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The World’s Greatest Pony Poem: James Wright’s “A Blessing” Lyrics by Perfectrhyme

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James Wright’s “A Blessing" is a poem I’ve always both admired and resisted. Its subject—two human friends moved by the sight of two lovestruck ponies—is just this side of ridiculous, while the ecstatic transcendence evoked by the ending draws on well-worn, mystical notions of the body as prison of the soul. Even the title smells like Hallmark. At the same time, the poem's sentimental openness is the mark of its daring: few poets as skilled as Wright would go anywhere near a pony poem. Assuming the risk pays off, what’s the poem's secret?
More even than most good poetry, “A Blessing” relies on the absolute precision of its imagery. Several of the individual images in the poem are deservedly famous in their own right: the twilight “bound[ing] softly forth on the grass,” the ponies “bow[ing] shyly as wet swans,” and especially the pony’s “long ear / That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.” Then there’s that closing fantasy:
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.What saves this image from sentimentality, I think, is a plainness of tone reminiscent of classical Japanese poetry, encapsulated in that matter-of-fact verb “stepped.” The speaker wouldn’t “rise” out of his body like a ghost, or “break” free of it; transcendence would be as simple as putting one foot in front of the other.
For me the power of these images, combined with the one note of deep ambivalence ("There is no loneliness like theirs"), effectively overwhelms the lesser moments of the poem. I could do without the slightly stilted “For” (as opposed to “Because,” or no conjunction at all) in the lines “For she has walked over to me / And nuzzled my left hand.” In fact, I could do without those two lines entirely. But I’m tempted to say, who cares? When the painter has such command of his canvas as a whole, the little brushstrokes don’t seem worth arguing over.
Throughout the poem, the line breaks correspond to the natural pauses of the speaking voice. The effect is one of unselfconscious spontaneity, of easygoing rhythm despite the unevenness of the lines. The slow layering of declarative statements lulls us almost into a trance in preparation for the final epiphany. I’m particularly intrigued by the metrical effect we get in line 2, which my ear always wants to hear as a series of trochees or as “headless” iambic pentameter, i.e., “Twilight bounds forth softly on the grass.” Instead Wright throws a wrench in the rhythm: “bounds softly forth.” I think he is consciously rejecting fastidious technique here, probably because instinct has told him that his picturesque subject matter and earnest tone will become insufferable if combined with tidy formality. (If this were a sonnet, we’d throw up.) Instead he gives us a consistent, quiet naturalness, which suddenly steps out into something more powerful than we could have anticipated.
Credits
Perfectrhyme

Perfectrhyme

About “The World’s Greatest Pony Poem: James Wright’s “A Blessing”” by Perfectrhyme

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