300 Goats

“300 Goats” is an example of ecopoetry in that it calls into question how human beings perceive nonhuman animals. Nye’s speaker is concerned about the welfare of the goats on her friend’s ranch; she is worried they will suffer in the icy weather. Tenderness is at the heart of her feeling for the animals. However, the speaker cannot express her concerns from a point of observation, as the goats are “far from here near the town of Ozona” (Line 13). She can only imagine their condition based on her own experience of exposure to the cold. In this way, she anthropomorphizes the goats—she imposes her own human nature and human feelings onto the animals.

In the first half of the poem, the speaker is distracted by thoughts of the Chinese zodiac and whether it is “the year of the goat or the sheep” (Line 4). In the zodiac, the animals are symbols; they are abstractions. In a way, the real goats on the distant ranch are an abstraction, as well, for the speaker.

While a ranch is wilder, perhaps, than a farm, it is to a large degree a cultivated space. The speaker, however, is not a rancher.