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left220980Life and Career00Life and CareerPoetry Notes- Elizabeth BishopBorn on 8 February, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father William, died of Bright's disease when Elizabeth was only eight months old. Her mother, Gertrude, was so traumatised by her husband's death that it led to the mental breakdown which resulted in her being hospitalised in 1917. Elizabeth never saw her mother again, although her mother lived until 1934. Cared for initially by her maternal grandparents at Great Village, a tiny town in Nova Scotia, a very happy time.However, in 1917 her paternal grandparents, the wealthy Bishops, took the six-year-old Elizabeth back to live with them in Worcester. She recalled it as a 'kidnapping' from the happy home she had known .Became ill - asthma, bronchitis, eczema - so that the Bishops felt unable to cope with her after only nine months. Her mother's older sister, Aunt Maude, took her to live with her and her husband in an impoverished neighbourhood in Revere, Massachusetts. Later, Elizabeth said that Aunt Maude had saved her life. Very little formal education before the age of fourteen. Her schooling, paid for by the Bishops, began at Walnut Hill School for Girls.Attended the exclusive women’s college at Vassar, in New York, where she majored in English Literature. Became friends with the American poet, Marianne Moore, who became a mentor. Bishop was also an accomplished musician and painter.It was when she was in college that her problems with alcohol first emerged. She would wrestle with alcoholism for most of her life.After graduation, moved to New York. Published in small magazines. Used inheritance money from Bishops to travel to France, England, North Africa, Spain and Italy. 1938: moved to Key West, Florida. 1946 : first book of poems, North and South, the fruit of ten years' work, received the Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award.Introduced to the poet Robert Lowell, and began one of the great friendships of her life. He was interested in her romantically at first, while she emphatically was not. They remained very close friends and corresponded by letter for many years. 1947: Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1947. Given the post of Consultant inPoetry at the Library of Congress.Restless and unhappy, Bishop's life changed again in 1951 when on a visit to Brazil she met and fell in love with Lota de Macedo Soares. She intended to go for two weeks, and stayed two decades, because she became ill from asthma (much more serious then) and Lota nursed her. The two women settled together near Rio de Janeiro.Bishop always said that this was the happiest time of her life - for the first time she had a home.Sadly, the relationship broke down. Lota de Macedo Soares had a busy professional life, which Bishop resented. Bishop returned to the US where she had an affair.There was a brief reconciliation, but Lota died by suicide in 1967.Bishop taught at major universities, such as the University of Washington. She died suddenly in 1979.Bishop’s output was small because she was so self-critical of her work. Only published a book of poetry roughly every ten years. While indubitably a feminist, Bishop never wanted to be published in anthologies of women poets. She wanted to be judged on her talent, not her gender.514357620Background00BackgroundThe FishElizabeth Bishop was a keen fisherwoman. She worked on the poem during the winter of 1939 and sent a finished draft to Marianne Moore in January 1940, and the poem was first published in March 1940. It is included in her first published collection Northand South. As with so many of her poems, it is based on a real experience that she had - in this case, catching a large Caribbean jewfish at Key West.895354445Summary and analysis00Summary and analysisLines 1-21In the first few lines the speaker tells us that she caught a 'tremendous' fish that didn't resist capture at all, probably because, as she says, he was 'battered and venerable' (line 8). 'Battered' suggests that he has suffered: 'venerable' is a word often applied as a term of respect for elderly people, and hints at the respect Bishop feels for him. She then describes uses some unusual and original images that appeal to our senses of sight and touch. The fish’s skin is compared to 'ancient wallpaper' (line 11). Vivid colours enable us to visualise the fish: brown, white and green, as well as suggestions of pink in 'roses'. She gives us a realistic picture of the fish, seeing him not only in imaginative terms but also taking care to present him his fishy flesh and physical characteristics. He is covered in barnacles and infested with sea-lice. From underneath him hang 'rags of green weed' (line 21), seaweed of course, but also suggesting the beard of a 'venerable' old man. Lines 22-33 In these lines Bishop focuses on the fish as an alien creature. The 'frightening gills / fresh and crisp with blood' (lines 24-25) and the 'coarse white flesh' appeal to our sense of touch, while we can see the 'dramatic reds and blacks' of his 'shiny' entrails (line 30-31). The pattern of flower imagery is continued as his pink swim-bladder is compared to a 'big peony' (line 33). Lines 34-64 Despite the barrier between fish and human, Bishop begins to empathise with the fish: 'I looked into his eyes'. Details are important to her, such as the fact that the fish's eyes are larger and shallower than those of humans, and how the irises seem 'backed and packed / with tarnished tinfoil' (lines 37-38). It is characteristic of her method of description that she clarifies this last image: not just any tinfoil but tinfoil 'seen through the lenses / of old scratched isinglass' (lines 39-40). (Isinglass: the word was originally applied to gelatine extracted from the swim bladders of certain fish, but is also used as a term for sheets of mica, a semi-transparent mineral) Isinglass causes an object viewed through it to seem somewhat hazy. The narrator is under no illusion that the creature responds to her, but she certainly responds to him. She 'admires' his 'sullen face, / the mechanism of his jaw' (lines 45- 46). She describes the hooks and fish-lines as 'weapon like', and sees that the fish has struggled many times to escape capture. The fish in escaping capture is compared a general who has endured conflict and is now honoured for it: the fish-lines are 'Like medals with their ribbons / frayed and wavering' (lines 61-62). Now the fish seems really to have earned the adjective 'venerable' used earlier in the poem. Lines 65-76 For the remainder of the poem Bishop is concerned with her own response to capturing the fish. When she says that she 'stared and stared' she suggests that she has an important moment of recognition that influences what she does next. There are a number of aspects to her sense of 'victory that filled up / the little rented boat' (lines 66-67). It was a great achievement to have caught such a 'tremendous fish'. There is also her own victory in achieving an insight into the experience of the fish, how he has struggled and overcome difficulties. Given the circumstances of Bishop's life, it is possible that she sees in the fish a fellow creature, suffering and struggling like herself. She expresses the joy she felt in a lovely metaphor of beauty and hope: a rainbow. The rainbow comes from an ugly spot: oil that had spread in a 'pool of bilge'. She describes parts of the boat as 'rusted' and 'sun-cracked', creating a link between the well-used boat and the 'venerable' fish. It seems appropriate that even the boat shares in the 'victory' which finally belongs to the fish: 'And I let the fish go'. 