The Unseen Poem and Elizabeth Bishop - Dublin Academy...The Unseen Poem and Elizabeth Bishop No part...

6th Year English

Higher Level Michael Ruaidhri Deasy

The Unseen Poem and

Elizabeth Bishop

No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from The Dublin School of Grinds. Ref: 6/eng/h/mrd/The Unseen Poem and Elizabeth Bishop

©The Dublin School of Grinds Page 2 Michael R Deasy

The Unseen poem section is worth 20 marks (5% of the exam) and will be the second last section on Paper 2. Contents Part 1: Pages Introduction to poetry and how to study a poem……………………………………..3-6 Past Exam Question 2014…...……………………………………………………………7 Poems……………………………………………………………………………………..8-9 Performance……………………………………………………………………………….10

Contents Part 2:

Subject Matter/topics in Bishops’s poetry…………………………………....P12

Main themes/ideas…………………………………………………………………P13

Imagery……………..………………………………………………………………..P14

The Fish…………………………………………………………………………...…P15 The Bight…………………………………………………………………………….P17 At the Fishhouses…………………………………………………………………..P19 The Prodigal…………………………………………………………………………P23 First Death in Nova Scotia…………………………………………………………P25 Filling Station ……………………………………………………………………….P27 In the Waiting Room………………………………………………………………..P29

Biography………………………………………………………………………….…P32


Introduction to poetry and how to study a poem- What your examiner is looking for.

Let’s start with the marking scheme all examiners will use to correct your exam... In particular 2 quotes from their guidelines:

1. ‘Students should be able to… read poetry conscious of its specific mode of using language as an artistic medium.’ (DES English Syllabus, 4. 5. 1)

2. Reward the candidates’ awareness of the patterned nature of the language of poetry, its imagery, its sensuous qualities, its suggestiveness.

Ok so what does this all mean? Well quote 1 means they are looking for students to understand that poetry is an art form. That language is used to express ideas, thoughts, emotion, feeling, descriptions, moments… (You get the idea). So, to get a good grade in the Leaving Cert you need to be able to:

• Read (and quote from) the poetry. • Understand what the poetry is about. • Express your opinion about how well the poet expressed their thoughts through

the language they used. Now look at quote 2. It specifically lists 4 areas to concentrate on.

• Patterned nature of the language • Imagery • Sensuous Qualities • Suggestiveness

Easy to remember? Look at the 1st 4 letters: PISS Now easier to remember?


P is for Patterns What makes a poem a poem is how it creates patterns. These patterns can be:

1. The shape of the poem on the page. Think of how a poem looks when you first see it. Why is it organized into stanzas (or not)? Why do certain lines stand out? How does the poem announce itself on the page?

2. The repetition or use of certain words or types of words. Are there groups of words? Words associated with a certain topic/area?

3. Patterns of sound: Think rhythm, beat, rhyme, even words which just sound good. All these contribute to the aesthetic feel of the poem.

So when you read a poem be aware of these patterns. They may be obvious or more subtle, but they will be there. Frequently repeated ideas and imagery can sometimes be described as a motif. That iswhen an artist gets fascinated with one part of the world live in. I is for Imagery Most of us think of an image as something we see, which is correct. But in poetry think of an image as a moment. In a poem there can be lots of images, or just one or two developed in more detail. Now, why is imagery used? Images, moments, descriptions can mean different things to different people. Imagine if I said “father” to a room full of people. Think of the different emotional responses. Poets enjoy provoking us into seeing things in a new way especially through comparison. Sometimes it can just simply be used to describe- in other words it is very literal (real, it exists). Other times a poet will use imagery to describe an emotion/feeling/thought- in other words the image represents an abstract idea/thought. All you need to do is to explain clearly what the image makes you think about… this is what the examiner loves, a student who “engages” with the poetry. Literal Imagery Abstract It’s real emotion It exists thoughts You can touch it. It needs imagery to help make it real. Poets are often abstract people. What a poem does is to take an abstract idea and make it real (literal) for us through its imagery- we can imagine it.


