“Afternoon with Irish Cows” by Billy Collins is a contemporary humorous free style poem with a mixed rhythm, meter, and no rhyme similar to the style of “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House”. It is about a field of cows as the author stares out at them.
Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, New York State Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006, and the winner of the Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry in 2005.
Let’s take a quick look at a summary of Billy Collins’s “Afternoon with Irish Cows” and then have a look at any figurative language he uses and an analysis of the writing.
Summary
“Afternoon with Irish Cows” is a humorous poem about a group of cows in a field and one eventually mooing. The first stanza starts out with the author speaking about a few dozen cows being in a field across the road from his house. The cows would be there and then suddenly not be there. Then at another time he’d open the front door and see them eating grass and scattered around. Finally, one of them moos.
Analysis
Title: Afternoon with Irish Cows
Style: Free Style written in five stanzas with seven lines each
Theme: Cows
Tone: Humor and Pleasure towards nature
Rhyme scheme: None
Line-by-line Analysis and Figurative Language
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- There were a few dozen who occupied the field / across the road from where we lived, / stepping all day from tuft to tuft, / their big heads down in the soft grass, / though I would sometimes pass a window / and look out to see the field suddenly empty / as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country. – There are a few dozen cows in a field across the road going “tuft to tuft” (that is, grass to grass when they are eating). Suddenly, the cows will disappear. He’s stating this as a hyperbole.
- Then later, I would open the blue front door, / and again the field would be full of their munching / or they would be lying down / on the black-and-white maps of their sides, / facing in all directions, waiting for rain. / How mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded / they appear in the long quiet of the afternoon. – The speaker would sometimes open the front door and watch them. They’d be there eating or lying down on their sides (black-and-white maps is a metaphor to the color pattern of the cow, like a Holstein). The cows would be facing all directions. The speaker says they are “waiting for rain”. This likely means that it’s simply a hot summer day and they are being lazy—as cows do.
- But every once in a while, one of them / would let out a sound so phenomenal / that I would put down the paper / or the knife I was cutting an apple with / and walk across the road to the stone wall / to see which one of them was being torched / or pierced through the side with a long spear. – Every once in a while a cow would moo. The speaker would put down whatever it was that he’d do and walk to the fence to see what’s going on. He’d ask himself if it is being torched or cut because the sound was so loud.
- Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see / the noisy one, anchored there on all fours, / her neck outstretched, her bellowing head / laboring upward as she gave voice / to the rising, full-bodied cry / that began in the darkness of her belly / and echoed up through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth. – He thought the mooing sounded like pain. He says the one who made the noise was “anchored there on all fours”. This means that the cow was standing there and not moving. He says that her neck was stretched out, upward, and the sound rose up like a cry coming from her stomach and echoing in the ribs up to her mouth.
- Then I knew that she was only announcing / the large, unadulterated cowness of herself, / pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind / to all the green fields and the gray clouds, / to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay, / while she regarded my head and shoulders / above the wall with one wild, shocking eye. – However, he’d then notice that the sound is just her announcing herself as being there as a cow. The announcement was as if it was being made to the fields, clouds, and landscape. As she’s doing this all, she is looking at the speaker.
Poem: “Afternoon with Irish Cows” by Billy Collins
There were a few dozen who occupied the field
across the road from where we lived,
stepping all day from tuft to tuft,
their big heads down in the soft grass,
though I would sometimes pass a window
and look out to see the field suddenly empty
as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country.
Then later, I would open the blue front door,
and again the field would be full of their munching
or they would be lying down
on the black-and-white maps of their sides,
facing in all directions, waiting for rain.
How mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded
they appear in the long quiet of the afternoon.
But every once in a while, one of them
would let out a sound so phenomenal
that I would put down the paper
or the knife I was cutting an apple with
and walk across the road to the stone wall
to see which one of them was being torched
or pierced through the side with a long spear.
Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see
the noisy one, anchored there on all fours,
her neck outstretched, her bellowing head
laboring upward as she gave voice
to the rising, full-bodied cry
that began in the darkness of her belly
and echoed up through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth.
Then I knew that she was only announcing
the large, unadulterated cowness of herself,
pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind
to all the green fields and the gray clouds,
to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay,
while she regarded my head and shoulders
above the wall with one wild, shocking eye.
Reader’s Reaction
Billy Collins is a master of imagery. He’s known to be a reader conscious poet as he allows us to truly engage with the scenery. He’s not using any far-fetched metaphors nor speaking about something not within the poem. He is speaking from the heart in a humorous way about a subject many of us have experienced. This is the embodiment of the contemporary poem.
