SOURCE: “Wright's ‘A Blessing,’” in The Explicator, Vol. 54, No. 1, Fall, 1995, pp. 44-45.

In the following essay, Pink discusses “A Blessing,” focusing on the significance of boundaries in the poem, and on the instances of transgressing them.

“A Blessing” is perhaps James Wright's best known poem. It certainly embodies his greatest strength: the poet evoking nature as an inroad to the metaphysical or numinous. Wright is, in general and in this poem in particular, a poet of epiphany in the grand Yeatsian tradition. “A Blessing” culminates with the poet's wish to step out of his body and “break into blossom.” There can be no doubt, given the poet's spoken wish for natural communication with an Indian pony, “I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,” that he is seeking transcendence through nature into a new connection with nature.

Although the speaker of the poem is wistfully...