241935246380Form and structure00Form and structureThe poem is written as one long, dramatic narrative with a clear beginning, progression and ending. It is unrhymed, which gives the sense of someone speaking, with the exception of the last two lines. The rhyming couplet at the end gives a sense of closure. Each line has two stresses (as in 'He didn't fight) or three ('He hadn't fought at all'). This form of metre echoes speech rhythms and is particularly suitable for telling a story. Sound patterns: Although the poem does not rhyme, Bishop makes use of sound patterns such as assonance, consonance and alliteration. You may notice repeated 'u' sounds in 'hung' / 'grunting', T sounds in 'skin' / 'strips' (assonance) , alliteration in 'big bones', 'tarnished tinfoil', consonance in the phrase 'speckled with barnacles', for instance. Such sound patterns are to be found throughout the poem and contribute to its harmonious effect. The poem is narrated in the first person, as are quite a few of Bishop’s poems. This gives a sense of immediacy and an intimacy for the reader. However, there is a hint that the speaker herself is something of an outsider, not a native of the place, the inhabitant of a ‘rented boat’. We are also introduced here to the famous Bishop ‘eye’, which sees both the beautiful and the grimy. She describes not only surface detail but even imagines the interior:The dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails,And the pink swim-bladder like a big peony.200025207645Useful reference to quote in an answer00Useful reference to quote in an answerMinute descriptions and calculated use of detail are a feature of Bishop’s poetry. She is reported as saying to her students (quoted by Wesley Wehr):‘I always tell the truth in my poems. With ‘The Fish’, that’s exactly how it happened. It was in Key West, and I did catch it, just as the poem says. That was in 1938. Oh, but I did change one thing: the poem says he had five hooks hanging from his mouth, but actually he only had three. Sometimes a poem makes its own demands. But I always try to stick as much as possible to what really happened when I describe something in a poem.’The ending of the poem is very similar to a Wordsworth nature poem such as ‘The Daffodils’: the hypnotic vision (‘I stared and stared’), the wealth accruing to the viewer (‘victory filled up the little rented boat’), and feelings of inspiration and joy through creating a connection with the world, a world that has been transformed by the vision, this moment of epiphany. Unlike Wordsworth, it is a spoiled, industrial world, but still beautiful.where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engineto the bailer rusted orange,…until everythingwas rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!-1047750217170Key Quotes00Key QuotesHe hung a grunting weight,battered and venerablehis brown skin hung in stripslike ancient wallpaper,the dramatic reds and blacksof his shiny entrails,and the pink swim-bladderlike a big peony.the irises backed and packedwith tarnished tinfoilseen through the lensesof old scratched isinglass.Like medals with their ribbonsfrayed and wavering,a five-haired beard of wisdomtrailing from his aching jaw.until everythingwas rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!And I let the fish go.156210259080Background00BackgroundThe Prodigal133350562610Useful reference to quote in an answer00Useful reference to quote in an answerThe poem was written in 1951 and is included in A Cold Spring (1955). From her college days, Bishop drank destructively and by 1939 she was an alcoholic. As she had no real family and no permanent home, her drinking often led to her walking out of awkward or embarrassing situations and making herself effectively homeless yet again. She herself tells us that The Prodigal' sprang from an experience in Nova Scotia in 1946 when 'one of my aunt's stepsons offered me a drink of rum, in the pig sties at about nine in the morning'. The poem, a double sonnet, is based on the story of the Prodigal Son told in the gospel of St Luke, chapter 15. The parable describes how the younger son of a rich man claims his inheritance early and leaves home. He squanders all his money and is forced to work as a swineherd, living with the pigs he tends. Eventually he returns home, to be welcomed and forgiven by his father, who is so delighted that he prepares a feast for him. This poem imagines the Prodigal before he decides to go home, and is written from his point of view.80010208280Summary and analysis00Summary and analysisBishop dramatises the time before the prodigal returned home rather than the homecoming itself. She does not flinch from describing the squalor in which the prodigal lives among the pigs in the pigsty, with their 'brown enormous odour', 'breathing' and 'thick hair' (lines 1-2). His life has been degraded, so much so that he does not even know how far he has fallen: he lives too close to the animals 'for him to judge' (line 3). Bishop describes the pigs in a non-judgemental, almost affectionate way. They offer the prodigal some comfort and companionship. Their eyes follow him with 'a cheerful stare', even the sow that 'always ate her young' (lines 6-7). This detail makes us realise how low the prodigal has sunk, especially since he scratches her head in spite of being sickened at what he sees. It is a measure of his self-deception that he has come almost to accept his living conditions. He also deceives himself (and perhaps others too) about his drinking: he 'hid the pints behind a two-by four' (line 10). But the poem suggests that he is still capable of seeing beauty and hope in his surroundings. He appreciates the sunrise that 'glazed the barnyard mud with red' and the 'burning puddles' (lines 11-12). However, his self-deception also allows him to think that he 'almost might endure / his exile' (lines 13- 14) for some time yet. In effect, he is not yet ready to face his problems and change his life. Lines 