The Bull Moose

The poem is told by an unnamed narrator in a matter-of-fact voice. Written in free verse, the unrhymed and unmetered poem can be called a narrative work since it tells a story. It is a romantic poem in the sense that it follows traditional romanticism in which nature is seen as good and redemptive. However, in romanticism, humans are considered a part of nature, but “The Bull Moose” presents humans and the wild world in opposition. This is perhaps because the poem is a romantic poem of the 20th century, when human interference in ecology is far worse than the 18th century in which romanticism as a philosophy arose.

Although the poem is told in a straightforward tone, it is very clearly a poem with a point of view and a moral center. The narrator seems to be objectively observing the journey of a bull moose from the mountains into human contact, but the choice of vocabulary and the juxtaposition of images make the poem’s underlying quiet anger very clear. Nowlan expertly uses the literary device of