Human Condition

Conventional wisdom has it that human beings are different from animals in that they have language and are aware of their mortality. This awareness, which occurs more frequently in some people than in others, causes people to act in ways they otherwise might not. For example, in a wellknown poem, "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota," by Bly's friend James Wright, the speaker is enraptured by the assorted wonders of nature he sees, such as butterflies, "a field of sunlight between two pines," and a chicken hawk, and yet he concludes: "I have wasted my life." Bly's speaker, on the other hand, though also captivated by the (snowy) natural world—albeit from the driver's seat of a car rather than a hammock—comes to a different conclusion: that he will "waste more time" by "driving around." These two starkly different responses...