15-2 3 The second stanza, in effect a second sonnet, opens with the word 'but', which signals another perspective on the situation. There is, for the first time, a note of real hope that the Prodigal may see the error of his ways. The imagery becomes more light-filled and positive than in the first section of the poem, reflecting the more optimistic viewpoint. A star is personified as it comes ‘to warn’ the Prodigal that he is on the wrong path. This reminds us of the star of Bethlehem which led the wise men to the infant Jesus. The implication here may be that a wise man will heed the warning or the guidance offered to him, but the Prodigal is not quite ready to do that yet. It will be ‘a long time’ before he attains enough wisdom to change his ways and go home. The star is not the only allusion to the Bible in this section; the farmer’s lantern leaves a circle of light on the mud that is like a saint’s halo or ‘aureole’, and the animals in the barn are as safe and comfortable as those on Noah’s ark. But there is also a sense of isolation in the image of the farmer going about his business, shutting up the cows and horses in the barn. They may have been 'safe and companionable as in the Ark' (line 20), but there is no indication of any human contact between the farmer and the prodigal. 1943100Epiphany00EpiphanyThe prodigal's moment of truth occurs when he becomes aware of the 'bats' uncertain staggering flight' (line 25), giving him some 'shuddering insights' (line 26). He recognises at last his terrible isolation. The bats terrify him because their blind flight resembles his own stumbles through life and his uncertain future. But the decision 'to go home' is not an easy or inevitable one: it takes him a 'long time' to make it. The implication is that the idea of 'home' is not without problems for the prodigal. Home may be seen as a last resort rather than the first place of refuge, recalling Bishop’s own experience. As she says at the end of 'Questions of Travel': 'should Ihave stayed at home / wherever that may be?' Her own troubled experiences of home and our awareness of Bishop's struggles with alcoholism, make The Prodigal' one of Bishop's most revealing poems. 114300294640Form and structure00Form and structureThe brown enormous odour he lived bywas too close, with its breathing and thick hair,for him to judge.the stywas plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung(he hid the pints behind a two-by-four),But evenings the first star came to warn.safe and companionable as in the Ark.he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight,his shuddering insights, beyond his control,touching him.But it took him a long timefinally to make his mind up to go home.-10325101416685Key Quotes00Key Quotes‘The Prodigal' is structured as two sonnets of a rather loose nature. They each have the requisite fourteen lines, and the first one maintains the conventional octave– sestet division, but the rhyming schemes are eccentric, if not absent altogether. The rhythm is a mixture of iambic pentameter and four-stress lines. It has been pointed out that the last word, 'home', does not have a true rhyme and this has the effect of isolating the word (and the idea) within the poem. 22860204470Background00BackgroundQuestions of TravelThis is the title poem of the collection Questions of Travel (1965). The poem takes a quizzical look at the notion of travel and why we feel the need to do it. It also questions our ability to understand other people's cultures. 41910204470Summary and analysis00Summary and analysisLines 1-12The poem is set in Brazil. At the beginning there is a slight touch of travel-weariness, as if the speaker has seen and done too much. Everything seems excessive and crowded, but beautiful, too. Similes and metaphors help the reader to visualise the landscape, while sound effects such as sibilance ('soft slow motion') and alliteration ('travelling, travelling') help create a harmonious aural effect. Lines 13-29 In this section Bishop raises some of the 'questions of travel'. She wonders whether it would have been better to have stayed at 'home' (in her case, the United States) and 'thought of here' (Brazil). In other words, would imagining some place be as good as travelling to it? Other questions occur to her. What right do tourists have to watch the people of other cultures, as if they were watching a play? The metaphor of theatre emphasises the unreality of travel as opposed to living in a place. The question also touches on what has become a modern concern, the notion of 'ethical' tourism. Possibly addressing the poem to herself as an enthusiastic traveller, Bishop wonders why people feel compelled to seek out different and strange sights. Is it childishness? Her tone is wryly humorous as she describes the usual tourist experience of staring at some 'inexplicable old stonework, / inexplicable and impenetrable' (lines 22-23). Here she implies the limitations we all have in understanding the culture of others. She also comments on the clichéd response most tourists make to the sights that are 'instantly seen' and 'always delightful'. Lines 30-59 Bishop herself said that she was always more interested in her poems in showing the mind in action instead of in repose. Characteristically, then, in the next section she shows herself working out some of the answers to the questions she has asked. But she continues to recognise uncertainty in her own mind, while at the same time delighting herself and the reader with her quirky observations of Brazilian life and culture. The details she chooses bring this world alive to us by appealing to our senses and focusing on the aspects of culture which make Brazil unique. She suggests that the claims of reality are more pressing than those of the imagination. It would surely have been a pity 'not to have seen the trees along this road'. These are particular trees, 'gesturing / like noble pantomimists' and not just a generalised view. She also recalls the 'sad, two-noted wooden tune' of clogs heard 'clacking' over the floor of a gas station. This too is a specific sound, peculiar to the footwear of Brazil and therefore part of its unique culture. Another example she chooses is the 'fat brown bird' that sings in his elaborately designed birdcage, a kind seen throughout South America. Her suggestion is that by studying such artefacts as the wooden clogs and the birdcage, one can understand the culture of a people. Her final observation about the rain in Brazil has a slightly humorous tone: it is 'unrelenting', she says, 'like politicians' speeches'. When it stops, the traveller may ask some final questions in a typical traveller's log or diary. Lines 60-67 The two stanzas at the end are presented in italics, almost like the handwritten notes of a traveller's diary. Once again Bishop returns to the idea of the competing claims of the imagination and of reality. Does the act of travelling imply a lack of imagination, since one can imagine places even if one hasn't visited them? On the other hand, she questions the belief of Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, who stated: '1 have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact,’ that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.' Rather, she suggests, the 'question of travel' is more complex. We may not be as free as we think to choose our destinations. We may not be free not to travel; for some people, staying at home may be impossible. The notion, too, of the 'home' that we leave behind may not be as simple as it seems. We could take into account here the ambivalent attitude to 'home' expressed in ‘The Prodigal'. So her last question about home, 'wherever that may be', is a poignant reminder of the deep loneliness at the heart of so many of her poems. 