Flower Fed Buffaloes questions and vocab

Questions:

1.  Why did the poet use flower-fed to describe the buffaloes?  What image does this bring to mind?

2. When does the poem take place?

3.  Who in the poem "ranged"?

4.  Who has taken their place?

5.  What effect does the use of personification in "the locomotives sing" have?

6.  Comment on the interesting use of punctuation :- in the poem in lines 4 and 12.  What effect does this have on the reader?

7.  Look at the words used to describe the grass in line 5.  What effect do they create?

8.  What is swept away by the wheat?

9.  What are the grass and the wheat images of?

10. Why is the word wheels repeated in line 7?  What effect does this have?

11.  What is your interpretation of line 8 "In the Spring that still is sweet"?

12.  What does the use of the word "but" in line 9 indicate?

13.  Why did the poet use the word "us in line 10?

14.  Where did the buffaloes go?

15.  What image do the words "gore" and "bellow" in line 11 give?  What is the effect of the repetition of ‘no more’?

16.  Comment on the use of the word "trundle" in line 12.

17.  Who are the Blackfeet?

18.  What does ‘lying low’ mean here?

19.  Who are the Pawnees?

20.  What effect does the repetition in line 13,14 and 15 have?

21.  What effect does the short last line "Lying low" have?

22.  What is the main point of the poem?

23.  What interesting comments can be said about the rhythm and rhyme of the poem and the effect they have on the reader?

24.  What comments can be made about the structure and the rhyme scheme in the poem?

25.  What comments can be made about the punctuation of the poem?

26.  Explore the ways Vachel Lindsay uses imagery in The Flower-Fed Buffaloes.

Vocabulary:

1_____Blackfeet    2____Bellow    3______Ranged    4______Locomotive    5______Prairie   6______Pawnees   7______Buffalo    8______Lie low    9______Gore    10______Trundle

A.  To pierce or wound with something pointed.

B.  To make the loud deep hollow sound characteristic of a bull.

C.  To lie prostrate, defeated, disgraced.

D.  American Indian people of Montana, Alberta.

E.  To move on or as if on wheels.

F.  Also called Bison.

G.  A wide area of land in North America without many trees and originally covered with grass.

H.  A self propelled vehicle that runs on rails and is used for moving railroad cars.

I.  American Indian people originally from Kansas and Nebraska.

J.  To roam at large or freely.