James Wright’s A Blessing Essay

A commendation by James WrightJust off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.And the eyes of those both Indian poniesDarken with kindness.They have come gladly knocked out(a)(p) of the willowsTo welcome my friend and me.We touchst unitary over the barbed wire into the pastureWhere they have been grazing all day, al unrivalled.They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come.They bow shyly as wet swans. They whap each other.There is no lone bendss same(p) theirs.At home once more,They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would manusle to hold the slenderer one in my arms,For she has goed over to meAnd nuzzled my left hand.She is black and white,Her mane move wild on her forehead,And the light breeze moves me to c atomic number 18ss her long earThat is diffuse as the skin over a girls wrist.Suddenly I realizeThat if I graduationped out of my torso I would breakInto blossom.Jam es Wright composes A benediction, by introducing a storyteller who recalls a memory about an experience he had with a friend on a trip around Rochester, Minnesota. On this trip, the teller and his friend encounter dickens Indian ponies, one of which appears to make a pronounced impact on the teller. Rather than describe what the scenery may look corresponding or how his friend is feeling about the trip, the fabricator instantly speaks of the ponies and continues to speak of them for the remainder of the poetry. However, ABlessing leaves many questions to be asked. Why does James Wright decide to only sex one of the two ponies his narrator encounters? Why does he fluctuate amidst the somatogenetic and the mental, which divides the themes in his poem? What does Wright try to accomplish by packing A Blessing with alliteration, assonance, and consonance? Is there any identity to be effect within his c atomic number 18fully placed inventorys and what does the lecturer take aw ay from the varying tenses throughout Wrights poem? Wright fills some(prenominal) lines of A Blessing with assonance to have varieties of structure for his poem. Wright believes that the moment betwixt his narrator and the ponies is precious and delicate.Therefore, he used one stanza to craft his poem because he does not want to interrupt their meeting. If the poem would have been constructed into varying stanzas, the poem would be broken rather than one conscious thought or action. By keeping the poem as one stanza the narrators interaction with the ponies is untouched. It is kept whole and beautiful. The structure of the poem is a reign over comparison to the spiritual relationship between the narrator and the ponies. Wright begins with this delicate theme with the soft o sound in softly and ponies in lines two and three. The soft sound connects softly and ponies and by doing so sets the scene for the contri stillor that the kindness the ponies display to the narrator and his friend is the beginning of the impact they make on the narrator. Wright provides textual evidence of this compassion by telling the readers, And the eyes of the two Indian ponies / Darken with kindness (3-4). Wright continues with alliteration in lines five through eight with the w at the beginning of willow, welcome, we, wire, and where. When spoken aloud, the repetition of the w sounds like the snorting a horse makes, which can be displayed as a greeting towards the narrator and his friend. The alliteration continues in lines nine through twelve with repetition of the th sound in they, that, there, and theirs. The th sounds like the thumping on the ground of the ponys hooves while they move towards the narrator. The movement of the ponies is a hall of openness and welcome. Nearing the end of the poem, Wright comes back to the o sound again in forehead, long, and over.This sound softens the moment between the young-bearing(prenominal) pony and the narrator. This distinction hel ps the reader understand the intimacy the narrator feels with the female pony. The soft o sound also imitates the sound of someone sighing an action that oftendisplays an perception of tenderness or care. In the same lines, Wright uses both alliteration and consonance with the repetition of the f and l sounds, falls, forehead, light, long, and delicate. The alliteration and consonance reflect the gentleness that was created by the o sound. Wright uses alliteration one last time in his net lines with the use of b in body, break, and blossom. The b used in Wrights concluding two lines, That if I stepped out of my body I would break / Into blossom. (23-24). B as a sound is explosive when it comes out of a speakers mouth. This movement of the mouth parallels the narrators explosion of excitement and realization of his discovery. Throughout the poem, the narrator expresses his enthusiasm towards this meeting with the ponies. It was important to Wright to end of the poem on this explo sive note so that it parallels the narrators excitement in the beginning. The alliteration, consonance, and assonance create an emotional arc through A Blessing. Each of the sounds created throughout the poem help the reader better comprehend the emotions the narrator is feeling during that given time. A Blessing begins in the present tense. By using the present tense, the reader can think the actions in the poem as the narrator does them. In different tenses, certain words carry different connotations.The present tense makes the reader feel as though they are watching the eyes of the ponies darken or as