American Romanticism
Student Poetry Presentation 2008

Thursday 11 September: James Wright, "A Blessing," N 2613

poetry reader / discussion leader: Donny Wankan

Modernizing the Transcendental:

Notes on James Wright's “A Blessing”

Donny Wankan

 

Relevant Course Objectives

·       Ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.


 

·       Crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream.


 

·       A Romantic hero or heroine may appear empty or innocent of anything but readiness to change or yearning to re-invent the self or world.

 

·       The lyric poem (a momentary but comprehensive cognition or transcendent feeling—more prominent in European than American Romanticism?)

 

American ideas of individualism, sentimental nature, rebellion, and equality in parallel.

 

·       Emerson’s Transcendentalism

 

American Romanticism exposes competing or complementary dimensions of the American identity: is America a culture of sensory and material gratification or moral, spiritual, idealistic mission?  

 

 

A Brief Biography1

            James Wright (1927-1980) was an academically trained poet, but he set out to take poetry in new directions, with freer formats, and experimental styles. 

            His work contained a hint of the confessional style that had been popular at the beginning of his career (1950's-60's), but within the framework of personally focused poetry, he showed an interest in the disenfranchised, the culturally alienated (the poor, minorities, homosexuals, etc.). 

(Norton, pages 2613-14)

 

A Blessing

 

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.

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.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

 

 

 

Comments

          The poem contains clear connections to American Romanticism, Emersonian transcendentalism, (a transcendence of mundane existence through embracing the natural world.)

            But, the experience is quasi-natural, horses inside a fence, off the highway, offering a good indicator of the poem's modern context (no “transparent eye-ball,”2or de-humanized nature here).

 

            The poem combines connection with liminality3. 

                        Connection: “the eyes . . . darken with kindness,” “come gladly out of the willows/ to welcome my friend and me.” “their hapiness/ that we have come,” “they love each other,” and “at home once more.”

                        The horses have become a force of natural knowledge, more than just two domesticated animals and all that implies. So then, maybe there is an Emersonian transparent eye-ball here.  

                        Liminality: “Just off the highway,” “twilight,” “out of the willows,” “we step over the barbed wire into the pasture,” “at home once more,” “if I stepped out of my body,” “break/ into blossom.”

 

            The final statement is troubled.  It implies death, “step[ing] out of my body” and violence, “I would break,” before he ends on the romantic image of a blooming flower.

            He never reaches the epiphany, but the experience is on the threshold of something spiritually or existentially instructive.  His realization is that there is an epiphany waiting for him just past the threshold he now occupies, but something must be lost, or broken for him to cross over into the next stage.        

 

Questions

1. To borrow from (and then reword) Dr. White's question in the last objective, is this poem a description of sensory and material gratification or of a spiritual or transcendental experience?

2. In what ways does this poem express the sublime?

3. How does he contain what could have become overly sentimental in the poem?

4. Does some of that (sentimentality) still escape? 

                       

 

 

 

 *Source Notes:

 

1. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/j_wright/j_wright.htm

2. http://www.rwe.org/works/Nature__complete.htm

                You can also find this on page 494 of the Norton Anthology.

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

                Note: this last article contains some quality standards warnings on Wikipedia, but it was the only online definition I could find.  I think the main problem is with the lack of citations, which I can understand, since “liminality” has not been extensively defined.