The Full Text of “Buffalo Bill's”
1Buffalo Bill 's
2defunct
3 who used to
4 ride a watersmooth-silver
5 stallion
6and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
7 Jesus
8he was a handsome man
9 and what i want to know is
10how do you like your blue-eyed boy
11Mister Death
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“Buffalo Bill's” Introduction
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"Buffalo Bill's" is E.E. Cummings's tragicomic reflection on the death of a legend. The poem's speaker thinks back on the spectacular feats of Buffalo Bill, the Old West showman whose death they're trying their best to wrap their mind around. The speaker's head-shaking astonishment suggests it's hard to accept that a larger-than-life figure like Buffalo Bill should fall prey to "Mister Death" like anyone else. Cummings first published this poem in The Dial (an American literary magazine) in 1920 and collected it in his important 1922 book Tulips and Chimneys.
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“Buffalo Bill's” Summary
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The speaker declares that Buffalo Bill is dead. He used to ride a silvery horse as smooth as water, and he could shoot five clay pigeons one after another, so fast! God, the speaker exclaims, he was good-looking. The speaker addresses Death himself, wondering if he's enjoying his golden boy.
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“Buffalo Bill's” Themes
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The Inevitability of Death
As the speaker of “Buffalo Bill’s” reflects on the death of the American showman Buffalo Bill, they’re forced to admit that even larger-than-life heroes can’t escape mortality. Buffalo Bill was a legend, the speaker remembers: a thrilling performer and a “blue-eyed boy,” a person the whole world loved. The fact that people like Buffalo Bill die just like anyone else can’t help but feel unfair—even almost insulting. But death is a fact the speaker (and everyone else) has no choice but to face.
Announcing the death of Buffalo Bill, the speaker can’t quite bear to say he’s dead. Instead, they say he’s “defunct”—out of commission, no longer functioning. Such a euphemism suggests that it seem wrong to the speaker to say that a person as fantastic as Buffalo Bill is just plain dead. The speaker remembers vividly how Buffalo Bill used to “ride a watersmooth-silver / stallion” and shoot clay pigeons “onetwothreefourfive” in a row, just like that. This language paints Bill as a glamorous, larger-than-life figure, the sort of person whose performance you’d remember all your life.
Remembering Buffalo Bill’s huge persona, the speaker can’t help but feel as if his death is particularly tragic, wrong, and wasteful. They thus confront a personified Death itself about this loss, cheekily calling him “Mister Death” and asking him, “how do you like your blue-eyed boy[?]”—as if accusing Death of stealing a treasure from the rest of the world.
This apostrophe to Death captures a complex mood of bewilderment, anger, and resignation. Calling death “Mister Death” feels irreverent and suggests the speaker’s sense of injustice: they’re so upset about Buffalo Bill that they feel emboldened to call Death itself “Mister,” as if it were a naughty child. But the familiar name also suggests that death is something as close and everyday as a next-door neighbor. Buffalo Bill isn’t the only person whom Mister Death will carry away: death comes for everyone, and being a living legend can’t save one from becoming a dead legend.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Buffalo Bill's”
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Lines 1-2
Buffalo Bill 's
defunct“Buffalo Bill’s” begins with the announcement of a tragedy: Buffalo Bill is dead. But the speaker can't quite bring themselves to say so. The abruptly enjambed opening lines makes it sound as if the speaker is struggling to find the right words to deliver this news. At last, they settle on:
Buffalo Bill’s
defunct“Defunct,” meaning “out of service” or “no longer functioning,” is a euphemistic way to say “dead”—one that lands with a little dark humor here. It’s the slightest bit awkward to say that a person is defunct, given that this is a term more usually applied to businesses or devices. But perhaps it just feels too hard for the speaker to admit outright that Buffalo Bill is dead. Buffalo Bill, after all, was a legend:
- The historical Buffalo Bill was a famous 19th-century American showman. He got his start exploring the American West as a Union soldier and bison hunter during the Civil War.
- He was best known for being the brains behind Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, a touring show that carried a fantastical, glamorized vision of the American West all around the world. Buffalo Bill and his performers demonstrated Western skills like horseback riding and trick shooting in a kind of all-American circus.
