Flame reflects Billy Collins’s “normal, average” writing style. It contains an ironic humor, and he unashamedly chooses bear as a protagonist. The poet uses bear because bear can be uncourteous which means all of them don’t know how to think. So, when a bear knows what is right and wrong, human should know it better. However, it doesn’t show it in this poem, it actually presents in the exactly opposite way. It conveys that human is careless, and dumb about the environment because it doesn’t belong the individuals. Through the ironic tone, the poet uses the bear to show all the men what is the hard result of not following the rules. This poem is expressing the idea “sometimes you just have to learn the hard way” he provides this ironic tone
