The Bull Moose

“The Bull Moose” by Canadian poet Alden Nowlan is a 33-line free verse poem divided in eight stanzas. Seemingly straightforward in tone, the poem is deeply ironic and presents a bleak view of people’s treatment of nature. It can be called a narrative poem, since it tells the story of the eponymous bull moose who strays into human territory. Since the poem positions nature as inherently good and divine, it is a romantic work. However, unlike most Romantic poems, it is pessimistic about the relationship between humans and nature.

The poem’s diction is relatively simple, but also rich and figurative. Using symbols, similes, allusions, metaphors, and alliteration, Nowlan creates a powerful nature poem with an emotional core and a strong point of view. The poem’s resonant themes of the degradation of nature, its use of irony, and its vivid imagery make it one of Nowlan’s most popular works.

Poet Biography

Called “the greatest Canadian poet of the twentieth century” by American poet Robert Bly, Alden Nowlan (1933-83) is known for the emotionally honest works. Nowlan struggled with deep poverty and a troubled childhood before moving to New Brunswick to work as a journalist. Though he dropped out of school in the fifth grade, Nowlan showed a keen interest in reading and writing from an early age. Working in New Brunswick, Nowlan showed his poems to Fred Cogswell, then editor of The Fiddlehead—one of Canada’s foremost literary journals. Impressed by Nowlan’s poetic voice, Cogswell began to publish his poems. Nowlan’s first collection of poetry, The Rose and the Puritan, was published in 1958, followed by Under the Ice (1961), and The Things Which Are (1962), from which “The Bull Moose” is taken. The Things Which Are established Nowlan as an important new poet as his vivid language and humanist themes strike a chord with readers.

Nowlan married his former newspaper colleague Claudine Orser in 1963, adopting her nine-year-old son from a previous marriage. Though his literary career was thriving, in 1966 he was forced to leave journalism after being diagnosed with throat cancer. Nowlan became cancer-free after several rounds of surgery and radiation treatment. In 1967, he published his fourth poetry collection, Bread, Wine and Salt, which contained poems inspired by his brush with death. The collection won Canada’s highest literary award: the Governor General's Award for Poetry. As Nowlan’s fame grew outside Canada, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the same year. Soon after, he was appointed the University of New Brunswick’s writer-in-residence, a job he held until his death in 1983.

In the last decade of his life, Nowlan also began writing novels, such as Various Persons Named Kevin O’Brien (1973), and The Wanton Troopers, posthumously published in 1988. He also wrote plays, which were critically acclaimed, such as A Gift to Last (1978), as well as essays on the landscapes of Canada. His eighth and last poetry volume, I Might Not Tell Everybody This, was published in 1982. His health began to degenerate after 1982, and he died of emphysema of the lungs on June 27th, 1983. He is buried with fellow poets at Poet’s Corner, Forest Hill cemetery, New Brunswick.

Poem Text

Nowlan, Alden. “The Bull Moose.” 1993. allpoetry.com.

Summary

Native to Canada and the United States, a moose is the largest member of the deer family and possesses enormous antlers. Narrated by an unnamed, third -person speaker—possibly a stand-in for the poet—the poem tells the story of a bull (male) moose. The bull moose descends from the mist-shrouded, wooded mountains into forests of white spruce and cedar trees. It has lost its way; its movements are described as “lurching” (Line 2) and “stumbling” (Line 3). Now on level land, the moose crosses wet swamplands dominated by shrub-like tamarack trees to finally stop in an enclosed pasture, possibly close to a town. Thus, the bull moose travels from mysterious wildness to the world of human beings.

Exhausted and disoriented, perhaps sensing he has reached the end of the line, the moose simply stands in the pasture along with the farm animals. But the cattle instinctively know he is different—wild and smelling “with the musk of death” (Line 8) or doomed to die. Therefore, they huddle away from the moose and wait, as if anticipating something. The large head of the moose is compared to the “ritual mask of a blood god” (Line 9): a god who is to be sacrificed as part of a ritual.

Soon, news of the moose’s presence spreads and the townspeople gather around the pasture to look at the wild animal. Children bait him with sticks, but he doesn’t react, gazing at them like “an old tolerant collie” (Line 14). Women wonder if the moose has escaped from a fair. The oldest man in the neighborhood recalls once seeing a “gelded” (Line 17), or castrated, moose pulling a plough with an ox. Young men mock the moose and force beer into its mouth while their girlfriends take pictures. The moose is docile and patient, letting people fiddle with him, stroke his flanks, and decorate his head with a crown of purple thistle flowers.

When the wildlife wardens reach the pasture, the consensus is no one should shoot the docile, cuddly animal. The narrator describes the bull moose as “shaggy and cuddlesome” (Line 25), like a large, stuffed toy women put to bed with their children. The wardens decide to lower their guns, but as the sun sets, the bull moose bolts for a moment, startling everyone. He raises his lowered head and gathers his strength like a “scaffolded king” (Line 30), or a chained and tortured king—a reference to Jesus scaffolded on the cross. Alarmed, the wardens raise their rifles again. As the moose is shot, he roars, scaring away the gathered crowds. They run to their cars. As the dying moose topples over, the young men honk their car horns in shock or fear or dismay.