Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
"The animals in that country" is told from the perspective of a third-person subjective point of view.
Form and Meter
"Backdrop addresses cowboy" is written in an iambic pentameter.
Metaphors and Similes
In the poem "The Circle Game" childhood is used as a metaphor for purity and also ignorance.
Alliteration and Assonance
We have an alliteration in the line "In the secular night you wander around alone in your house" in the poem "In the Secular Night".
Irony
N/A
Genre
The poem "The Circle Game" is a meditative poem.
Setting
The action in "Backdrop addresses cowboy" takes place in the distant past in a small settlement.
Tone
The tone used in "The Circle Game" is a childlike one.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonists in "The Circle Game" are the children and the antagonist is the character identified as "you".
Major Conflict
The major conflict in the poem "In the Secular Night" is between the past and the present.
Climax
The poem "In the Secular Night" reaches its climax when the narrator turns her attention to the present.
Foreshadowing
In the first line of the poem "In the Secular Night," the narrator describes the main character as sitting alone in his house. This description foreshadows the later mentioning made to the death of everyone the character knew.
Understatement
In the first stanza of the poem "Backdrop addresses cowboy," the narrator claims that the cowboy only hurts the villains which may come near his home. This is proven to be an understatement because at the end of the poem the narrator admits that the cowboy was extremely cruel towards anyone who had the misfortune of coming into contact with him.
Allusions
The main allusion in the poem "The animals in that country" is the idea that even though humanity regard itself as being well above the animals surrounding us this is not the case in many instances and in fact, humans can be inferior to animals at times when it comes to cruelty.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The term border is used in the poem "Backdrop addresses cowboy" as a general term to make reference to the internal boundaries everyone set and which stops a person from becoming who they are supposed to be.
Personification
We have a personification in the line "beer bottles slaughtered by the side" in the poem "Backdrop addresses cowboy".
Hyperbole
We have a hyperbole in the lines "back into each of the single /bodies again" in the poem "The Circle Game".
Onomatopoeia
We have an onomatopoeia in the line "with blood and given an elegant death, trumpets, his name" in the poem "The animals in that country".
