Summary Of Lying In A Hammock By James Wright

I chose Sven Birkerts’s article about James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”. The author sets a very nice pace, going over all the vital parts of the poem. It starts off addressing the title, he feels as though it is needlessly long. Therefore, Wright must have written it that way “not to inform, but to memorialize a place and a time” (Birkerts). Then he moves on to compare the poems first three lines to that of a painting, discussing the color composition and dimensions. Before commenting on the importance of Wright saying the butterfly instead of a butterfly, which he concluded signified a “beginning of a psychic dilation” (Birkerts). He also points out similar instances with other words in the