Elizabeth Bishop Essay

Elizabeth Bishop is a very highly skilled poet. She deals with several different but equally interesting subject matters. I am personally drawn to many elements of her work, for example her themes and style of writing. Bishop deals with many different themes, including family, death, beauty and survival. She also uses a very unique and intriguing style of writing. Bishop has a remarkable eye for detail, her poems reach a conclusion and she puts a huge amount of her own life into her work. Firstly I will look at the themes of her poetry. Family, childhood and home are recurring themes throughout her poetry. Bishop had quite an unfortunate childhood and lost both her parents at quite a young age. This is reflected in the unnerving images she often employs in accounts of her childhood. This theme is central to many of her poems. â€Å"Sestina†, for example, is dominated by mages of rain, failing light and tears. Also in â€Å"First Death in Nova Scotia† she captures the confusion of a child faced with the inexplicable fact of her cousin’s death. The use of the third person voice in â€Å"sestina† blends the poet’s adult perspective with the child’s. It also allows Bishop to distance herself emotionally. Quite noticeably there is no mother in â€Å"sestina†, which is reinforced by the repetition of â€Å"grandmother.† This lack of parental figure in Bishop’s life is common in her poems, all but â€Å"First Death in Nova Scotia†. â€Å"Come,’ said my mother† Bishop lost her mother at five years of age. Although her mother didn’t die at this time it is notable that the only poem in which she is mentioned is predominantly about death. It seems Bishop never knew a true home and her search for a sense of belonging is apparent in â€Å"Filling Station.† At first she is disgusted by the â€Å"dirty† filling station. However as the poem progresses she discovers that it is a â€Å"family filling station.† She notices a warmer, more feminine touch in the home. â€Å"They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret.† Bishop tells us that â€Å"somebody† embroidered the doily. This somebody is the mother of the â€Å"greasy sons.† There are also many other domestic comparisons in her work, such as the reference to â€Å"ancient wallpaper† and â€Å"tarnished tinfoil† in â€Å"The Fish.† â€Å"The Fish† uses many different types of descriptions. Bishop’s use of both factual, objective imagery and aesthetic, subjective imagery is an element of her work which really appealed to me. In contrast to factual description such as â€Å"rags of green weed hung down† there is quite a bit of romanticising such as â€Å"five haired beard of wisdom.† There is also a contrasting link between the fish and roses. Once again Bishop takes something quite unpleasant and makes it beautiful. â€Å"Speckled with barnacles† is hardly a pleasant image, much like the skin of the fish hanging off. However Bishop’s carefully chosen language shows beauty. Bishop also finds beauty in the most miserable of scenes. This is clear in â€Å"The Prodigal.† The prodigal lives in a pig sty, he leads a truly disgusting life. However Bishop’s ability to find beauty in the most miserable of places shines through. â€Å"The sunrise gazed the barnyard mud with red.† Beauty is discovered through a series of observations in â€Å"Filling Station.† At first glance the filling station is a filthy and thoroughly unpleasant place to be. â€Å"Oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing overall black translucency.† However she continues to discover more and more about their home and the images become more pleasant. â€Å"Embroidered with daisy stitch with marguerites.† Another interesting theme throughout Bishop’s work is death. â€Å"First Death in Nova Scotia† deals with a child’s first experience of death. The child is younger than five and doesn’t understand death. This is showing where she speaks about the stuffed loon. â€Å"Since Uncle Arthur fired a bullet into him he hadn’t said a word.† The child doesn’t understand what has happened or what will happen to â€Å"little cousin Arthur.† She is unfamiliar with coffins and compares his to a â€Å"little frosted cake† because it is small and white. In the final lines of the poem the child becomes frustrated due to her confusion. â€Å"But how could Arthur go and the roads deep in snow?† Throughout â€Å"The Fish† the animal’s life is in the speaker’s hands. She holds him â€Å"half out of water,† while he breathes in the â€Å"terrible oxygen†, the fish is slowly dying in her hands and she must decide whether or not he is worth saving. Ultimately the speaker decides the fish is far too â€Å"venerable† to lose its life. â€Å"And I let the fish go.† The final theme I will look at is survival. This is shown best in â€Å"The Fish† and â€Å"The Prodigal.† â€Å"The Fish† shows that nature’s creatures are like humans in their ability to suffer and learn from that suffering. The â€Å"tremendous† creature has escaped death at the hands of previous fishermen 5 times. â€Å"A five haired heard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw.† The word â€Å"wisdom† shows that he has become wise from his struggles. â€Å"The Prodigal† shows survival in a different sense. The alcoholic in this poem will endure anything to maintain his addiction. Surviving in vile conditions to maintain his drinking. â€Å"The Prodigal† also made me question my own attitudes towards addiction, helping me to understand and sympathise with it. Many poems have attention to the senses. This shows Bishop’s commitment to detail. This is very strong in â€Å"The Prodigal.