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A poem about the beauty and kindness of two Indian ponies in a pasture. The poet feels a deep connection with the horses and a sense of bliss in their presence.
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- Summary of A Blessing
- Themes in A Blessing
- Structure and Form
- Literary Devices
- Analysis of A Blessing
- Similar Poems
The speaker takes the reader through details of a meeting between two friends and two ponies along the side of the road. There, the friends stepped into the horses’ pasture and were greeted warmly. The speaker has a deeply moving experience where he’s urged on by the breeze to touch the pony’s ear and recall the sensation of touching a woman’s wris...
Throughout ‘A Blessing’ the poet makes use of themes of isolation/solitude, love, and interconnectivity. The latter is in reference to a broad connection between humankind and nature. This connection is at the heart of this poem but it takes the entire poem to get to the point where it’s at the forefront of a reader’s mind. In the last moments of t...
‘A Blessing’ by James Wright is a twenty-four-line poem that is written in free verse. This means that Wright chose not to use a rhyme scheme or metrical pattern when structuring ‘A Blessing’. Despite this, there are examples of half-rhymescattered throughout the poem. For example, “softly forth” in line two and the long “e” sound in “shyly,” “each...
Wright makes use of several literary devices in ‘A Blessing’. These include but are not limited to alliteration, juxtaposition, imagery, and enjambment. The latter, enjambment, is seen in the transition between lines. It is a very common literary device that is employed in order to alter the natural rhythmone would normally move through the sentenc...
Lines 1-10
In the first lines of this poem, the speaker begins by setting the scene and describing the landscape. The speaker, along with afriend, is “Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota”. This piece of information is at once very clear and pretty obscure. The reader knows exactly where they’re going but not where they are at that moment. He uses an example of personification in the second line when he depicts “Twilight” as bounding “softly forth on the grass,” it moves as the horses in the nex...
Lines 7-10
In contrastwith the words “kind,” “gladly,” and “welcome” is “barbed wire”. The two have to step over it in order to get into the pasture where the horses are being kept. The two visitors are stepping into an area that they’re technically not supposed to be in but the horse’s “invitation” makes them feel as though it’s okay to proceed. There, in the field, the horses have been “grazing all day, alone”. This suggests that the horses have been lonely, hoping that visitors would turn up whom the...
Lines 11-17
There is an interesting simile in the eleventh line of ‘A Blessing’. The speaker describes the horses as bowing “shyly as wet swans”. It appears that the two horses turn their attention back to one another, bowing and showing their love for one another. There are a few contrasts here as the horses are decided as being in love but also being as lonely as one is capable of being. The romantic symbolof the swan is another interesting addition. They are alone together and despite how much they ca...
Poets such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth are remembered for writing poems similar to ‘A Blessing’. Both of these poets knew the power of tapping into and writing about the connection between all living things on earth. Some good examples of this at work can be seen in ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ and ‘My Heart L...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
A Blessing. Load audio player. James Wright. 1927 –. 1980. Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies. Darken with kindness.
Like many of the nature poems of the English Romantic poets, James Wright’s “A Blessing” begins with the close observation of the natural world and moves toward a startling moment of...
Explore the depths of James Wright's "A Blessing," a profound poem that delves into themes of nature and human connection, uncovering its rich literary elements and emotional resonance.
Oct 28, 2023 · James Wright won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for poetry that depicted post-industrial midwest America, marginal types and the effect of humans on nature. 'A Blessing', published in 1963 in Wright's book The Branch Will Not Break, has become one of his most popular poems and can be found in many anthologies.
By James Wright. Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. 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. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