S is for Sensuousness Easy. 5 senses: Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. A good poem arouses the senses… Poets particularly enjoy blending two senses in one sentence. That’s good description and helps create the right mood/feel to the poem. When you read the poem try open up your imagination a little- what are you hearing, seeing, feeling etc and can you relate this to your own experience. Your job in the exam is to comment on how the poet has opened up your imagination- pick out the sensuous images that you felt engaged you. S is for suggestiveness A bit more vague. You need to think about what the poet is suggesting to you. Through their words, images, ideas and the overall poem. This is where you will gain marks in the exam. Both in the unseen poem and in your study of the Prescribed Poets. You need to be clear on your thoughts and elaborate on them with examples and quotes. The key is to be able to explain how the poet succeeded in suggesting the ideas that you responded to. Remember the aim of aesthetic language at all times. Vocabulary builder: Finally for now: Opinion counts. Any poetry question will ask you to express your opinion. But the A grade student is one who is able to explain how they have formed their opinion, how the poem has prompted these thoughts and be able to point to elements of the poets technique and writing skills that evoked this response.


How to read any poem:

Read the poem through once- Ask yourself:

o Who is talking? (The voice- is it the poet, a character, an object) o What are they talking about? (The subject of the poem) o What are they saying about the subject? The message of the poem. Read the poem again. Look out for and think about the following:

o Title – This frames your initial response.

o Structure/Shape- how is the poem structured- Is it divided into stanzas- what happens in each

stanza- is there development of the subject matter through the stanzas.

o Vocabulary- what words stand out when you read the poem? Are there any patterns/repeated

words?

o Punctuation- is there a lot of punctuation or not- why does the poet want to slow down or speed up the poem through punctuation. Question marks, Full stops, Exclamation marks, Ellipsis…

o Tone- what would the poem sound like when read aloud (sad, happy, angry, depressed, etc.) - the tone will tell you’re the writer’s attitude to what they are speaking about?

o Main imagery- what is the poet trying to get you to picture/suggest to you through his/her imagery?

o Metaphors/Similes/Personification- what comparisons is the poet using- what are they comparing

and why are they making these comparisons?

o Imagery- think of an image as a moment- what moment is the poet trying to get you to imagine- how is he/she doing it- through visual descriptions/ sounds/ smells/ comparisons etc.

o What is the rhythm/beat of the poem- are the lines the same length, does it rhyme, are sounds or

words repeated? Does the poet use alliteration/assonance/onomatopoeia etc.?

o For all of the above think of why the poet has chosen to use these. Remember: Poems do not have “hidden” meanings- everything is written on the page in front of you. The poet wants you to discover a meaning/message, they want you to imagine or think about something- just think about what the words images and how they sound are trying to suggest to you. These ideas or themes are why the poem wrote the poem in the first place. Poets don’t use themes instead they want us to see some aspect of our world in a fresh way. Poets aim to share their insight into the human experience as they explore a subject.


2014: SECTION III POETRY (70 marks) Candidates must answer A – Unseen Poem and B – Prescribed Poetry. A UNSEEN POEM (20 marks) Read the following poem by Seamus Heaney from his collection, Door into the Dark, and answer either Question 1 or Question 2 which follow.

THE PENINSULA

When you have nothing more to say, just drive For a day all round the peninsula; The sky is high as over a runway, The land without marks so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall. At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable And you're in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, That rock were breakers shredded into rags, The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, Islands riding themselves out into the fog

And drive back home, still with nothing to say Except that now you will uncode all landscapes By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, Water and ground in their extremity.

Seamus Heaney 1. (a) In the above poem Seamus Heaney recommends driving “all round the peninsula”. Based on your reading of the poem, explain why you think the poet recommends undertaking such a journey. (10) (b) Choose two images from the poem that appeal to you and explain your choice. (10) OR 2. Discuss the effectiveness of the poet’s use of language throughout this poem. Your answer should refer closely to the text.