if they are stepping over the barbed wire with the narrator and his friend. By describing the beginning of the poem in present tense, the narrator seems more reliable to the reader. The emotions and actions appear real because they are being done as the audience reads them. The present tense creates a sense of intimacy between the narrator and the reader because they are in tune to the actions he is performing or the effects he is seeing. In line sixteen, Wright changes the tense from present to past. Up until that point, the poem is written in the present tense as Wright describes for his audience what actions the narrator takes as he approaches the horses. In line sixteen, rather than describing the moment as it is happening, Wright chose to say that the pony walked over to him, in the past tense For she walked over to me (16). The tense change is abrupt and grabs the readers attention. The readers attention is drawn deeper into the relationship between the narrator and the ponies. The narrator also seems less reliable for he is recounting the ideas rather than sermon of them as they are happening. The reliability also plays in effect towards to relationship between the narrator and the ponies. The past tense and the reliability make the last one-half of the poem light and flighty. This flighty atmosphere relates to the otherworldly connection between the n arrator and the ponies. by-line sixteen not only begins the tense change but it is also the climax of the poem. Wright and his friend had been waiting the entire poem to make contact with the Indian ponies.Wright displayed their eagerness throughout the first fifteen lines of A Blessing by building the anticipation within his narrator and the audience. Wright wants his readers to realize how critical the moment shared between the female pony and his narrator is. A Blessing is serene of two divisions, the strong-arm and the mental. The beginning ten lines describe animal(prenominal) actions performed or things physically seen by the narrator. Wrights narrator mentions that, And the eyes of those two Indian ponies / Darken with kindness (3-4). These two lines describe something seen by the narrator. By describing what Wrights narrator is seeing as he draws closer to the ponies allows the reader to understand and consider for themselves what is being felt by the ponies and how thei r physical appearance and demeanor changes. To the ponies, the narrator and his friend are strangers. For most animals it is instinctive when strangers enter their territory they become territorial and act in aggression towards the unk right awayn. For the ponies to not act in their natural instincts towards the narrator and his friend show ups compassion. This compassion hints at an unseen bond between the quartette characters. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture / Where they have been grazing all day, alone (7-8).Wright uses lines seven and eight for the narrator and his companion to take physical action, where they cross the boundary between themselves and the Indian ponies. The narrator watches a physical action taken by the ponies as their eyes darken and they became more insane as the narrator and his companion draw nearer. When a person or animal feels excited, their eyes naturally let loose, allowing more light into their eyes causing their pupils to widen and their eyes to appear darker. Directly preceding line four, Wrights narrator says, They have come gladly out of the willows / To welcome my friend and me (5-6). The eyes of the ponies show this natural attraction which is then directly followed by them coming to greet the narrator. The ponies are naturally attracted to thenarrator and his friend. In lines eleven and twelve, Wright begins his first emotional division. Line eleven shows a physical action taken by the ponies, They bow shyly as wet swans (11). However, Wright follows that sentence immediately, in the same line, with an emotional one, They love each other (11).Line eleven is the only line where Wright formatted two sentences on one line. This is a development to draw attention to the importance of the ponies actions. whop is an emotion and therefore is not something that can physically be seen. However, actions between two participants are used to display affection, which is often interpreted as love. Wright also describ es the loneliness of the horses, another emotion that cannot be physically seen but is often portrayed by the one who is feeling lonely. There is no loneliness like theirs (12). The horses bowing their heads can be seen as a sign of loneliness because by bowing their heads they are hiding their faces, which shield their emotions. If the ponies were happy, they would have no contain to protect their delicate emotions. To be in love but to be lonely are not two emotions one would typically place together. live is an emotion that is shared between two companions. If two people are present, one would assume that there should be no sense of loneliness because two people are together.However, Wright puts these together successfully which draws the reader to become invested in the emotional state of the ponies and it shows that the narrator himself is invested in the ponies. From lines fourteen to twenty, Wright begins to drift back into the physical division by describing the female pon y, her actions towards the narrator, and his actions against her. The horse nuzzles the narrators left hand and a light breeze moves him to pet her. For she had walked over