127635217170Form and structure00Form and structureThe poem is written in free verse. The poem is structured as a dramatic monologue, a dialogue with herself, which is an appropriate form, given the philosophical approach to the subject. Having asked if it would not have been better to stay at home, she proceeds, by a series of negative questions, to reach an indefinite conclusion. The language Bishop uses here is a blend of the poetic and the conversational, which seems appropriate to convey the notion of someone thinking aloud. She handles many variations of tone: the poem is at different times speculative, tentative, humorous and lyrical. She uses the now familiar method, combining precise observation with her idiosyncratic descriptions, where objects are made to look entirely strange so that we view them in a new light. She draws the reader in with detail and then challenges us visually to look hard and understand. We can see this at work in the first section. Using all the conventional poetic devices of alliteration, assonance and sibilance, she recreates the fluid continuity of the waterfalls as they ‘spill over the sides in soft slow-motion’. With graphic, clever imagery she evokes the gigantic scale of the scene, giving it an aura of sadness (‘those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains’). Then, shockingly, we are invited to this upside-down view of the mountains: the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, slime-hung and barnacled. She has domesticated them by reference to ships, yet allowed them to retain their strangeness. left215900Key Quotes00Key Quotesspill over the sides in soft slow-motion,Alliterationthe mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,slime-hung and barnacled.What childishness is it that while there's a breath of lifein our bodies, we are determined to rushto see the sun the other way around?And have we roomfor one more folded sunset, still quite warm?the sad, two-noted, wooden tuneof disparate wooden clogsOr could Pascal have been not entirely rightabout just sitting quietly in one's room?‘Should we have stayed at home,wherever that may be?' left217170Background00BackgroundThe ArmadilloThis poem was published in the New Yorker on the 22nd of June 1957 and falls among the later of the first batch of poems about Brazil that Bishop published. She had been working on various components of it for a number of months, if not years. The fire balloons, the armadillo, the owls and the rabbit feature in her letters of the previous year, describing St John's day, 24th of June, which is the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere. It was the custom of the local people to send up fire balloons into the sky, which then self-ignited as they drifted towards the shrine of St John in the mountains. They often caused forest fires. The practice was declared illegal because of ecological damage but it still occurred widely. Bishop wrote to a friend in 1955 that she was in two minds about the fire balloons. She admired them as they lit up the sky, but she was horrified at the damage they caused. Dedication to Robert Lowell Lowell had said that his famous poem ‘Skunk Hour’ was indebted to ‘The Armadillo’. So, when she finally published it in Questions of Travel (1965), Bishop dedicated the poem to him. Also, Lowell had become a conscientious objector to the Second World War when the Allies fire-bombed German cities such as Dresden, a dreadful act of inhumanity. The gesture of defiance of destruction from the skies finds an echo in the last stanza of the poem. left36195Summary and analysis00Summary and analysisAs in many of Bishop's poems, she begins with a short narrative (This is the time of year') that sets the poem in context. She writes as an observer rather than a participant in the custom. When you read the poem you can trace the differing attitudes she has to the balloons. You you can almost hear her thinking aloud as she describes the balloons as precisely as possible - what they look like, how they move through the sky. The tone at this stage is admiring. She sees the balloons as hearts, as stars, responding to their charm and recognising the loving reason for their existence. In the third and fourth stanzas the tone is still admiring as she describes how the balloons float upwards towards the major constellation in the southern hemisphere, the Southern Cross. 'Steadily forsaking us' - mere mortals looking up - there is a suggestion that they have a higher purpose as they make their way towards the heavens. But quite soon we are made aware of the dreadful consequences when the balloons drop into the forest. The word 'dangerous' (line 20) takes the reader aback somewhat. Images of suffering birds and animals, presented still without comment, have an emotive effect on the reader: the owls that are burnt out of their nest and that 'shrieked out of sight' in pain and terror; the armadillo, defenceless against fire and forced out into the open. A ‘baby rabbit', soft and short-eared, is seen in a horrifying image as 'a handful of intangible ash', his eyes 'ignited', destroyed by fire. 704852370455Form and structure00Form and structureIn the final stanza, placed in italics for emphasis, Bishop's indignation finally breaks through. It is not entirely clear to whom she is addressing the accusation ‘Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!’ in the final stanza. Is she accusing the balloons of being deceptively pretty, as she had described them earlier? Unlike the stars which they resemble, they are dangerous to the animals here on earth. Or, as has been suggested, might she be addressing herself as a poet, criticising her depiction of the whole scene as too beautiful, too obviously poetic, when what is really happening is horrific? If we reread the poem in the light of the final stanza, we become aware of the poetic devices she has used - simile, metaphor, sound effects such as alliteration and rhyme and above all powerful imagery. The poet's art has been exposed for what it is - an act of pretty mimicry. There is no mistaking the angry tone, however. The speaker is in complete sympathy with the natural world here. The armadillo, as she depicts him in the last two lines, is ignorant of evil and powerless to protect himself in the face of human cruelty. -876300435610Useful reference to quote in an answer00Useful reference to quote in an answerPenelope Laurans (in Elizabeth Bishop: Modern Critical Views, edited by Harold Bloom)examines in detail how the poet shapes the reader’s response to this beautiful and cruel event: 1.by a factual presentation, describing what happens; 2.by metrical variation – in other words, continually changing rhythm so as not to allow the reader to become lost in the lyrical music. The metrical variation stops the momentum of the verse. A detailed study of the first four stanzas will show how this operates. Stanzas 1 and 2 have a regular metrical pattern: lines 1, 2 and 4 are all of three stresses, with the five-stress third line emphasising the descriptions of the balloons, their frailty, beauty and flashing romanticism. Then stanzas 3 and 4 change to varying three-stress and four-stress lines. The abab rhyme of the first stanza changes in the second.-981075207010Key Quotes00Key QuotesKey Quotesthe frail, illegal fire balloons appear.the paper chambers flush and fill with lightthat comes and goes, like hearts.We saw the pairof owls who nest there flying upand up, their whirling black-and-whitestained bright pink underneath,So soft! - a handful of intangible ashwith fixed, ignited eyes.Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!a weak mailed fistclenched ignorant against the sky!13335241300Background00BackgroundSestina (Questions of Travel - 1965). It was originally called 'Early Sorrow'. It was among the first poems Elizabeth Bishop wrote about her childhood. She was in her fifties, living in Brazil, before she was able to write about her traumatic experiences as a child in Nova Scotia, just before and after her mother's final departure for the mental institution in which she was to spend the rest of her life. It is thought that psychoanalysis helped Bishop to work through memories of that time. 5715012700Summary and analysis00Summary and analysisStanza 1 The domestic scene painted at the beginning of the poem seems cosy at first. We can picture the child and the grandmother reading from the almanac, surrounded by familiar and comforting objects. But as the poem progresses we become aware that all is not well. The grandmother is 'laughing and talking to hide her tears' (line 6). It is raining and the light is 'failing'. These images are bleak and rather threatening. They seem to contradict some of the apparent cosiness of the scene. Stanza 2 Bishop enters into the child's mind as she tries to make sense of what is taking place. She has no idea why her grandmother is crying, but thinks in her childish way that the almanac had foretold her tears, as it had the weather. As children do, Bishop focuses on the familiar objects around her - the kettle, the stove. Stanza 3 From a child's perspective objects often have a personality and a life. To the young Elizabeth, the teakettle's 'small hard tears' (overflow of water) seem to 'dance like mad' on the 'hot black' stove. This is a revealing image. The stove that seemed so cheerful, almost toy-like in the first stanza now appears threatening. The drops of water that dance 'like mad' jolt us into remembering that Elizabeth Bishop's mother was institutionalised for mental illness when Bishop was a young child. The phrase suggests something out of control that contrasts with the grandmother's actions in 'tidying up' and hanging up the almanac. Stanza 4 The grandmother is clearly suffering grief for what has happened to her daughter and to the child, but hides her sorrow by drinking tea and pretending she feels chilly. To the child, the almanac that hovers over them on the wall is 'birdlike' - another rather menacing image. The tea cup is full of 'dark brown tears'. As in the previous stanzas, Bishop's language here is simple and childlike, focusing throughout on objects (linguistically on nouns). Bishop's experience of psychoanalysis and her readings of child psychology taught her that young children tend first of all to name the world, without realising the significance of what it is these names represent. In the poem these objects come to bear the weight of the child's emotions, without her being consciously aware that this is so. Stanza 5 The child makes the stove and the almanac speak. Neither of them says directly what has happened or is happening in that family, since the child Elizabeth was unlikely to have been told exactly what that was. But psychoanalysis made Bishop familiar with the concept of a child's knowing and not knowing at the same time. The pictures a child who has been traumatised draws are often quite revealing, too. So, for instance, the 'rigid house' that the child Elizabeth draws, with the figure of a man in it, might be understood by a psychologist to represent her awareness of the father she had lost (Elizabeth Bishop's father died when she was an infant). Stanza 6Although still poignant, the mood seems to lift somewhat in this stanza. In her child's imagination Bishop sees the 'little moons' of the almanac (that denote the changing months) falling 'down like tears' onto the flower bed that she has drawn in her picture. Might the flower bed suggest a sense of hope for the future? At the very least it points to a possibility of beauty and happiness in the future. EnvoyBishop makes the almanac speak again. It gives a rather cryptic message to the child: Time to plant tears'. We can interpret this message in a number of ways. For example, it could suggest that the fruits of this difficult time will grow for years to come. Or it might be a burying of the tears?41910208280Form and structure00Form and structureThe sestina formA sestina is a poem of six stanzas of six lines each, in which the line endings of the first stanza are repeated, but in different order, in the other five. The poem concludes with an envoy, which is a short address to the reader (or the person to whom the poem is addressed). So the elements here are: house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac and tears; and they are rearranged in the other stanzas like a sort of moving collage. Some of the elements carry greater symbolic weight, such as the almanac, which has been construed as representing the poet’s lifelong anxiety about the passing of time. Almanacs were essential to fishermen and farmers. They also contained a great deal of material just there for entertainment, so the phases of the moon as a scientific fact might be accompanied by a horoscope.The house is a pictorial representation of her childhood, and the little Marvel Stove seems to provide a counterbalance of domesticity, heat and comfort. This poem proves Bishop was a highly accomplished poet on a technical level, as well as a master of detail. The difficult, somewhat contrived form is an unusual choice for such an emotional moment, but it allows a kind of detachment from the feelings that the child felt.