“Beginning” by James Wright delves subjectively into images of darkness, nature, and solitude. After an imagined night that transpires seemingly without solace the voice of the poem finds itself discovering support in the darkness that clouds the work.
Lighter Than Darkness
In the first line “the moon drops one or two feathers into the field”. Instantly, the reader is carried into the darkness of night imagining the moon as capable of manipulating feathers. The image is lofty and surreal. The setting is a desolate field and the loneliness of the voice’s tone is set into motion.
Grounding Reality
Darkness continues to pervade, but now it takes the form of “dark wheat [that] listens” (2). Lines 3 and 4 are instructive, “Be still. / Now”. Who are the lines instructing: the reader, the voice itself, a second character, or possibly all three simultaneously? The ambiguity of the command seems to pull the poem into distinctive directions. One direction probes into the consciousness of the reader while another direction rummages through real life stirring a transformative shift in the reader and grounding the poetry into something that can be related to the here and now.
Celestial Wings
The voice of the poem next steers the reader to another image of the field, but now the reader is shown a different perspective where the feathers that the moon dropped are now “the moon’s young” and they are “trying / Their wings” (5-6). This transition back to the moon and its “young” seems to be a foreshadowing/introduction for the voice’s foil.
Here and Gone
The foil for the voice makes a brief, yet significant, appearance in lines 7-9:
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
The “slender woman” seems to take no notice of the voice or the darkness and does not remain constrained by gravity. Clearly the poem is not presenting a reality, but the surreal scene is grounded by commonalities that link it to a more concrete representation of the world. The scene presents a litany of stark oppositions: field and forest, man and woman, real and unreal. It is through the voice that the oppositions intersect and become a fluid for understanding the abstract.
Darkness is the Light
After the voice is left alone again as it watches the “woman” disappear “into the air” it does not seem fascinated or scared or apprehensive. Rather the voice is subdued and introverted. The voice does “not dare breathe / Or move” (10-11), yet it continues to “listen” (12). The reader is left with an image where “wheat leans back toward its own darkness” and concurrently the voice is able to “lean toward” its own (13-14).
The Answer’s Within
Despite the poem being enveloped in darkness and consecutive subjective images it maintains a grasp in the concrete, albeit the grip is hanging by fingernails. The poem is probing into psychology and the depths of the human mind finding only the light of the moon. The only character other than the voice flies without acknowledgment of the voice and the voice is left alone just as when the poem began.
It may be discomforting to many to be left alone in the dark, but it seems that the voice is comfortable rather than frantic. Instead of running away to find the light the voice takes solace in what it knows: darkness. Maybe what humanity is always searching for through progress, commerce, development, and science is not what it needs. Maybe comfort comes with the realization that the drive to explore can be quieted by looking within oneself.
 |