‘Wounds’: Michael Longley

Here are two pictures from my father’s head— I have kept them like secrets until now: First, the Ulster Division at the Somme Going over the top with ‘Fuck the Pope!’ ‘No Surrender!’: a boy about to die, Screaming ‘Give ’em one for the Shankill!’ ‘Wilder than Gurkhas’ were my father’s words Of admiration and bewilderment. Next comes the London-Scottish padre Resettling kilts with his swagger-stick, With a stylish backhand and a prayer. Over a landscape of dead buttocks My father followed him for fifty years. At last, a belated casualty, He said — lead traces flaring till they hurt — ‘I am dying for King and Country, slowly.’ I touched his hand, his thin head I touched.

Now, with military honours of a kind, With his badges, his medals like rainbows, His spinning compass, I bury beside him Three teenage soldiers, bellies full of Bullets and Irish beer, their flies undone. A packet of Woodbines I throw in, A lucifer, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Paralysed as heavy guns put out The night-light in a nursery for ever; Also a bus-conductor’s uniform— He collapsed beside his carpet-slippers Without a murmur, shot through the head By a shivering boy who wandered in Before they could turn the television down Or tidy away the supper dishes. To the children, to a bewildered wife, I think ‘Sorry Missus’ was what he said.


‘Out, Out—’: ROBERT FROST The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside him in her apron To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap— He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all— Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart— He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’ So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.


Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune--without the words, And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

2013 Student Performance:

Higher Level Average Marks by Question

Question

Average Mark Attained Average Percentage Attained

Paper 1 Section I Comprehending QA

34/50 68

Paper 1 Section I Comprehending QB

34/50 68

Paper 1 Section II Composition

67/100 67

Paper 2 Section I The Single Text

38/60 63

Paper 2 Section II The Comparative Study

42/70 60

Paper 2 Section III A Unseen Poetry

11/20 55

Paper 2 Section III B Studied Poetry

33/50 66


Elizabeth Bishop

Subject matter/topics:

1. The Fish

2. The Bight

3. At the Fishhouses

4. The Prodigal

5. Questions of Travel

6. The Armadillo

7. Sestina

8. First Death in Nova Scotia

9. Filling Station

10. In the Waiting Room


Themes/Ideas in Bishop’s poetry:

• “The eye that sees things and the mind behind the eye that remembers"

“All the untidy activity continues, Awful but cheerful”

• Poetry that fills us with awe, cheers us up at times but also gives a unique view on the

ugly in the world.

3 qualities she most admired in poetry

• Accuracy

• Spontaneity

• Mystery Themes and subject matter

• Geography, landscape

• Travel

• Human connection with the natural world

• Questions of knowledge and perception- gaining understanding

• Childhood and sense of self.

• Combination of beauty and ugliness.

Descriptive skill

• Passion for great description of minute details that reflects life as if light through a prism, detailing the world in many different angles.

• Awe and respect for the natural world is consistently present in her work- with imagery and detail to satisfy all senses.


• Moulds language to paint a picture, full of sounds, sights, colours and symbolism for the reader.

• She paints a portrait with words to detail the world through her eyes for others to see.

• She had the knack of seeing beauty in unexpected places.

• Her work doesn’t begin with conclusions but comes to them- think of each poem as a process of working something out.

• Her poems move from neutral description to thought to a more private world of reflection and wisdom.

A descriptive artist • I'd like to be a painter most, I think. I never really sat down and said to myself, I'm

going to be a poet. Never in my life. I'm still surprised that people think I am.

• ELIZABETH BISHOP, The Paris Review, summer 1981

Her poetry

• Praised for their precise observations and understated descriptive quality.

• Subtle wit and close attention to detail.

• Conversational style- like she is speaking her thoughts. She felt that language should not be allowed to become a barrier therefore lots of simple language- lots of one syllable words, adjectives, objects and detail.

• Sensual detail- sights, sounds, smells, sensations, tastes.

• Sense of looking more closely at the scene- noticing new details, having deeper thoughts- a process of observation and reflection.

• Bishop’s poetry is in large measure a response to her personal experiences.

• The sense of loss (the loss of her parents in her childhood）, vaguely felt at first but more keenly with time, is built into the texture of her poetry.

• She was a widely travelled person as she searched for a place to feel at “home”.

• Her meetings with Marianne Moore and T. S. Eliot all affected her writing very much.

• Both her interest in painting and the influence of contemporary art and surrealism have left a visible imprint on her work.


