Lying In A Hammock....by James Wright

1) The speaker in the poem is laying in a hammock noticing all the small sounds and things going on around him on a farm.

2) The person lying in the hammock is a very observant and descriptive person and knows a lot about nature. The man has most likely spent a lot of time outdoors or worked outside in his past. We also know that the speaker is visiting the farm because the title says (William Duffy's Farm)

3) I arrived at the conclusion that the speaker is very observant and knows a lot about nature because he noticed the color of the bronze butterfly and the sound of the cows following each other down the ravine behind the empty house. The speaker also knows that the two trees he sees the sun between are pines and that the horse droppings are from a year ago and knows that the bird that flies above him is a chicken hawk which many people would not know.

4) The title tells us that the speaker is lying in a hammock, on the setting of a farm, at the place he is visiting (William Duffy's Farm) and that he is in Pine Island, Minnesota.

5) The speaker makes you feel involved with what is going on around him by using sounds and different ways of saying what is happening in a different way. Instead of saying the cows are following eachother around he notes the sound of cowbells follwing one another giving you a greater sense of what is going on. He also gives the idea of a "beautiful" picture of poop in a field by saying it is blazed up in golden stone giving us the picture of sun shining down on a pile of horse droppings. Overall the descriptions are in great detail in the look and sound of what is happening around him.

6) The speaker notices the things he does because those are the things he feels most like. He notices a butterfly blowing like a leaf in the green shadow giving the feeling of floating anywhere and just going where life takes you which may explain why the speaker is sitting in a hammock on a island in minnesota. He notices the cows following one another in a herd behind the empty house because the feels that he is the empty house all alone while the cows have a pack that they can call family. Then he notices the chicken hawk that floats over him looking for home which is very likely how the speaker feels. He feels that he is floating around looking for a place that he can call home but hasn't seemed to settle down yet.

6) The speaker feels that he has wasted his life because he sees all these beautiful things happening like the butterfly at piece sleeping and fluttering in the wind. He sees the ravine with the cattle in the herd that are most likely doing all they need to ever do and describes the brilliance of simple horse dung shining in the sun. Last he sees a hawk gliding over himself looking for home and he feels that he is doing nothing but looking at all the wonderful things going on around him as he sits and wastes his time lying in a hammock.