Friesian Bull by Gillian Clarke: Analysis
Friesian Bull by Gillian Clarke: An Analysis
The poem Friesian Bull is full of Clarke’s vivid imagery. Even from the first line, you get a sense of the real beast this animal is: “He blunders through the last dream of the night.” The word “blunders” sounds brash and clunky, already painting a picture of the bull for the reader. The use of verbs such as ‘blunders’ and ‘thundering’ makes the bull’s rage seem even more graphic and creates a clear picture for the reader of a large bull staggering about. They also make the bull seem more like a helpless animal. The repeated ‘d’ and ‘b’ sounds (plosives) throughout the poem deepen this sense of the bull’s violence, as it gives the poem an aggressive nature. Indeed, it is very hard to read the poem aloud in a calm, subdued manner.
The fact the stall he is in is described as “narrow” makes him, by comparison, seem large and intimidating, filling up his stall with his large mass of muscle. The line “A froth of slobbered hay droops from the stippled muzzle” is a disgusting image, yet one that captures the essence of a heaving, huffing bull extremely well.
In ‘Friesian Bull’, Clarke makes the bull both an object of terror and pity. She evokes fear for the bull with her description of its aggressive and unpredictable behavior. The quotation ‘His stall narrows to rage’ shows the bull’s sharp focus on its anger as the stall turns to anger or ‘rage’ in the bull’s perspective. The threat of the bull continues throughout the poem but is mixed with empathy and pity for the bull.
Clarke portrays the bull as disgusting and crude with the description of a piece of hay trapped in its muzzle as ‘froth of slobbered hay drooping from his muzzle’ (the onomatopoeia adding to the sense of the disgusting) and a simile of the stall as ‘narrow as a heifer’s haunches’. Hence, we also feel a sense of disgust for the beast.
The bull’s memories are very simple things, a smell or a longing that is not too detailed to become unnervingly human but detailed enough to evoke empathy. An example of this is ‘clover-loaded winds’. A powerful sense of smell is a characteristic most relate to animals, so we get a sense of that in this line.
The last way in which Clarke conveys a vivid sense of the bull is through personifying the bull, making him reminisce and have feelings. This allows the readers to sympathize with the bull’s pains. For example, the bull has a nostalgic moment remembering his past in lines 13-17: ‘Remembered summer hay smells reach him, a trace of the herd’s freedom… The thundering speed blows up the Dee breathing of plains…’ Up until this part of the poem, the bull is only described physically and in a rather gruesome way. However, these lines allow the reader to be let into the life of the bull and tap into his emotions. The words ‘herd’s freedom’ show the bull’s desire to be free from captivity and loneliness. This is also emphasized by ‘the thundering speed’ at which the bulls traveled, which contrasts with the Friesian bull’s current ‘slow rolling’ movements, showing the differences between its current life in captivity and his previous freedom.
Clarke then goes on to write, “in the slow/rolling mass of his skull his eyes surface like fish bellies.” The use of caesura between “slow” and “rolling” adds to the point Clarke is trying to make, as it slows the line down, echoing the “mass” of the bull’s skull. The image the reader gets from this line is a terrifying one. The fact his “mass” of skull is slow makes me think of a creature that is so large it moves slowly.