Her poetic voice

• Communicates directly to the reader in simple easy to understand language and description.

• But also comes with a sense of learning, wisdom and the ability to reflect.

• Agreed with Wordsworth- if you can’t say something in everyday words then it is probably not worth saying. The influence of the great American poet Robert Frost is also seen in this element.


‘The Fish’ I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen —the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly— I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. —It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip —if you could call it a lip—


grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels—until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go.

Themes/Ideas

• Free verse poem that tells about the speaker of the story’s experience- actually happened in 1938 Speaker of the poem is a Bishop, who is both proud of her catch and at the same time sympathetic and admiring toward it. Four movements are noticeable in the poem: her capture of the fish, the description of the caught fish, her growing admiration of the fish, and her decision to let it go.

• The precision of the description of the fish and the event. Bishop also makes use of

metaphor and simile to describe the detail of the fish.

• Notice the suffering of the fish - interpret this as symbolic of human suffering and perhaps of the poet’s own pain. Is this why she lets the fish go? The 5 fish hooks are sometimes taken to be a reference to the 5 wounds Christ suffered on the cross. This leads to the epiphany. The celebration of the beauty that is to be seen in all things as they were created by god. Releasing the fish therefore becomes a celebration of the natural world. Possibly the release of the fish might symbolise the release of her own unhappiness or psychological trauma as a result of her loneliness.


• By the end we get a sense of wisdom, that something has been gained from this experience- a greater understanding of life and compassion.

• Also note the conversational style. Bishop is telling a story in which she aims to bring the reader as close as possible to the event so that we may share in her epiphany that everything is “Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow.”.

Pattern: Imagery: Sensuousness: Suggestiveness:


‘The Bight’ At low tide like this how sheer the water is. White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches. Absorbing, rather than being absorbed, the water in the bight doesn't wet anything, the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible. One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire one could probably hear it turning to marimba music. The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves. The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard, it seems to me, like pickaxes, rarely coming up with anything to show for it, and going off with humorous elbowings. Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar on impalpable drafts and open their tails like scissors on the curves or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble. The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in with the obliging air of retrievers, bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks and decorated with bobbles of sponges. There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock where, glinting like little plowshares, the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry for the Chinese-restaurant trade. Some of the little white boats are still piled up against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in, and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm, like torn-open, unanswered letters. The bight is littered with old correspondences. Click. Click. Goes the dredge, and brings up a dripping jawful of marl. All the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful. Themes/Ideas

• This poem is similar to ‘The Fish’ in the close observation and detail, leading to an important moment of insight. Written on her birthday we see how that affects her thoughts on life and time passing. There is lots of detail and activity as Bishop describes the harbour, as full of disorder, rubbish and danger. The disorder in the bight perhaps then reflects the disorder in Bishop’s mind.

• However there is also a celebratory aspect as the scene is also full of colour, music and dance. “All the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful”


• Note the unusual description of the birds- describing them as mechanical. We expected a natural description of a shoreline but got a mechanical, manmade view- influence of man on nature?

• There is a hugely positive ending to the poem as she celebrates thw world she observes through her detailed depiction of it.

• We see Bishop’s good humour as she mocks her own pretentiousness through the reference to Baudelaire,

• Her admiration for the working class community shows her strength in that instead of mourning what she doesn’t have she celebrates this community. This refusal to fall into self-pity reveals then a positive view on life.



‘At the Fishhouses’ Although it is a cold evening, down by one of the fishhouses an old man sits netting, his net, in the gloaming almost invisible, a dark purple-brown, and his shuttle worn and polished. The air smells so strong of codfish it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water. The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up to storerooms in the gables for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on. All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea, swelling slowly as if considering spilling over, is opaque, but the silver of the benches, the lobster pots, and masts, scattered among the wild jagged rocks, is of an apparent translucence like the small old buildings with an emerald moss growing on their shoreward walls. The big fish tubs are completely lined with layers of beautiful herring scales and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them. Up on the little slope behind the houses, set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass, is an ancient wooden capstan, cracked, with two long bleached handles and some melancholy stains, like dried blood, where the ironwork has rusted. The old man accepts a Lucky Strike. He was a friend of my grandfather. We talk of the decline in the population and of codfish and herring while he waits for a herring boat to come in. There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb. He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty, from unnumbered fish with that black old knife, the blade of which is almost worn away. Down at the water's edge, at the place where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp descending into the water, thin silver tree trunks are laid horizontally across the gray stones, down and down at intervals of four or five feet. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,