to me / And nuzzled my left hand (16-17) and And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear (20). Each of these actions shows emotion, presumably love or lust, which Wright described in earlier lines. By creating actions that exude an emotion Wright ties action and emotion together as if they are one entity. The relationship that Wright shows between the narrator and the ponies is spiritual in that humans cannot physically have relationships with animals. However, the narrator continues to emphasize the emotional draw he has towards these beautiful creatures. The narrator is becoming all the more entangled in this special encounter with the ponies. In the concluding sentence which consisted of linestwenty-two, twenty-three and twenty-four, Wright comes full circle and ends with a mental or emotional divisio n.He leaves the narrator thinking to himself that if he was able to step out of his body that he would blossom. Wright uses blossom as a term of development for his narrator that his experience with the ponies has so greatly affected him that he feels he has now grown and grown so much so that he can have an out of body experience. Suddenly I realize / That if I step out of my body I would break / Into blossom (22-24). Blossoming can also be used to describe the freedom the ponies have of being extracurricular free to roam their pasture and belong in nature. By nature, ponies are wild animals, free of any responsibilities. The nature of the ponies and the nature of the narrator are direct contrasts to each other. The ponies are unrestricted and the narrator is looking for this freedom which is why he is so fascinated by them. Wrights use of emotional and physical divisions throughout his poem illustrates the narrators inner turmoil between what he wants and what he physically has. The narrator wants to be free to roam around, like the ponies, but rather he is human and therefore possesses daily responsibilities. He is straining to find what he is looking for and finds beauty in the freedom that the ponies are allowed. Wright uses the divisions to alter the attention of the reader and divide his one stanza poem.A Blessing has an understated identity, one in which the speaker is hoping for a chance to collaborate the ponies in another life. Wright mentions on several occasions breaking or crossing a barricade. He begins in his first line, Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, (1) where the narrator is bridging the gap between manmade the highway and nature just off. He then continues to We step over the barbed wire into the pasture. (7). In this line, the narrator and his companion are physically stepping over the barrier between themselves and the ponies. Nearing the end of the poem, Wright breaks the physical barrier between the narrator and the pon ies when one of them touches his left hand, And nuzzled my left hand (17). Each of these barrier crossings can be viewed as passages to an afterlife. Each of these barriers must be crossed in order for him to be effectively revitalized. Wright mentions reawakening in the last two lines of his poem. That if I stepped out of my body I would break / Into blossom (23-24). The narrator mentioned earlier in the poem that the ponies were of Indian descent. It is common belief in many Indianor Native American tribes that rebirth or reawakening is a part of their religious philosophies. This reawakening contributes to the narrators relationship with the ponies. The relationship shared between the narrator and the ponies is spiritual and in the last two lines the narrator expresses his need of wanting to be as close with them as possible. Therefore, he desires to step across these borders and join the ponies so that they can be together. Wrights narrator is searching for himself in the ponies and within the nature around them. He hopes that these events will transcend into a rejuvenating experience.He also gives only one of the ponies an identity. He describes one of them as female and personifies her with human characteristics. In line fifteen he describes her as the slender one and in line eighteen he calls to her coloring black and white. In lines nineteen and twenty-one he talks about the way her hair falls and how delicate her skin is. By giving the pony human characteristics, the reader can see that this pony was possibly someone the narrator had known in another life. The ponies cannot greet the narrator as the narrator would greet a fellow human. To bridge the gap between animal and human, the narrator personifies the ponies. James Wright composed a poem of enlightenment and curiosity. Wright draws his readers in by creating vivid images. He developed a new way to entertain the idea of love. The relationship between the narrator and the ponies is one of endearme nt which is commonly seen between two humans rather than an animal and a human. The spiritual relationship held between the narrator and the ponies, especially the female pony, is the basis of everything the narrator does and describes before and after the encounter.Wright has created new interpretive descriptions of crossing into another lifetime. He developed a life where animals and humans can walk as one and where humans can walk as freely as animals. He also incorporated the common human need for greening and created A Blessing as a new way to fulfill that human need. James Wright developed a poem that touched on several topics, bringing them all together to create a coherent and fulfilling new life.