Buffalo Bill's by e.e. cummings

Full Text

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
       who used to
       ride a watersmooth-silver
                                 stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                  Jesus

he was a handsome man
                      and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

Overview

Cummings eulogizes Buffalo Bill Cody with characteristic typographic invention, compressing the showman's legendary speed into fused words while confronting death with irreverent directness. The poem is simultaneously an elegy and a challenge.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-2

The possessive "Buffalo Bill's" followed by "defunct" is deliberately deflating. Not "dead" or "departed" but "defunct" — a word usually reserved for closed businesses or obsolete machines. The legend is reduced to a thing that stopped working.

Lines 3-5

The indentation creates a visual gallop. "Watersmooth-silver" is a cummings compound that captures both the color and fluid motion of the horse. "Stallion" sits alone at the far right, arriving like the horse itself.

Lines 6-7

The compressed "onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat" is the poem's most famous move — the speed of the shooting act rendered as a single breathless rush. "Jesus" functions as both an exclamation of awe and a theological invocation beside death.

Lines 8-11

The direct address to "Mister Death" personifies mortality as a collector. "How do you like your blueeyed boy" is at once tender (the diminutive "boy") and confrontational (demanding Death answer for taking him). The politeness of "Mister" is laced with sarcasm.

Themes

• Mortality
• American mythology
• The spectacle of the frontier
• Irreverence toward death
• Speed and vitality

Literary Devices

Portmanteau

onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat — Fusing the words eliminates the pauses between shots, making the reader experience the rapid-fire marksmanship as a single continuous act.

Neologism

watersmooth-silver — A compound adjective that merges texture, color, and motion into a single sensory impression of the stallion.

Personification

Mister Death — Death is addressed as a gentleman caller or collector, given the formal honorific that makes the confrontation both polite and menacing.

Visual typography

The staggered indentation throughout — The layout on the page mimics the galloping rhythm and sudden stops of a Wild West show performance.

Historical Context

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody died in 1917. His Wild West Show had been a massive American entertainment spectacle from the 1880s through the early 1900s. Cummings, writing just three years after Cody's death, captures the collision between frontier mythology and modern mortality.