† Sound, â€Å"their little feet and snored;† smell, â€Å"the brown enormous odour;† touch â€Å"he leaned to scratch her head;† and sight â€Å"plastered half way up with glass smooth dung.† This attention to all our senses is also strong in â€Å"The Prodigal†. Sound, â€Å"their little feet and snored†; smell â€Å"The brown enormous odour†; touch â€Å"he leaned to scratch her head†; and of course sight â€Å"the sty was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung† Our senses are also used in â€Å"Sestina†. Sound, â€Å"rain that beats; smell â€Å"she cuts some bread†; touch â€Å"she thinks the house feels chilly†; and finally sight â€Å"With crayons the child draws a rigid house†. Bishop’s concern with every day, ordinary objects also adds to her compelling dedication to detail. This is at the heart of â€Å"The Fish,† â€Å"Filling Station† and â€Å"First Death in Nova Scotia.† As such she allows us to see how wonderfully attractive the world can be if we stop and pay attention to the details. In â€Å"The Fish† for example, Bishop describes a â€Å"tremendous,† fish that she caught. She compares the fish’s skin to â€Å"ancient wallpaper† and speaks of the â€Å"rosettes of lime† that she sees. Even the aspects of the fish that she cannot see, his insides and entrails, she describes in intricate detail. Likewise this fascinating attention to detail is also apparent in â€Å"Filling Station.† Standing before an average filling station the poet becomes increasingly curious about the place. â€Å"Why the extraneous plant?† she wonders. In â€Å"First Death in Nova Scotia,† we discover Bishop’s commitment to detail was something she possessed even as a young child. â€Å"Edward, Prince of Wales†¦ with Queen Mary.† As she tells this poem from her childhood perspective the images are childlike and unusual, however they stay true to her particular technique. This ability of Bishop’s to see beyond the ordinary, to note and appreciate the wonder in the everyday objects around us is refreshing All of Bishops poetry reveals how time spent observing the world around us can lead to interesting conclusions and insights. Colour is also an appealing quality of her work. There is a lot of colour throughout â€Å"The Fish†, we never go more than a few lines without the next addition of colour. These colours get much more vibrant as the poem progresses, going from his â€Å"brown skin† to â€Å"rusted orange.† The steady progression of colour ultimately leads to the exclamation â€Å"rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!† In â€Å"The Prodigal† she mentioned â€Å"the brown enormous odour.† Attaching a colour to the odour strengthens the unbearable stench and I think it creates one of Bishop’s strongest descriptions. Unlike â€Å"The Fish†, â€Å"First Death in Nova Scotia,† references the same colours repeatedly. Red and white are repeated and references continuously. The â€Å"frozen lake† which the loon sits on is mentioned twice along with â€Å"frosted cake,† â€Å"white like a doll,† and â€Å"left him white forever.† This colour may represent peace or innocence. The child also mentions the loon’s â€Å"red eyes† twice, as well as â€Å"a few strokes of red† and â€Å"warm in red.† This may represent pain or suffering. There is also reference to colour in â€Å"Filling Station.† The difference here is that Bishop focuses on the lack of definite colour. Greys and blacks make up the scene, â€Å"Black translucency.† The repetition of â€Å"dirty† reinforces this. The lack of colour makes the comics stand out, â€Å"the only note of certain colour.† A common theme throughout all of Bishop’s work is her ability to reach a conclusion in order to end the poem. Her conclusions include â€Å"And I let the fish go†; â€Å"But it took him a long time finally to make his mind up to go home†; â€Å"The child draws another inscrutable house† and â€Å"Somebody loves us all†. Quite notable there isn’t a pleasant ending to â€Å"First Death in Nova Scotia† which reinforces the lack of understanding in the child and her inability to give her cousin a happy ending. What I personally admire most about Bishop’s work is how much of herself she puts into her poetry. On a deeper level, â€Å"Filling Station† may be about Bishop herself. She missed and longed for a mother figure in her own life. Sadly she and her mother were separated when she was only 5 years old. â€Å"Sestina† deals with the period of time just after the separation. The mother is absent from the scene and she draws a man who we presume is her late father. â€Å"Then the child puts in a man†. â€Å"The Prodigal† represents her problems with alcoholism and was inspired by drinking in a barn. She, like the prodigal, suffered with addiction. â€Å"First death in Nova Scotia† is the only poem where Bishop mentions her mother, showing us she has some memory of her. It is significant that the only poem where she mentions her is one where death and the understanding of death is the central theme. â€Å"The Fish† shows the ability to struggle on and survive, despite all odds. The Fish was like Bishop because it had grown tired of fighting for its life. Bishop’s poetry displays her need throughout her life to find stability and order. Bishop never outgrew the loss of her mother and the terrible feeling of not belonging. Elizabeth Bishop’s work is fantastic and compelling, allowing the reader to see into her own life through varied themes and subject matters. Her style of writing is appealing and unusual and this makes her an incredibly skilled poet. Bishop is honest in her portrayal of her upbringing which is undoubtable very appealing.