Poetry+-+May+10

//Judson Jerome//
 * Deer Hunt**

Because the warden is my cousin, my mountain friends hunt in summer, when the deer cherish each rattler-ridden spring, and I have waited hours by a pool in fear that manhood would require I shoot, or that the steady drip of the hill would dull my ear to a snake whispering near the log I sat upon, and listened to the yelping cheer of dogs and men resounding ridge to ridge. I flinched at every lonely rifle crack, my knuckles whitening where I gripped the edge of age and clung, like retching, sinking back then gripping once again the monstrous gun, since I, to be a man, had taken one.

Alexander Mitchell: At first this poem confused me a little. Yet, i figured that it is about a man in the woods animal hunting. The author seems to be the narrator of the poem. The poem is about a man that goes to hunt in the summer with friends because his cousin is the warden of the hunting range, but the man is afraid of guns. you can see this when he describes the gun as monstrous. He also uses a gun a a metaphor for becoming a man. He explains this when he says, "the monstrous gun/ Since I, to be a man, had taken one" (13-14). The tone of the poem seems to be in the sense of someone who is afraid.