Explication of the Poem "A Blessing" by James Wright Essay

The poet, James Wright, recounts his own experiences in the poem 'A Blessing'. He was driving his car down the highway with a close friend in Minnesota where they drove past a field on which two ponies were standing. This was a moment of beauty that impressed the poet so much that his world came to a standstill. He had to return to the same field where he alighted the car and walked straight to the horses that were contained in a fence. The entire poem revolves around this moment when he met the impressive ponies that brought his feelings to life (Blunk). The poet utilizes an unusual context of words, a distinct choice of vocabulary, and symbolic imagery throughout the literary poem as diction. All the images that the poet has used depict elegant beauty with the poem using various vocabularies to enable the reading audience to visualize the momentous image of the encounter with the horses.

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The poet says that 'Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly out on the grass' to mean that the early dusk leaps silently on the fields. 'They have come gladly out of the willows' means that the ponies eagerly come to the trees. The ponies want to interact with the two friends so 'they step over the barbed wire'. This wire was a barrier erected to keep the ponies from leaving and also deny people an entrance inside the enclosure. The ponies have been on their own the entire day nibbling on the grass like horse do. The individual notes that the eyes of the two Indian horses, meaning they are either spotted or pinto ponies, grow darker with gentleness as the two friends keep approaching.

The ponies ripple tensely as they can hardly contain their elation. This is diction in the form of an image where the horses ripple their muscles, which they normally do after a long ride. Both the two male friends and the ponies can barely contain their happiness at this sight. Even when two swans touch their foreheads, their heads and necks result in a heart shape. How beautiful! But the reality is that they are cut off from humanity.

'They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

One of the ponies, which is the thinner of the two horses, is especially drawn to the speaker of the poem. The poet goes on to describe the diction of this beautiful image to the reader:

'The pony nuzzles his left hand...she is black and white...her mane falls wildly on her forehead'.

The poet's choice of words to depict this image is so vivid that the reader can exactly visualize the pony in their minds. Since the narrator is standing close to the pony, the horse desires for him to caress her ear as a gesture of compliment to the man because she already trusts him within a short duration. Then the ponies revert to grazing on the grass again but close to the two friends.

The experience of this wonderful moment presented by nature makes the poet feel like he would come out of his body and blissfully blossom into an exquisite flower. The narrator's moment with the horses is crowned with a metaphor while he looks at the ponies graze on the tufts of spring grass in the glowing evening darkness. The tender moment of happiness describes the general tone of the poem.

Work Cited

Blunk, Jonathan. James Wright: A Life in Poetry. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. Internet resource.