Chinese Elements In Robert Bly's Poetry

Robert Bly,a prominent poet in contemporary America,is the leader of Deep Image movement.He was so fascinated by Chinese culture that he not only studied it with great passion but also infused it into his poetry writing.This thesis,from the perspective of cultural acceptance,investigates how Bly selects and absorbs Chinese elements in his Silence in the Snowy Fields,This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years,Jumping out of Bed and other poetry collections.What Bly mainly concentrates on is Taoism and Zen Buddhism,as well as the landscape and pastoral poems of Jin and Tang Dynasties.Furthermore,he wisely rewrites them to express his poetic ideal and spiritual pursuit in a way accepted by the western society.His purpose of doing so is to attack the writing style of American Academy poets and the American post-industrial civilization.The thesis thus concludes that this kind of cultural importation is to meet the social and personal needs.Bly is open-minded in infusing Chinese culture into American poetry and makes every effort to spread it because he wants to reform the American poetic scene.Based on this,he hopes to help modern man out of his spiritual dilemma.