-100012554610Key Quotes00Key QuotesKey Quotesreading the jokes from the almanac,laughing and talking to hide her tears.but the childis watching the teakettle's small hard tearsdance like mad on the hot black stove,Birdlike, the almanachovers half open above the child,hovers above the old grandmotherand her teacup full of dark brown tears.With crayons the child draws a rigid houseand a winding pathway.the little moons fall down like tearsfrom between the pages of the almanacTime to plant tears, says the almanac.The grandmother sings to the marvellous stoveand the child draws another inscrutable house.13335208280Background00BackgroundFirst Death in Nova Scotia (Questions of Travel - 1965)Again, this was written after psychoanalysis to help her come to terms with a traumatic past. The poem tells of her first disturbing encounter with death. It is interesting to note that it contains one of the few direct references to her mother found in her work, although her presence is implicit in many of her poems of loss. The poem is set in her childhood and concerns the death of her cousin, whom she calls Arthur. The elegy is based on an actual funeral, probably in 1914, of a cousin named Frank. Elizabeth was not quite four when the child died. As in 'Sestina' the perspective is that of a child. 41910205740Summary and analysis00Summary and analysisThe child-narrator describes the scene in the parlour where Arthur has been 'laid out', significantly enough by Elizabeth's own mother. The parlour is 'cold, cold'. From the beginning, repetition plays a part in creating atmosphere. As a child does, Bishop names the objects that she sees in the room where Arthur lies: the coloured pictures of the British Royal family on the walls (Canada was still part of the Commonwealth) and the stuffed bird that had been shot by Arthur's father. Stanza 2 At the beginning the child's interest appears to lie completely in the stuffed bird. As a child does, she personifies the bird, saying that he 'hadn't said a word' since he was shot. Like a child, too, she focuses on the primary colours of the bird and his 'red' glass eyes. She seems unable to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. But her awareness of his silence and his motionlessness is perhaps a way of skirting around the subject of death rather than articulating it fully. Stanza 3She remembers being lifted up by her mother to 'say goodbye' to her little cousin. This is a poignant little scene, all the more so when we consider that once again Elizabeth's memory of her mother is bound up with moments of loss. In a childlike image she describes Arthur's coffin as a 'little frosted cake'. In her childish way she imagines the 'red-eyed loon' (is he weeping too?) wanting it for himself. Stanza 4Bishop describes Arthur in his coffin as a child might. The language is simple. The images are those that a little girl might have chosen. Arthur is 'like a doll'. 'Jack Frost' is a name children often give to frost; here it allows Bishop to show how aware the child is of the coldness of death. At this point she associates the winter frost of Arthur's pallor with the Canadian flag and by extension the Canadian National Anthem (at the time of writing), ‘The Maple Leaf Forever'. In her confusion she thinks that Jack Frost had begun to paint the child but had left him unfinished, but by repeating the word 'forever' she shows that somehow she knows that Arthur himself is gone forever. Stanza 5 In this final stanza the child invents a sort of fairy-tale ending for Arthur. He is going to be a 'page at court' for the royal family whose pictures are on the walls. They, like the loon, are seen to be in the colours of death - red and ermine (white fur). But, as she asks, how could Arthur go out in the snow all alone? This is a terrifying image for a child, and suggests that deep down she knows that it is impossible. 13335207645Form and structure00Form and structureThe poem is divided into five ten-lined, mostly unrhymed, stanzas. Longer stanzas allow her to give the impression of a child observing and thinking. The metre chosen by Bishop in this poem, mainly three-stressed lines (trimeter) has been regarded as the most speech-like of metres and therefore appropriate to telling a story (see also ‘The Fish’). This is another of Bishop’s poems in which she is very successful at recreating the consciousness of a child and establishing the point of view of the very young. She manages to suggest the feelings of confusion through the blurring of colour distinctions. Red and white, the national colours, seem to permeate the entire scene, or at least colour the meaning of it. As well as of the national flag, they become the colours of little Arthur, of the dead bird, of the royal robes, and even of the coffin timbers. The child has held on to just one set of familiar colours. There is also a notable absence of comfort from the adults. It is very -1009650970915Key Quotes00Key Quotesmuch a child trying to make sense of an experience beyond her comprehension.In the cold, cold parlormy mother laid out ArthurSince Uncle Arthur fireda bullet into him,he hadn't said a word.His breast was deep and white,cold and caressable;his eyes were red glass,much to be desired.Arthur's coffin wasa little frosted cake,and the red-eyed loon eyed itfrom his white, frozen lake.Jack Frost had started to paint himthe way he always paintedthe Maple Leaf (Forever).Jack Frost had dropped the brushand left him white, forever.But how could Arthur go,clutching his tiny lily,with his eyes shut up so tightand the roads deep in snow?41910208280Background00BackgroundFilling Station (Questions of Travel, 1965)Many of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems show a fascination with the exotic: with travel, with the mysterious forces in nature, and with the extremes of human experience; but she is also a poet of the ordinary, the everyday, the mundane and banal. She is interested in both the extraordinary and the ordinary.Stanzas l and 2The poet almost seems to enjoy describing the grease and grime she sees in a petrol station, where presumably she has stopped to fill up her car. Everything she sees seems oily and dirty: 'oil-soaked, oil-permeated' to the extent that it has an 'over-all / black translucency' or shine (lines 3-5). Humorously, she warns (herself or someone else) to be careful with