Diane Glancy is a well-known American poet. Most of her poems deal with common themes from a feminist viewpoint. This poem unravels the beautiful bond between a father and daughter. The writer travels through her father’s life where alienation finds a better companion.
This poem remains as a reminiscence of her father’s life. Her father was from a Native American family where hunting was their main livelihood. Hunting gave him mental and physical satisfaction.
There were many traditional beliefs associated with the tribal Americans. They attributed spiritual characteristics to wild animals. There was an innate thread between man and wildlife.
Later, he married a modern Anglo Germán woman. There was a deep-seated struggle with his father whether to adopt a new culture or to stick with his own culture. This cultural conflict can be seen in Gabriel Okara’s Piano and Drums too.
The poet also remembers the days in which her mother humiliated her father. The poet draws the picture of a man who had to change his interests and beliefs after the marriage.
The poet also mentions his father’s interest in painting different pictures on his car. Wild animals were the subjects most of the time. He had to eventually change his habits.
The poet now discovers the depth of solitude her father underwent. She expresses her intimacy with her father.
The title of the poem ” without title” is relevant since marriage changed his whole identity. His marital life was a search for a new identity that he couldn’t find ever. Even after his death, the poet feels the presence of his father and she can feel the purity of her father’s culture.
Read the poem below
It’s hard you know without the buffalo,
the shaman, the arrow,
but my father went out each day to hurt
as though he had them.
He worked in the stockyards.
All his life he brought us meat.
No one marked his first kill,
no one sang his buffalo song.
Without a vision he had migrated to the city and went to work in the packing house.
When he brought home his homs and hides my mother said
get rid of them
I remember the animal tracks of his car
backing out the drive in snow and mud, the aerial on his old car waving
like a bow string.
I remember the silence of his lost power, the red buffalo painted on his chest.
Oh, I couldn’t see t
but it was there, and in the night I heard his buffalo grunts like a snore.
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