Essay - James Wright's 'A Blessing' is a Poem that Celebrates the...

James Wright's "A Blessing" is a poem th*****t celebrates the wonders of nature, particularly the animal world, and expresses the poet's strong desire to become one with that world - to the extent *****, at least momentarily, leaving the human world behind.

The poem begins with a fairly straightforward description of a c*****r ride: "Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, / Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass." Right away, it becomes apparent that the poet has left the world of human civilization behind, as his immediate observations are taken up ***** nature; he is clearly more interested in ***** twilight on the gr*****s than he ***** in the *****, and the rest of the ***** will be taken up with evocations of nature, ***** "here ***** now," rather than the place from which the poem just came. This effectively gives the poem a feeling of placelessness, of being situated somewhere outside of time, where the only thing that truly matters is what happens in each l*****e of the short poem.

Upon arriving at this isolated stretch, a place that is never explicitly named, as the arrival *****ly ***** r*****e to *****, the poet and his friend are met by two Indian ponies:

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my ***** and me.

We step over the barbed wire in***** the pasture

***** *****y have been grazing all day, alone.

***** *****ping "over the barbed *****" and into the pasture, ***** poet and his friend are effectively ***** the human world behind - symbolized by the barbed wire, an industrially produced product - *****d into the wilds ***** nature ***** the pasture where ***** two Indian ***** graze.

***** poet goes on to describe the ponies' happiness upon making contact ***** their human visitors: "They bow shyly as wet swans. ***** love each other. / There is no loneliness like theirs."

Th***** last line is ***** curious. For, if the ponies have one another for company, and clearly love one another, as the poet asserts, *****n why are they simultaneously lonely?

It seems that th***** question finds its answer in the following line: "At ho***** once more..." As ***** ponies certainly have not gone anywhere, the ***** reason ***** ***** are now "at *****me," whereas be*****e they were not, is because their two ***** *****s have come to visit them. The implic*****ion, then, is that the ponies, despite having one *****, will always be ***** without human companionship. This is why "there is no ***** like theirs," to quote Wright - theirs, in other words, is a peculiar kind of loneliness that exceeds the ***** definition of *****.

***** second half ***** the ***** is dedicated to ***** poet's desire to make physical contact with one of the *****:

would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

***** nuzzled my left h*****.

In many ways, the second ***** ***** the poem solves the *****stery of the