Explication of James Wright's "A Blessing"

Xavier Veliz
Professor
ENC 1102
February 16, 2014

Explain in 500 to 750 words the meaning & effect of James Wright’s A Blessing, including how he provokes in his readers via diction, tone, imagery, and figurative-language.
Quote for support (line(s) #), (#(-#)).
Use MLA formatting (1 L “” (#), 2 L / (#s), 3+ L: block indent. (#-#)


A Blessing Into Now

James Wright’s poem “A Blessing” is a poem of transcendence, of crossing from a position fettered by time, place, and circumstance, into the eternal Now of presence and awareness, where the all-restraining and consuming Kronos-time is consumed in Kairos, in the actualized and inhabited opportunity to appreciate, and participate-in, life.  Wright presents through sensual, yet conversational language and images a scene where a man finds himself unexpectedly aware, present and participant in a moment greater than his circumstance requires, where as-if isolated in a dream-like state, he realizes his connectedness with nature, and being. Yet he is not so isolated, as we are not so isolated in our sharing in this account... It transcends typical boundaries, in quite an uncommon and spectacular fashion.

With the words: “Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, / Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.” (lines 1-2), immediately there is present a place and time in-between and beyond places, and in-between and beyond times. Rochester is an area without mountains and hills. The setting is off a road, and in a pasture near the woods, not wholly civil nor wholly wild. Even the time of day is hazy. "Twilight bounds softly forth" affords us likely dusk or gloaming, near the golden hour between day and night. This is a time and place in between, where details haze as colors and shadows with gradients of light. This, with:
          And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
          Darken with kindness.
          They have come gladly out of the willows
          To welcome my friend and me. (3-6)
sets us wholly within Kairos-time. This is a setting to live in, to inhabit, for becoming, and becoming AWARE.

What becomes here, in this unique place the speaker so  effusively depicts? Everything, right now. Life awakens. The speaker speaks to us, so we can assume to be the friend that joins him, stepping with him "over the barbed wire into the pasture / Where they have been grazing all day, alone" (7-8). The way these lines are phrased, the speaker presents here one of several possible double-entendres. While the ponies may seem alone, it can only be the speaker and us, his (reader) friend, which can possibly be alone in this intimate experience, together crossing "over the barbed wire into the pasture", "Just off the highway to Rochester" (7, 1). This encounter breaks the fourth wall of poetry, between speaker and audience, and celebrates this special awareness with us in an explicit, personal, and intimate way. "They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come" (8-10) seems to continue this double-entendre, having departed describing only the ponies in line seven A with the word "alone", seeming even to affirm this change in the reader and his friend, as even the Indian ponies may represent: "They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness" (8, 9).

This possible interpretation of the first-half of "A Blessing" would seem far-fetched and implausible, if not for firstly:
how consistently the imagery shifts from the ponies, to their observers, and then to the inclusive experience of the speaker;
and secondly, to measures included within the very structure of "A Blessing" that reveal this reading as intentional. Such measures include the literary symmetry of the setting, where the Indian ponies (which shadow we observers breaking away from our own routines) are "COME gladly out of the willows" (5), as well the purposeful separation of line ten, which can be read alone as referring to lines eight and nine: "That we have come." (10). This is not unintended or accidental. This is carefully-crafted, self-aware, and self-referential. The reader is to participate together-with the speaker: "That we have come. (10)" is to read as "that, we now become".

"They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs." (11, 12) describes the tenderness shared in this moment, both in the ponies that would be observed, as toward and with their observers come from the highway, and into the ongoing metaphor of the aloneness between the speaker and his reader, united in the experience of this poem, while divided by circumstance, both tenderly and appreciatively aware of the other, even if alone. here is no lonliness like that between author/speaker and reader, even more so than two Indian ponies in a secluded pasture.






Work Cited
Wright, James. “A Blessing.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.