element bearable to no mortal, to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly I have seen here evening after evening. He was curious about me. He was interested in music; like me a believer in total immersion, so I used to sing him Baptist hymns. I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." He stood up in the water and regarded me steadily, moving his head a little. Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug as if it were against his better judgment. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us, the dignified tall firs begin. Bluish, associating with their shadows, a million Christmas trees stand waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones. I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world. If you should dip your hand in, your wrist would ache immediately, your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn as if the water were a transmutation of fire that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame. If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter, then briny, then surely burn your tongue. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts forever, flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown. Themes/Ideas Watch how Bishop describes the world she lives in using all the descriptive writing techniques at her disposal. Her use of figurative language captures the scene in a fresh way. The fish scales become chain mail. The worn knife symbolises the users ageing. The scent of the codfish that “makes one’s eyes water” is typical of the sensuousness that Bishop employs as she brings the scene to life. As she does so she lets us share in how this experiencing of the world allows her to form universal reflections. She moves from the literal to the abstract. The description of the scene before her in stanza one (again described with the immediacy of the present tense) allows us see how she started to consider the transience inherent in human life. She then shows us


how she started to develop the comparison that is central to the epiphany. This is achieved through the repetition of the phrase “Cold dark deep and absolutely clear” . The difficult or challenging epiphany here centres around the comparison between human knowledge and the sea. As death is inevitable as outlined in the first stanza then Bishop asks how it is that human knowledge persists, changes ad even develops. She concludes that both are changing fluid and timeless. Pattern: Imagery: Sensuousness: Suggestiveness:


‘The Prodigal’ The brown enormous odor he lived by was too close, with its breathing and thick hair, for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung. Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts, the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare-- even to the sow that always ate her young-- till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head. But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts (he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours), the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red the burning puddles seemed to reassure. And then he thought he almost might endure his exile yet another year or more. But evenings the first star came to warn. The farmer whom he worked for came at dark to shut the cows and horses in the barn beneath their overhanging clouds of hay, with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light, safe and companionable as in the Ark. The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored. The lantern--like the sun, going away-- laid on the mud a pacing aureole. Carrying a bucket along a slimy board, he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight, his shuddering insights, beyond his control, touching him. But it took him a long time finally to make up his mind to go home. Themes/Ideas

• Based on the parable from Luke's gospel. We see Bishop focus not on the happy ending, but on the ugliest and most difficult period of the young man's life - his time spent as a swineherd after he had squandered his inheritance. His loneliness is the aspect that Bishop could identify best with. She explores this story as a metaphor for her own condition as an alcoholic- the isolation, the deception (of self and others), and the aspirations left unfulfilled.

• However, the Biblical story is also a source of hope for the poet. Bishop describes how the prodigal finally finds the courage to rise above his wretched condition and rejoin the human race- an optimistic ending. Note especially how the poem ends with the most emotive of words for Bishop – ‘home.’




‘First Death in Nova Scotia’ In the cold, cold parlor my mother laid out Arthur beneath the chromographs: Edward, Prince of Wales, with Princess Alexandra, and King George with Queen Mary. Below them on the table stood a stuffed loon shot and stuffed by Uncle Arthur, Arthur's father. Since Uncle Arthur fired a bullet into him, he hadn't said a word. He kept his own counsel on his white, frozen lake, the marble-topped table. His breast was deep and white, cold and caressable; his eyes were red glass, much to be desired. "Come," said my mother, "Come and say good-bye to your little cousin Arthur." I was lifted up and given one lily of the valley to put in Arthur's hand. Arthur's coffin was a little frosted cake, and the red-eyed loon eyed it from his white, frozen lake. Arthur was very small. He was all white, like a doll that hadn't been painted yet. Jack Frost had started to paint him the way he always painted the Maple Leaf (Forever). He had just begun on his hair, a few red strokes, and then Jack Frost had dropped the brush and left him white, forever. The gracious royal couples were warm in red and ermine; their feet were well wrapped up


in the ladies' ermine trains. They invited Arthur to be the smallest page at court. But how could Arthur go, clutching his tiny lily, with his eyes shut up so tight and the roads deep in snow? Themes/Ideas

• Recollection of a painful childhood memory. She recalls the death and wake of her young cousin, Arthur.