a lighted match, or the place would go up in flames. She then turns her attention to the family who own and work in the station, a father and 'several' sons. Like their surroundings, they are all 'greasy' and 'quite thoroughly dirty' (line 13).The lone of voice here is quite light-hearted. Stanza 3With characteristic Bishop curiosity about the world around her she begins to ask questions about what she sees here. She finds some evidence to answer her own question as to whether the family live in the filling station, unlikely as it might seem at first. On the porch she can see a set of wicker chairs, 'crushed and grease- / impregnated' like everything else, and there is an equally dirty dog, 'quite comfy', lying on the sofa (lines 19-20). The colloquial word 'comfy' suggests she finds the scene pleasant despite the dirt. This is certainly not a soulless, alien place, though even at this stage we cannot fail to notice that there is no mention of a woman in this masculine environment. Stanzas 4 and 5In the fourth stanza other objects attract her attention. Comic books 'provide / the only note of colour / of certain colour'. The detail of the line highlights how impossible it really is to know what colour anything here really is. She notices a 'big dim doily' (ornamental table mat) placed over a taboret (a type of seat) as well as a big hairy plant. Then in the stanza that follows she wonders aloud about these objects - 'Why the extraneous plant? / Why the taboret? / Why, oh why, the doily?' (lines 28-30). Although everything is dirty ('doily' even rhymes with 'oily'), these are objects that suggest a desire for a more orderly life. The doily may be 'grey' now but it has been carefully crocheted. -1057275294005Epiphany00EpiphanyStanza 6Bishop answers her own questions in the final stanza. Somebody cares about this place and has tried to improve it, even if their efforts are futile. That same 'somebody' has taken the trouble to arrange the petrol cans in some kind of order, so that they 'softly say / esso-so-so-so' (Esso is a brand of petrol). Bishop herself explained these words as sounds used to soothe restless horses, which accounts for the next witty line: 'to high-strung automobiles'. They suggest a calming influence in the midst of the work-like atmosphere of the filling station. The final line, 'Somebody loves us all', sums up her sense that there is an affectionate presence there, possibly a maternal figure that completes the family although she is not visibly present. left226060Form and structure00Form and structureAllegoryAn allegory is a story with a symbolic meaning. Some people have interpreted 'Filling Station' as an allegory of human life. The filling station has been seen as a symbol of the real world that is full of disorder and sordidness. Efforts to make it orderly with some kind of decoration (the doily, the begonia, the petrol cans) can be interpreted as a metaphor for our earthly efforts to create beauty out of ugliness, meaning out of randomness. 'Somebody loves us all' may then imply a divine perspective that oversees our efforts. The poet has placed the word 'Somebody' within the last stanza so that it takes a capital letter, a respect normally given to the word God. The phrase recalls the phrase often embroidered on samplers (or perhaps, in this case, a doily): 'God loves us all'. For Bishop, is domesticity is the greatest good, and is establishing domestic tranquillity what gives meaning to life? Has she elevated this into a philosophy of life in place of a religious outlook? Indeed this last stanza has been read as a parody of the great theological argument from design, used as a proof of the existence of God by the celebrated Dominican Thomas Aquinas, among others. In Bishop’s ‘theology’, is the Great designer feminine? Bishop makes frequent use of sibilance (repetition of s sounds) in the poem, for instance in words such as 'soaked', 'translucency', 'saucy', 'greasy' and so on throughout the poem. The poem does not rhyme, as is appropriate when the impression is that of someone thinking, but assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) in 'black' / 'match', for instance, and alliteration in 'family filling', 'dim doily' contribute to the harmony of the poem. This poem doesn't follow any formal poetic structure. The poem is made up of six stanzas, all of six or seven lines each (except for the last stanza, which has eight). Bishop keeps the lines relatively uniform and short. It's a very descriptive poem, with relatively little action, so perhaps she does this to keep the momentum goingAnaphora: That's a term for a repeated word or phrase, especially at the beginning of a series of lines. Bishop uses the repetition of "somebody" toward the end of the poem to establish a rhythmic pattern. After about the second "somebody" it is clear that we are meant to be paying attention, and this "somebody" is important.Bishop is a poet of patience, persistence, and immaculate detail. She has the ability to make a specific, even seemingly uninteresting place, come to life in 30-40 lines. She does this by describing everything in vivid, clear detail, even when it a grotty, grimy filling station. Bishop makes us stop and study what we might ordinarily never give a second glance. -1038225560070Key Quotes00Key QuotesOh, but it is dirty!oil-soaked, oil-permeatedto a disturbing, over-allblack translucency.Be careful with that match!several quick and saucyand greasy sons assist him(it's a family filling station),a set of crushed and grease impregnatedwickerwork;on the wicker sofaa dirty dog, quite comfy.big dim doilyWhy the extraneous plant?Why the taboret?Why, oh why, the doily?Somebodyarranges the rows of cansso that they softly say:ESSO-SO-SO-SOto high-strung automobiles.Somebody loves us all.'In the Waiting Room' (Geography III -1976). 