Galway Kinnell's "The Bear" can be read as a graphic account of a hunter tracking and eating the totemic animal, thus insuring himself of future benefits from the gods as well as practical benefits of food and clothing here and now. The poem can also be seen as the record of a shaman whose job it is to infuse himself with the sacred animal and, by so doing, take unto himself the beast's wisdom, strength, cunning, or terror. Such readings seem to find little to impede them unless it be the final section … where the speaker awakens; even here the difficulty is slight, because the person seeming to wake could be the hunter or the shaman fantasizing about the ritual of the hunt. However, an alternate reading seems to represent itself: the poem may be about the writing of poetry. (pp. 3, 5)

[In the final section, there] is a...