- This show made Bill and his crew world-famous. Touring extensively through Europe and the United States, they created a stylized, romantic, cowboy-driven image of the Old West that would endure all through the 20th century. (The genre of the Western simply wouldn't exist without Buffalo Bill.)
- Cummings published this poem in 1920, just a few years after the real-life Buffalo Bill died in 1917.
In this rueful, darkly funny poem, the speaker will shake their head over the fact that even a larger-than-life figure like Buffalo Bill can die. It just seems wrong, this poem suggests, that legends have to go, just like the rest of us.
This poem uses Cummings’s characteristic free verse. Not only does Cummings eschew a regular meter or rhyme scheme here, he gives his poem a playful, experimental shape, feeling free to introduce huge stretches of white space or to cut out all the spaces in a sentence. The way the poem uses the space on the page—the way it looks—has a big effect on the way it sounds.
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Lines 3-6
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
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Lines 7-8
Jesus
he was a handsome man -
Lines 9-11
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death
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“Buffalo Bill's” Symbols
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Buffalo Bill
By choosing Buffalo Bill as the poem's hero, Cummings invites readers to read this elegy not just as an expression of grief for one particular American hero but also as a symbolic lament for an optimistic, attractive, and perhaps subtly false vision of America itself.
Buffalo Bill Cody was a famous 19th-century American showman. His hugely successful touring production, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, carried a glamorized fantasy of the American West all around the world. That fantasy depicted a flashy, charismatic, and tough vision of American heroism. This vision was also inherently a bit deceptive. Buffalo Bill, after all, was a performer, and his show presented a simplified and fictionalized picture of the West.
Buffalo Bill's death in this poem thus suggests that these attractive-but-false ideas about what being American means might also have died (perhaps in the wake of World War I, a global catastrophe that made a lot of people feel pretty cynical about patriotism and national ideals).
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“Buffalo Bill's” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
Brief but evocative flashes of imagery capture the legendary Buffalo Bill’s charisma and glamor. The first of these moments arrives when the speaker remembers how Buffalo Bill “used to / ride a watersmooth-silver / stallion.” This complex image captures the way the horse looked and the way it moved at the same time:
- “Watersmooth-silver” creates an image of the horse’s well-kept coat. That silvery smoothness suggests a natural animal beauty, but also care and pride: if this stallion is gleaming and “watersmooth,” its rider must groom it with loving attention.
- The horse’s silveriness also suggests value and polish—and perhaps raises associations with other silvery things you might see on a performing horse, like gleaming spurs and highly polished tack.
- There’s a glimpse of the way the horse galloped in these words, too. “Watersmooth-silver” might describe the exhilarating speed of a stallion as it bolts past as fast and easily as a river runs.
All in all, this rich, dense moment of imagery suggests a kind of showmanship that combined natural and theatrical beauty. Buffalo Bill’s horse was a splendid animal, the imagery suggests—and Buffalo Bill took an artist’s pride in his steed.
A second moment of imagery works more subtly. At the end of the poem, when the speaker confronts “Mister Death,” they ask him a bold question: “how do you like your blue-eyed boy,” they wonder. The phrase “blue-eyed boy” is an idiom meaning a specially favored or wonderful person. But here, it also introduces a flash of color that summons up the living Buffalo Bill’s presence and charisma. It’s as if the speaker is briefly remembering Buffalo Bill’s living eyes, sparkling blue for just one moment in memory before Mister Death packs them away.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Personification
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Enjambment
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Alliteration
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“Buffalo Bill's” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Buffalo Bill
- Defunct
- A watersmooth-silver / stallion
- Pigeons
- Blue-eyed boy
Buffalo Bill-
Buffalo Bill was the stage name of Bill Cody, a famous 19th-century American showman who performed dramatic (and exaggerated) tales of the Wild West in a popular touring theatrical production. Buffalo Bill was famous for his skill as a trick shooter and horseman.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Buffalo Bill's”
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Form
Readers might see "Buffalo Bill's" as a kind of elegy, a poem memorializing the dead. Like other famous examples of this genre, "Buffalo Bill's" at once honors the person who's lost and ponders mortality more generally.
