W: James Wright

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

I love this poem. If pushed, I think I’d probably pick it as my favourite poem ever. I remember where I was when I first read it: age 18, sitting on the green sofa in my parents’ living room during the summer between college and university. It was featured in The Guardian (or maybe The Observer) which I’d taken to buying because I thought it was the kind of thing people who went to university would read. I’d have been excited about going to university but also nervous about being on a cusp and sad about having to leave the safety of home and childhood. I’d already decided I liked English Literature and I’d enjoyed poems before, so it’s not quite that this poem made me fall in love with poetry. It’s more that it made me realise what poetry could do, perhaps. Arriving at the gut-punch of its last line, I do remember being astonished – a kind of ‘where did that come from?” “Is he allowed to just do that?” I think I just put the newspaper down and sat staring, and it felt like a core memory was being activated. I’ve always loved it and I do like a Wright’s other work too – if you enjoy this one, then “A Blessing” by him is also a beautiful poem, and “A Note Left In Jimmy Leonard’s Shack” is great.

You can read the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47734/lying-in-a-hammock-at-william-duffys-farm-in-pine-island-minnesota

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

It was the title that drew my eyes to the bottom corner of that newspaper page when I first read it. I think as a writer it’s the thing that’s drawn me towards writing poems with long titles. I like the possibility of giving information outside of the main body of the poem, but mostly I just like the odd vibe of a long title. I’ve talked in a few other of these essays – Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O’Hara, Martin Kratz – about wryness, a quality I really love in poetry, where I feel as though the writer has a slight twinkle in their eye. I know this title is long, Wright is saying, unnecessarily so, and I’m winking at you with a little smile as I break the unspoken rule that the title of a poem should be short, evocative, metaphorical, not unwieldy and over-detailed like this.

That said, I also love how the title puts you there, at that farm. I’ve never been to Pine Island, Minnesota – I assume it exists – but somehow from this title I know exactly how it feels to lie in a hammock at William Duffy’s farm there.

So for me, there’s something about this title that does a lot of work in creating both setting and tone for this poem, which is only very short, really.

Also, I love hammocks. I don’t know if I love hammocks because of this poem, or I love this poem because I love hammocks.

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   

Because the title has put us in that very static place in the hammock, of course the first thing our speaker sees from his prone position is over his head. So what are we looking at, as we look at this butterfly with him?

I guess the first thing we might notice is the abundance of colour – the bronze butterfly, the black trunk, the green shadow. The use of colour is foregrounding the small detail of the butterfly against the larger backdrop of the tree, with the bronze connoting value, perhaps. Something to notice, even in the lazy passivity of a speaker who has not yet bothered to lift or move his head for something to look at. There’s definitely pastoral idyll here – an admiration and a valuing of nature, the presentation of nature as this beautiful and safe place.

It’s also worth looking at what else is being noticed in the butterfly – it’s “asleep” on the black trunk. At first it feels apt, and we might skip over it – there’s something in ‘asleep’ which conveys the slow languorous movement of the butterfly’s wing. But actually – how can this speaker know, from his position in the hammock, whether the butterfly is asleep? How would anyone know the difference? Do butterflies even sleep? (Google says yes, but at night, and in a safe place, not out in the open on a tree trunk.) So it becomes pretty clear that there’s some projection going on here on the part of the speaker, poetic license, perhaps. When the speaker sees the butterfly, he also sees himself, maybe, and maybe also we have a spreading out of the laziness suggested by the hammock of the title so that it includes other elements of the wider world as well as the speaker. Kinship between the speaker and this lazy but beautiful and valuable butterfly.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,   
The cowbells follow one another   
Into the distances of the afternoon.   

I think the next three lines are interesting because it doesn’t feel like they progress or change anything, really. Not that a poem has to do that, and I think that’s the point - it’s another observation, but still very much from the static place of the hammock. This time it’s not something the speaker can directly see, but something the speaker knows is there because he can hear it. But again, I think there are small details in the observation that create some mystery or suggest bigger things.

I love that the house is empty. Why is the house empty? The title has established for us that this is not the speaker’s place - this is William Duffy’s farm. So where’s William Duffy if the house is empty? We never find out but there’s a whole story in that, surely? The vibe of this poem is already too relaxed for it to be one about the speaker trespassing, his relationship with William Duffy must be a close one if he’s allowed to be in William Duffy’s hammock on his land. But that’s never explored! Also there’s something really interesting in the idea of the speaker being so comfortable and indolent in a place that isn’t his own.

I also love that it’s the “cowbells” following each other. Like with the sleeping butterfly, the slight off-ness of the phrase is sneaky, and easy to skip over, but obviously it’s not the cowbells following each other down the ravine, it’s the cows. So why ‘cowbells’? Maybe there’s something here with this and the empty house that continues to do the work of centring the speaker and the hammock above all else. There are other things around, but the details of them don’t matter, especially if the speaker can’t see them. The cowbells exist, because he can hear them, but the cows don’t because he can’t see them. The house is there because it’s a permanent fixture, but Duffy isn’t because, in this moment, he doesn’t matter, because he’s out of sight and out of mind. There’s something solipsistic being created, where the only thing that matters in this speaker’s laziness is the very small, selected world he’s creating himself. Maybe that’s what laziness *is*, in fact, or at least that’s why laziness is so attractive – it’s the ultimate solipsism in which your only loyalty is to yourself in the moment?

