Along the Lac Qui Parle River and "The True Gift Beneath the Pale Lakes of Minnesota": Robert Bly's poetics and the Midwest landscape in <i>Silence in the Snowy Fields</i>

It is comprised of a study of Robert Bly's debut collection,<i> Silence in the Snowy Fields </i>(1962) (31,837 words excluding bibliography), a collection of poems (68 pages), and a bridging statement (6,671 words). The study of Bly argues that <i>Silence in the Snowy Fields</i> asks poets to reject the dominant American poetic and take up a new approach that aligns with poetic principles outlined in "A Wrong Turning in American Poetry" (1963) and is rooted in landscape of the American Midwest.

This is executed in two main chapters. The first addresses Bly's essay on American poetry and uses it to interpret the epigraph of <i>Snowy Fields</i> as a call for poets to reject the dominant American poetic and begin a journey towards a new poetic approach. The second chapter demonstrates how this journey toward's Bly's alternative poetic depicted in <i>Snowy Fields</i> is also a journey into the rural Midwest, thus tying it to place.