James Wright’s A Blessing Essay

A t terminationerness by James WrightJust dispatch the avenue to Rochester, Minnesota,Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.And the vista of those 2 Indian poniesdarken with charity.They lose make gladly come out of the closet of the willowsTo welcome my superstar and me.We step everyplace the barbed wire into the eatageWhere they have been grazing all day, al nonp beil.They ripple tensely, they endure hardly tally their happiness That we have come.They bowknot shyly as wet swans. They recognise each other.There is no l star demarcationss want theirs.At place once more than,They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer sensation in my arms,For she has walked over to meAnd nuzzled my left over(p) hand.She is black and white,Her head of hair falls wild on her forehead,And the light breeze moves me to c bess her big spindleThat is diffuse as the skin over a lady assistants wrist.Suddenly I realizeThat if I stepped out of my tree trunk I would to-doInto blossom.James Wright composes A Blessing, by introducing a fibber who recalls a memory close an experience he had with a promoter on a trip around Rochester, Minnesota. On this trip, the fibber and his friend encounter cardinal Indian ponies, one of which sees to maintain a pronounced impact on the vote counter. Rather than describe what the scenery may look like or how his friend is aspect about the trip, the bank clerk right off speaks of the ponies and continues to speak of them for the remainder of the verse form. However, ABlessing leaves many questions to be asked. wherefore does James Wright decide to still sex one of the two ponies his vote counter encounters? Why does he fluctuate in the midst of the physical and the mental, which divides the themes in his verse form? What does Wright try to accomplish by packing A Blessing with alliteration, assonance, and harmoniousness? Is there any identity to be found wi thin his cautiously placed lines and what does the endorser take away from the varying tenses passim Wrights verse form? Wright fills several lines of A Blessing with assonance to clear varieties of construction for his verse form. Wright believes that the moment between his teller 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 preferably than one conscious thought or action. By keeping the poem as one stanza the storytellers interaction with the ponies is untouched. It is kept whole and beautiful. The expression of the poem is a direct comparison to the religious relationship between the fabricator and the ponies. Wright begins with this delicate theme with the soft o just 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 ref that the kindness the ponies display to the fibber and his friend is the beginning of the impact they make on the fibber. Wright provides textual evidence of this mercy by telling the endorsers, 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 repeat of the w sounds like the snorting a horse makes, which so-and-so be displayed as a greeting towards the vote counter 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 worldly concern of the ponys hooves while they move towards the fabricator. The movement of the ponies is a firm of openness and welcome. Nearing the end of the poem, Wright comes suffer to the o sound again in forehead, long, and over.This sound s oftentim ess the moment between the female person pony and the teller. This distinction helps the reader comprehend the intimacy the bank clerk feels with the female pony. The soft o sound also imitates the sound of someone sighing an action that oftendisplays an feeling of meat or c be. 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 last-place lines with the use of b in frame, 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 salvo of excitement and realization of his discovery. Throughout the poem, the narrator expresses his enthusiasm towards this me eting with the ponies. It was outstanding to Wright to end of the poem on this explosive note so that it parallels the narrators excitement in the beginning. The alliteration, consonance, and assonance create an aroused glint through A Blessing. all(prenominal) 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 place tense. By using the present tense, the reader cigaret imagine the actions in the poem as the narrator does them. In assorted tenses, certain words carry different connotations.The present tense makes the reader feel as though they are watching the eyes of the ponies change 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 do or the forcefulnesss he is seeing. In line sixteen, Wright changes the tense from present to away. 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, sooner 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 attending. The readers attention is sweepn deeper into the relationship between the narrator and the ponies. The narrator also seems less reliable for he is recounting the ideas preferably thanspeaking 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 h alf of the poem light and flighty. This flighty atmosphere relates to the super inherent connection between the narrator and the ponies. origination sixteen not only begins the tense change but it is also the climax of the poem. Wright and his friend had been delay 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 outlook 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 composed of two divisions, the physical and the mental. The beginning ten lines describe physical 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 allow s the reader to understand and contrive for themselves what is being felt by the ponies and how their physical appearance and demeanor changes. To the ponies, the narrator and his friend are strangers. For most living organisms it is instinctive when strangers enter their territory they bring territorial and act in aggression towards the unk presentlyn. For the ponies to not act in their natural instincts towards the narrator and his friend shows compassion. This compassion hints at an unseen gravel between the four characters. We step over the barbed wire into the tramp / Where they have been grazing all day, alone (7-8).Wright uses lines seven and eight for the narrator and his confrere 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 excited as the narrator and his companion draw nearer. When a person or animal feels excited, t heir eyes of course widen, 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. Love is an emotion and therefore is not something that can physically be seen. However, actions between two pa rticipants are used to display affection, which is often interpreted as love. Wright also describes 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 need to protect their delicate emotions. To be in love but to be lonely are not two emotions one would typically place together. Love 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 pony, 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 former 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 humanitys 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 confused in this special encounter with the ponies. In the concluding sentence which consisted of linestwenty-two, 2 3 and twenty-four, Wright comes full circle and ends with a mental or emotional division.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). florescence can also be used to describe the freedom the ponies have of being outside free to roam their pasture and belong in spirit. 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 illustrat es 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 rein what he is looking for and finds beauty in the freedom that the ponies are allowed. Wright uses the divisions to motley the attention of the reader and divide his one stanza poem.A Blessing has an unpretentious identity, one in which the speaker is hoping for a chance to colligation the ponies in another life. Wright mentions on several occasions breaking or interbreeding a barrier. He begins in his first line, Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, (1) where the narrator is bridging the kerfuffle 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 ponies when one of them touches his left hand, And nuzzled my left hand (17). Each of these barrier crossways 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 inwrought 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 coloration black and white. In lines nineteen and twenty-one he talks about the way her hair falls and how delicate her skin is. By plentiful the pony human characteristics, the reader can see that this pony was perhaps 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 newborn way to entertain the idea of love. The relationship between the narrator and the ponies is one of endearment 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 rejuvenation 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.