"Buffalo Bill's" offers a great example of Cummings's characteristic free verse (poetry that doesn't use a traditional meter, rhyme scheme, or form). Cummings was interested in poetry as a visual medium: he thought a lot about the way his poems looked on the page, not just the way the words sounded. In fact, this poem's shape helps create its sound, with white space and unusual line breaks helping readers to catch the speaker's half-sorrowful, half-grudging tone.
The poem's 11 lines are all different lengths; some are only a word long (as when the speaker exclaims "Jesus" in line 7). Deeply indented lines (like "who used to / ride a watersmooth-silver / stallion" in lines 3-5) create big stretches of blank space, giving slow rhythm to the speaker's meditations on the career of the legendary Buffalo Bill.
While some lines capture the speaker's excitement around their memories of Bill's performances (like the whip-quick "break onetothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat"), the big gaps of space on the page make the poem feel unrushed and thoughtful. The speaker is slowly and painfully grappling with the reality that a guy as spectacular as Buffalo Bill is dead.
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Meter
"Buffalo Bill's" is written in free verse, with no regular meter—a fact that reveals itself at a glance! Rather than sticking to a steady pulse of metrical feet (like iambs or trochees), Cummings scatters words all over the page, creating rhythm visually. For example, take the first two lines:
Buffalo Bill 's
defunctThe line break here creates a big pause between the introduction of Buffalo Bill and the speaker's description of what has happened to him. It's as if the speaker is searching for the right word here, almost unable to admit that Bill is dead. In the end, the speaker settles on the euphemistic word "defunct" (meaning "no longer functioning") to describe what has happened to this legend—a darkly comical choice that lands harder because of that line break.
Cummings also creates innovative rhythms by getting rid of empty space. Describing how Buffalo Bill used to perform astonishing feats of trick shooting, the speaker remembers how he would:
[...] break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
This breathless, spaceless line captures Buffalo Bill's sheer speed—and the exhilaration of watching him shoot.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Buffalo Bill's" doesn't use a rhyme scheme (or any rhyme at all, for that matter). The lack of rhyme helps to give the poem its homespun flavor. The speaker here sounds like a person who might have seen Buffalo Bill live at some point back in the good old days, and their own language has a cowboyish tone. When they mutter "Jesus" to themselves in line 7 and challengingly address death itself as "Mister Death," for instance, they sound like a tough old bird.
Leaving rhyme out of the picture here helps to support that characterization. This speaker sounds as if they're musing privately, not constructing a traditional elegy.
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“Buffalo Bill's” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a nostalgic person looking back on Buffalo Bill's glory days. Their reflections suggest that they might personally have seen Buffalo Bill performing in his prime, back when he could "break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat" with his fabulous trick shooting. The speaker's astonishment that a guy like Buffalo Bill could possibly be dead suggests that they had a romantic, starry-eyed perspective on this legendary figure. Truly thrilled by Buffalo Bill's showmanship and glamor back in the day, they're now finding it painful to accept that even a larger-than-life figure like Bill has to die one day.
Perhaps this speaker is a bit of a tough old boot, too. Shaking their head over Buffalo Bill's death, they capture their incredulity in one succinct exclamation: "Jesus." They also aren't afraid to directly (and cheekily) confront "Mister Death" himself, the guy they blame for this mess. The climax of the poem comes when the speaker addresses death directly, asking whether that rude fellow is enjoying his "blue-eyed boy" as much as the rest of the world did. There's some bravado in these lines, but also some weary sadness: this speaker knows they're not going to get a real answer to "what [they] want to know" from death.
All in all, then, this speaker comes across as both a romantic and a down-to-earth old-timer. Though they've seen it all, they can still find it in their heart to lament the death of a hero.
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“Buffalo Bill's” Setting
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The poem doesn't say much explicitly about its setting, but its real-life subject, the soldier and showman Buffalo Bill Cody, died in 1917. Cummings first published this poem in 1920, so readers might imagine it taking place in Cummings's own time.