I also wanted to mention “into the distances of the afternoon”. Just as a lovely phrase, lovely sounding, that sibilance in ‘distances’ and the lovely to say. It’s also a moment in the poem that at least hints at the passage of time, away from that stasis in the hammock. ‘Distances’ and ‘afternoon’ kind of mix the phrases up, turning time into physical distance, and it’s interesting that it’s the cows, not the speaker, that time is acting upon. If the poem is about that solipsism, then at this point we’re watching the cows file slowly out of existence itself, in that they exit the orbit of the speaker.

To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,   
The droppings of last year’s horses   
Blaze up into golden stones.

The poem is short, and it’s coming to an end, but again we feel the stasis, and we must feel the repetition structurally. We’ve had ‘over my head’, then ‘down the ravine’ and now ‘to my right’. The speaker continues to be the absolute deictic centre of the poem.

I like the focus on the droppings of the horses. There’s something undermining here; I feel like the wryness, the playfulness, of the title is back again. This poem was in danger of becoming a dull landscape piece, perhaps? And now this part is following logically on from that – the field of sunlight, the pines. But what’s there, in this capital-R Romantic little set up? Horseshit. Not only that, but horseshit that has gone through some kind of alchemical transmutation into gold. What’s this doing? Is it undermining the whole idea of pastoral idyll, a kind of bathetic joke?

If we’re going to continue considering this poem as a celebration of solipsistic laziness, then maybe we should be taking that transmutation into gold more seriously? Maybe there’s an implied claim here that is a kind of opposite to the disappearance of the cows and the absence of William Duffy – the droppings of last year’s horses are within the speaker’s orbit, and so even these are automatically made real and valuable? Perhaps there’s something even cleverer in the fact that they’re the droppings of ‘last year’s’ horses – the horses are long gone, and so they are no longer relevant, but their droppings which have been, rather lazily, not cleared up, are still here and real.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

“I lean back”. What, further? You were already leaning back! You’re in a hammock! What an affirmation of that lazy vibe! But is there a shift after that? In that lean, the speaker is active for the first time in the poem, and then immediately after this movement it’s as though he’s suddenly subject to time again. The evening is ‘coming on’, and although there’s no hint here that this will make the speaker move from his place, it’s our first dark moment in this idyll.

If we continue the logic that everything external to the speaker is significant because it’s part of his orbit, that chicken hawk is perhaps also troubling. It ‘floats’, which puts it in the same relaxed tonal landscape as the speaker and the butterfly, but it’s also ‘looking for home’. There’s something lonely and sad in the floating of the bird. And just like the butterfly, the speaker doesn’t *know* what the bird overhead is looking for at all – the ‘home’ part has been supplied and projected from the speaker himself. So, suddenly we have these two moments and suddenly the speaker’s laziness feels like a problem, maybe?

And then that last line. ‘I have wasted my life’. Oof. A flash that comes out of almost nowhere. Or maybe not out of nowhere, if we’re Romantics: maybe this is an encounter with the sublime, a moment of communion with nature resulting in the discovery of a larger truth. Okay. Why I love this:

I think for me, the first meaning of that line appearing there, almost out of nowhere, in a poem where 12 out of the 13 lines have focused almost exclusively on this kind of lazy observation of the external world, is that it’s an almost dizzying invitation into a moment of panic and devastating self-reflection. Seeing that chicken hawk ‘looking for home’ has reminded the speaker of his own unsettled status. ‘Wait a second. The world doesn’t revolve around me at all! Oh god! What am I doing? I have wasted my life! I’m not even on my own farm! I am doomed!’. A kind of moment of gut-churning realisation about the shortness of life, and the ease with which we can waste it doing nothing in hammocks instead of achieving things, or building homes.

On the other hand, what if it’s the exact opposite? What if the revelation ‘I have wasted my life’ hits because he hasn’t been spending *enough* time in the hammock? This isn’t the speaker’s farm, so maybe the speaker is just a tourist here, taking a rest from a life of activity and stress. So the realisation comes when he gets out into nature and finds real meaning, real connection. ‘Wait a second. I’ve wasted my life working hard and achieving things! I should have my own farm like William Duffy, where I can lie in this hammock every day!” So it’s still a moment of life-regret, but maybe slightly less bleak, as the evening is only ‘coming on’ and it’s not necessarily too late for this speaker to enjoy more lazy days in nature.

And yet. What does it mean to ‘waste’ your life? A third run at this line might give us something different again, perhaps. Does the epiphany *have* to be regretful or panic-inducing? Maybe the final line actually *affirms* the speaker’s commitment to indulging his indolence in the hammock. Maybe this speaker *does* spend lots of time in this hammock, and so the realisation becomes something like a boast, maybe? “I have wasted my life and I am delighted about it. If wasting one’s life by society’s standards means I can do this in someone else’s hammock, turning horseshit into gold in my mind, then I have wasted my life”. A triumphant anti-capitalist rallying call to the lazy! I think I like this version the best, but mostly I love that this single line in this short poem contains these multitudes.

You can read the poem again here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47734/lying-in-a-hammock-at-william-duffys-farm-in-pine-island-minnesota