• Voice of the child, as “In the Waiting Room” is very powerfully employed in this poem. We can feel the pain and lack of understanding the child experiences. The unfamiliar language of death is transformed into the language of a bedtime story in this poem. Notice how the dead child’s coffin is described as a frosted cake a simile a child would create.

• The poem relies on visual detail to create the setting (as is characteristic of Bishop’s poetic style.

• Mood is cold, solemn - the child observes and responds to this.

• We see a child’s thought process as she takes this scene in- and her use of a fairytale to make sense of it- but lack of a traditional happy fairytale ending.



‘Filling Station’ Oh, but it is dirty! —this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it's a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty. Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy. Some comic books provide the only note of color— of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia. Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.) Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: ESSO—SO—SO—SO to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.


Themes/Ideas

• We see Bishop’s fixation on home and belonging in this piece as she focuses on the discovery of the domestic in an unusual place. This leads to the sense of surprise and wonder.

• Again we see Bishops close observation of detail which leads to thought, then wisdom/understanding/insight/epiphany.

• We see her conversational style- questions, humour, observations, thought process.

• Note the contrast between the filth, dirt and danger of the opening and the sense of humanity and care at the end.

• We still see the filling station as less than beautiful, but are comforted by the fact that “somebody loves us all”.



‘In the Waiting Room’ In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo to keep her dentist's appointment and sat and waited for her in the dentist's waiting room. It was winter. It got dark early. The waiting room was full of grown-up people, arctics and overcoats, lamps and magazines. My aunt was inside what seemed like a long time and while I waited I read the National Geographic (I could read) and carefully studied the photographs: the inside of a volcano, black, and full of ashes; then it was spilling over in rivulets of fire. Osa and Martin Johnson dressed in riding breeches, laced boots, and pith helmets. A dead man slung on a pole --"Long Pig," the caption said. Babies with pointed heads wound round and round with string; black, naked women with necks wound round and round with wire like the necks of light bulbs. Their breasts were horrifying. I read it right straight through. I was too shy to stop. And then I looked at the cover: the yellow margins, the date. Suddenly, from inside, came an oh! of pain --Aunt Consuelo's voice-- not very loud or long. I wasn't at all surprised; even then I knew she was a foolish, timid woman. I might have been embarrassed, but wasn't. What took me completely by surprise was that it was me: my voice, in my mouth. Without thinking at all


I was my foolish aunt, I--we--were falling, falling, our eyes glued to the cover of the National Geographic, February, 1918. I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world. into cold, blue-black space. But I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them. Why should you be one, too? I scarcely dared to look to see what it was I was. I gave a sidelong glance --I couldn't look any higher-- at shadowy gray knees, trousers and skirts and boots and different pairs of hands lying under the lamps. I knew that nothing stranger had ever happened, that nothing stranger could ever happen. Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone? What similarities-- boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts-- held us all together or made us all just one? How--I didn't know any word for it--how "unlikely". . . How had I come to be here, like them, and overhear a cry of pain that could have got loud and worse but hadn't? The waiting room was bright and too hot. It was sliding beneath a big black wave, another, and another. Then I was back in it. The War was on. Outside,


in Worcester, Massachusetts, were night and slush and cold, and it was still the fifth of February, 1918. Themes/Ideas

• Intensely personal poem describing a very particular moment of her childhood- a moment of identity and discovery. Typical of Bishops work we see microscopic description give wat to a moment of insight or an epiphany where the six-year old becomes aware of her own existence.