22860217805Background00BackgroundElizabeth Bishop was six when her paternal grandparents 'kidnapped' her and brought her to live with them in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the poem is set. She revealed in a letter to a friend that her memory of the experience she describes in the poem was detailed and vivid. She wrote the poem, like 'Sestina' and 'First Death in Nova Scotia', when she was in her fifties - almost half a century after the experience it recalls. The fabled truth of Bishop’s descriptions lets her down here. Research has shown that there are no naked people in the National Geographic of February 1918, and Osa and Martin Johnson had not yet become famous at that time. So for once her realism is a product of poetic licence.left208280Summary and analysis00Summary and analysisLines 1-16The poem begins with a narrative account in a factual tone of a visit Bishop made as a child with her Aunt Consuelo (Aunt Florence in real life) to a dentist. The location and the time are described very precisely and with Bishop's usual eye for detail. We can visualise the people waiting, dressed appropriately for that time and place in 'arctics [overshoes] and overcoats' (line 9). While she waits for her aunt to come out from the dentist’s treatment room, the child Elizabeth reads the National Geographic magazine and looks at the photographs. Lines 17-35The narrator records what she sees in the photographs - pictures of a volcano as it erupts and famous explorers dressed for their expeditions. But other pictures surprise and disturb ber, as visions of a world she hardly knew existed. There are images of cannibalism (the 'Long Pig' slung on a pole), as well as babies with seemingly deformed heads and naked black women with their necks 'wound round and round with wire / like the necks of light bulbs'. The reader may be aware that what she sees are the beautifying rituals and customs of other cultures, but the child Elizabeth has no such frame of reference. She can only stare in alarm at the 'horrifying' breasts of the women. She is so embarrassed that she is 'too shy to stop". Lines 36-53She hears a cry of pain and thinks it must be Aunt Consuelo in the dentist's chair. It sounds timid, as she knows her aunt to be, but she can ignore that and distance herself from the foolish woman ('I might have been embarrassed, / but wasn't') until she realises with horror that the sound was her own involuntary cry of surprise at what she has seen in the magazine: 'my voice, in my mouth' (line 47). Perhaps she cried out at the same time as her aunt. Perhaps it was only ever her own voice, which she has realised is just like her aunt's. But suddenly she is disorientated, no longer distanced: 'Without thinking at all /I was my foolish aunt'. For the first time she becomes aware of herself as a human being with her own identity and place in the world. She realises that she and her aunt share an identity as family members and as women, and that they are both connected as human beings with the people in the photographs. Her disorientation at this discovery is expressed in images of 'falling, falling', almost fainting, trying to hold on to the date and the time, February 1918. Lines 54-74The narrator clings to ordinary facts - that she will be ‘seven in three days' - to counteract the bewildering discovery she has made, which she continues to describe as having the 'sensation of falling off / the round, turning world / into cold, blue-black space.' The image of the globe is revealing. It suggests that she is losing the sense of perspective that allows one to view the world from one's own particular vantage point of location and culture. As a child, of course, she could not have analysed her own experiences in this way, and the narrator does not suggest that she does. Instead she shows us Elizabeth coming to realise that she is an individual, and that she is also 'one of them' - a member of the human race, but specifically a female. She asks the unanswerable question: 'Why should you be one too?' What she does express is a realisation that she is not unique in the world. Even as a child she senses how important this discovery is. Lines 7 5-99In these lines the child's questions continue. She wonders about the similarities between herself and her aunt and between them and the women in the photographs. How could human beings all be individuals and yet so similar? And how and why was she here in that particular place, at that particular moment, listening to the patient cry out in the dentist's room? These are fundamental, unanswerable questions, and Bishop does not attempt to answer them. Instead we see her characteristic ability to accept uncertainty. After the feelings of shock - she is still 'sliding / beneath a big black wave' - she is 'back in it', that is, the world she knows, Worcester, Massachusetts, in February 1918, with seasonal weather outside and ordinary men and women in the dentist's waiting room.-1051560-8383905Useful reference for quotation in an answer00Useful reference for quotation in an answerThese twin realisations of being an individual and yet somehow being uneasily connected to this strange and varied world form the central wisdom of this poem, what her biographer Brett Millier has described as ‘the simultaneous realisation of selfhood and the awful otherness of the inevitable world’. It is interesting that Bishop chooses the age of seven to mark this onset of adult awareness, an age traditionally seen as initiating moral responsibility. She herself has dated the onset of many of her own most important attitudes from the age of six or seven, including a feeling of strangeness or alienation from the world. She also dates the beginnings of her feminist philosophy from that age. 32385303530Form and structure00Form and structureFree VerseThis poem was written in free verse; it has no set rhyme scheme or meter. The poem is made up of five stanzas. The first two are quite long, but they get progressively shorter. The stanzas become short once Elizabeth asks her big questions. It's almost like the gaps between the stanzas reflect her inability to answer the big questions that she poses. Instead of answers, we get (almost) silence. So, even though the poem is free verse, its form still affects its meaning. When the poem is read aloud, it sounds quite matter-of-fact. Even the big emotional moments of the poem are written in uncomplicated words. And though the speaker is no longer the six-year-old Elizabeth in the poem – she's narrating from a future point in time and looking back on this experience – the poem has some of the simplicity of child's speech.-9906001330960Key Quotes00Key QuotesBishop is known for her finely tuned and precise poems. In a Bishop poem, every word matters. She is a master of detailed description. She doesn't just tell us that she's reading National Geographic: she tells us the date of the issue. She doesn't just talk about the knees of the patients in the waiting room: she tells us about their "shadowy grey knees." Outer space isn't black: it's "blue-black." She is expert at creating a world in her poems. and while I waited I readthe National Geographic(I could read)black, naked women with neckswound round and round with wirelike the necks of light bulbs.Their breasts were horrifying.even then I knew she wasa foolish, timid woman.What took mecompletely by surprisewas that it was me:my voice, in my mouth.the sensation of falling offthe round, turning worldinto cold, blue-black space.Why should you be one, too?shadowy gray knees,Why should I be my aunt,or me, or anyone?It was slidingbeneath a big black wave,another, and another.Outside, 95in Worcester, Massachusetts,were night and slush and cold,and it was still the fifthof February, 1918. ................
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