All the Pretty Good Horses

After we read James Wright's serene and transcendent poem "A Blessing," I like to have my Creative Writing students draw the scene-- at a minimum, they are required to sketch two graceful, docile "Indian ponies" that can "hardly contain their happiness" and if they're really cooking with gas, then they can also attempt to draw the narrator, who is so entranced by these kind and mysterious animals in the twilight that he says, epiphanically: "Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom" and, year after year, the results of asking kids to draw beautiful horses are extraordinary: .  

and I do NOT allow the students to use their computers or phones to look at horses before they draw, and the point of this exercise (besides my amusement) is that for most of us, it is much easier to use our words to convey tone than it is for us to visually represent tone, especially if the tone is enchanting . . .

and there is a bonus message to this lesson; noted writer Garrison Keillor once had James Wright as a teacher and Keillor describes Wright as lecturing through the haze of a hangover while smoking cigarettes and ashing in a tuna fish can-- so think on this irony: this unkempt figure wrote some of the most beautiful and evocative lines of poetry in the English language-- this should be inspirational to all of us, you don't have to be a beautiful person to write a beautiful poem . . . 

but you do need some real skill to DRAW a beautiful horse.