Bly as a key figure in the realm of psycho-spiritual poetry, which aims to heal and reclaim lost aspects of the self. This work marks a pivotal moment in Bly's poetic evolution, focusing on inner exploration rather than external political commentary.
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Sleepers Joining Hands by Robert Bly
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1973 (collected in Sleepers Joining Hands, 1973)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“Sleepers Joining Hands,” the title poem of Bly’s 1973 collection, marks a departure from the type of poetry for which Bly had been known previously. His antiwar poetry, remarkable for his energetic, manipulative handling of the language of politics and political thought, had served as a training ground for the more mature, more personal poetry that distinguished this volume. Here language is used to uncover the truth of the psyche on a personal level. The use of Jungian psychology becomes more than a mere feature of the poetry; it becomes a central impetus—a tool for digging into the unconscious to discover the self.
The imagery of the poem is essentially autobiographical—recounting Bly’s days in New York reading poems by Rilke in solitude, recalling his relationship to his mother and his father, describing his life at home with his wife and children. To say that this poem is autobiographical is misleading, however, because the poem is not written in normative language but written instead in a crazy-quilt juxtaposition of images in a tone Bly calls psychic. The language in the poem is like the language of dreams—bits and pieces of memory alongside half-thoughts and inner, often unvoiced, fears.
The poem has been described by the critic Richard Sugg as an epic quest seeking selfhood, but to understand this quest, one must first turn to the ideas of Jung. Jung believed each personality was made of three features: the individual consciousness (experiences and memory, of which one is aware), the individual unconscious (experiences and memory one has suppressed or forgotten), and the collective unconscious (inherited, universal experiences and memories of ancestors that are passed down to each individual). Archetypes, or images which reveal or reflect the collective unconscious, function as indicators of that part of the personality that is most strong but usually inaccessible. Jung believed (as does Bly) that an individual who could integrate the three aspects of personality would obtain an enlightened state (Jung’s examples were Jesus Christ and Buddha) whereby his or her personality would be whole and intact.
It was this sort of integration Bly seeks in the lines of his poem, which uses images from his memory (consciousness); images from his dreams, fears, and unspoken feelings (unconscious); and archetypal images from mythology and religion (collective unconscious) to fuse the three into an overall understanding of the self. He often uses images of digging, of plunging down beneath the surface, of seeking the roots of the self. The journey takes place at night, and images of night prevail—owls, other nocturnal animals, and moonlight. It is a journey taken when one is in a dreamlike, unconscious state. What one finds at the end of the journey, at the core of the self, is communion with all other selves—full participation in the collective unconscious: One becomes the night creature, one becomes the archetypal image, one becomes a “sleeper,” joining hands with “all the sleepers in the world.”
Bly’s poem “Sleepers Joining Hands” attempts this participation in the collective unconscious. The poem, and the other poems in the volume, marks a new plateau for Bly’s achievement, not so much in form but in terms of poetic subject. Rather than seeking a more mature political voice, Bly turns his attention inward, writing what some critics have called psycho-spiritual poetry. Of this kind of poetry, which seeks to heal psychic wounds and regain the unconscious that has been lost, Bly has been recognized as an undisputed master.
Bibliography
Altieri, Charles F. “Varieties of Immanentist Experience: Robert Bly, Charles Olson, and Frank O’Hara.” In Enlarging the Temple: New Directions in American Poetry During the 1960’s. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1979.
Davis, William Virgil. Understanding Robert Bly. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988.
Friberg, Ingegard. Moving Inward: A Study of Robert Bly’s Poetry. Goteborg, Sweden: Acta University Gothoburgensis, 1977.
Harris, Victoria. The Incorporative Consciousness of Robert Bly. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992.
Lensing, George S., and Ronald Moran, eds. Four Poets and the Emotive Imagination: Robert Bly, James Wright, Louis Simpson, and William Stafford. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976.
Malkoff, Karl. Escape from the Self: A Study in Contemporary American Poetry and Poetics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
Nelson, Howard. Robert Bly: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Peseroff, Joyce, ed. Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1985.
Robert Bly Web site. www.Robertbly.com.
Smith, Thomas R. Walking Swiftly: Writings and Images on the Occasion of Robert Bly’s 65th Birthday. New York: Perennial, 1991.
Sugg, Richard P. Robert Bly. Boston: Twayne, 1986.