Many poems use mystical creatures to tell stories. From mermaids, to sirens, andgoat-footed balloonMen. A good example of the use of these mystical creatures can be seen in the poem "In Just-." The creature used is this goat-footed balloonMan. He helps condense a story into a poem, while condensing the story this creature also attracts the reader's imagination and keeps him or her intrigued meanwhile maintaining a politeness to the reader by taking vulgar words out of the poem.This balloonMan condenses a story of a man that lured small children into his gripto molest them. If a reader dissects this poem enough they can come to the conclusionthat a man disguise himself as a nice man an attracts small children, turns on them andmolest them. How else to describe a nice man other than a balloonMan. As youngchildren are intrigued with floating balloons. Describing this balloonMan as goat-footedis very precise. In many myths goat-feet represent the devil. Using this myth of goat-feetas a symbol of the devil shows that this “balloonMan” is not as nice of a balloonMan as achild would expect. As you can see the writer uses the fraise the “goat-footedballoonMan” to describe a nice man that lures little kids in and then turns of them.The writer knows that he has to help the readers imagination develop into thinkinghis way. He uses the term balloonMan to let us know this man is around kids andinteracting with them as well. By taking goat-footed and adding this before the title“balloonMan” shows that you can associated the balloonMan with the devil or somethingawful along that line. Now there is a deviled man luring children in by his balloons he isassociated with. Not only does the writer use goat-footed in the poem, he uses wordssuch as queer, and wicked. This gives the reader the assumption that this man is up to nogood with these children. Politeness is a key factor to author in telling the ...
