An Analysis of the Poem Buffalo Dusk Essay -- Buffalo Dusk Essays

An Analysis of the Poem Buffalo Dusk The main topic of this short poem is the connection between the liquidation of the buffaloes, and the extermination of those that saw the buffalo, namely Indians. It also alludes to the Europeans that came to the Americas, charging crossways the country in the same fashion that the buffalo charges across the land, trampling and killing the luscious super acid pasture. The poem includes many poetry instruments such as metaphor, repetition, imagery, and alliteration. The title itself, Buffalo Dusk, implies the gradual and expected death of the buffalo, due to the cyclical nature of the universe. The pose of the sun often inspired death to the early man, that also re freshlyal, rebirth. The buffalo, an entity subjected to the same laws as everything else, is doomed to have a birth, climax, and death, just like the sidereal day itself. The notion of a cyclical universe is also expressed in line 6, where the heard of the buffalo is describe d as a great boasting of dusk, or a glorious and intentional march towards death. When writing about the stampeding buffaloes, the author thought about the immigrants of the United States, and how they charged across prairies and mountains across the land, from east to west, trampling everything in their paths. This is straind by line 5, which describes the buffalos pos... ...e a loud drum, as alliteration of words like pawed, prairie, pageant accentuate peaks in the poem. This has the purpose of emphasizing the imagery, stimulating the reader to form a picture. Lines 1 and 7, and 2 and 8, repeat. This, again, points out the authors intention. The beginning is the same as the end. The middle is always unpredictable, but the beginning always coincides with the end, again emphasizing the unstoppable cycle of life and death. The poem ends as it started, a mild statement, but very poignant. Right now, the middle of the poem is the people of the United States, and all civilization. T he beginning was predictable. It all started in earnest, with birth to a new people and new ideas. The end is just as predictable as the beginning however, and it is bound to come.