Still, in a sense, the poem's most important setting is a nostalgic vision of the American past. Looking back on the life and times of Buffalo Bill, this poem's speaker thinks wistfully of Bill's prime as a Wild West showman. From where the speaker sits now, Bill's "watersmooth-silver / stallion" and his dramatic trick shooting feel almost legendary, sights so glamorous that they belong to another world. The speaker's resentment and sadness over Buffalo Bill's death hint at a wider nostalgia for a grander and more fantastical world.
Perhaps this poem's nostalgia also hints at a lost optimism in the wake of World War I, which ended in 1918 (and which Cummings saw first-hand as an ambulance driver and a conscripted soldier). Many writers felt despair and cynicism in the wake of this particularly bloody and pointless war. The good old days of glamorous heroes on horseback, this poem suggests, are as "defunct" as Buffalo Bill himself.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Buffalo Bill's”
Literary Context
E. E. Cummings (often styled "e e cummings") lived from 1894-1962 and was one of the most distinctive voices in 20th-century American poetry, famous for experimenting with language as a visual medium.
Cummings's 1922 collection Tulips and Chimneys, in which "Buffalo Bill's" was collected, was his first book of poetry. This collection's playful, innovative use of language made Cummings an important voice in the avant-garde literary world of the 1920s, a movement in which writers pushed the boundaries of traditional poetic forms. Cummings is also often considered a major Modernist, one of a group of early 20th-century poets who championed free verse. But Cummings also drew inspiration from earlier sources, including Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and John Keats.
Both experimental and traditional, Cummings's work met with suspicion from either side of the literary world: more conventional and more subversive writers both looked at his work skeptically. But that was nothing he wasn't ready for. In a short essay offering advice to young poets, he remarked that being a poet means "to be nobody-but-yourself"—and that to do so "in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
By the end of Cummings's life, the poetry world had recognized his unique brilliance, and he was widely lauded, earning honors from a Guggenheim to a prestigious fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
Historical Context
Cummings first published this poem in 1920, not long after World War I ended in 1918. He saw a lot of that war's horrors first-hand: he volunteered as an ambulance driver, and due to his pacifistic opinions and his skepticism about the war, he ended up being imprisoned in a French internment camp on the suspicion that he was a spy. He was not the only poet to feel shock and grief at the war's overwhelming violence and a growing cynicism about old ideas of patriotism and nationhood. This poem's pained nostalgia for the glory of Buffalo Bill might thus be founded on a wider sense of loss: after the Great War, a certain kind of all-American optimism was well and truly dead.
Of course, the poem's hero himself was famous for telling a made-up, romanticized story of America. William Cody got his start as a soldier and scout, fighting for the Union army in the Civil War (and developing a talent for hunting American bison, hence the moniker "Buffalo Bill"). But he made his name as a showman, working as the ringleader of a show called Buffalo Bill's Wild West. This spectacular production toured the world, presenting a glamorized vision of the American West. Some of the highlights of the show included displays of fabulous horsemanship and trick shooting. (The legendary markswoman Annie Oakley was one of Buffalo Bill's many notable colleagues.)
Buffalo Bill was in many ways a man ahead of his times. Not only did he hire women and Indigenous people for his show, he paid them exactly the same as the white men on staff—and publicly declared that the rest of the world should follow suit. He even advocated for women's right to vote. "Set that down in great big black type that Buffalo Bill favors woman suffrage," he said in an 1898 interview. "These fellows who prate about the women taking their places make me laugh."
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More “Buffalo Bill's” Resources
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External Resources
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Cummings on Poetry — Read Cummings's advice to young poets (framed by a short appreciation of Cummings by the essayist Maria Popova).
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Cummings himself reading the poem aloud.
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A Short Biography — Read the Poetry Foundation's biography of Cummings.
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Cumming's Self-Portrait — Cummings was a painter as well as a poet. Take a look at his self-portrait to get a glimpse of how he saw himself.
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Buffalo Bill — Learn a little background on Buffalo Bill, the poem's hero.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by E. E. Cummings
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