• The speaker takes on the voice of a child in the poem. The use of first person allows us see the perspective of the child more clearly as she begins to search for her own identity, her place in the world.

• She tries to make connections between herself and the rest of the world. She describes herself as “one of them”, “an Elizabeth”. She feels part of a bigger world- a larger waiting room.

• Another poem that deals with identity, discovery but also retains that sense of mystery.



Biography:

• Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts

• an American poet

• the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950,

• a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 ( Poems )

• a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970 ( The Complete Poems )

• one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century

• When she was 8 months old her father died, and when she was 5 her mother was committed to a mental asylum

• From ages 3 to 6, Bishop lived in Great Village, Nova Scotia, with her mother's parents, and was then taken in by her father's family in Worcester and Boston

• Growing up, Elizabeth was a very sick child; suffering from eczema, asthma, and nervous ailments

• Although unable to have formal schooling because of her health before the age of fourteen, Elizabeth was a strong student who was accepted to Vassar college in 1934

• She earned a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in 1934

• Using money from her father’s death, she spent time travelling to France, Spain, North Africa, Ireland, and Italy and then settled in Key West, Florida, for four years.

• Her poetry is filled with descriptions of her travels and the scenery which surrounded her, as with the Florida poems in her first book of verse, North and South, published in 1946

• From 1952 to 1969, she lived in Brazil, then came back to the U. S., and taught at University of Washington and Harvard University in her later years.


Elizabeth Bishop 1911–1979

During her lifetime, poet Elizabeth Bishop was a respected yet somewhat obscure figure in the world of American literature. Since her death in 1979, however, her reputation has grown to the point that many critics, like Larry Rohter in the New York Times, have referred to her as "one of the most important American poets" of the twentieth century. Bishop was a perfectionist who did not write prolifically, preferring instead to spend long periods of time polishing her work. She published only 101 poems during her lifetime. Her verse is marked by precise descriptions of the physical world and an air of poetic serenity, but her underlying themes include the struggle to find a sense of belonging, and the human experiences of grief and longing. Bishop, an only child, experienced upheaval at a tender age. Her father died before she was a year old. Her mother suffered through serious bouts of mental instability and was permanently committed to an institution when Elizabeth was only five years old. The poet never saw her mother again. She was taken at first by her maternal grandparents, who lived in Nova Scotia, Canada. After some years, however, her paternal grandparents took charge of her. They were well-to-do inhabitants of Massachusetts, and expressed their concern over the limited financial and educational resources available in Nova Scotia. Under their guardianship, Bishop was sent to the elite Walnut Hills School for Girls and to Vassar College. Her years at Vassar were tremendously important to Bishop. There she met Marianne Moore, a fellow poet who also became a lifelong friend. Working with a group of students that included Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clark, and Margaret Miller, she founded the short-lived but influential literary journal Con Spirito, which was conceived as an alternative to the well-established Vassar Review. After graduating, Bishop lived in New York and traveled extensively in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and North Africa. Her poetry is filled with descriptions of her journeys and the sights she saw. In 1938, she moved to Key West, where she wrote many of the poems that eventually were collected in her Pulitzer Prize-winning North and South. In 1944 she left Key West, and for fourteen years she lived in Brazil, where she and her lover, the architect Lota de Macedo Soares, became a curiosity in the town of


Pétropolis. After Soares took her own life in 1967, Bishop spent less time in Brazil than in New York, San Francisco, and Massachusetts, where she took a teaching position at Harvard in 1970. That same year, she received a National Book Award in Poetry for The Complete Poems. Her reputation increased greatly in the years just prior to her death, particularly after the 1976 publication of Geography III and her winning of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Bishop worked as a painter as well as a poet, and her verse, like visual art, is known for its ability to capture significant scenes. Though she was independently wealthy and thus enjoyed a life of some privilege, much of her poetry celebrates working-class settings: busy factories, farms, and fishing villages. Analyzing her small but significant body of work for Bold Type, Ernie Hilbert wrote: "Bishop's poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist's discretion and attention. Unlike the pert and wooly poetry that came to dominate American literature by the second half of her life, her poems are balanced like Alexander Calder mobiles, turning so subtly as to seem almost still at first, every element, every weight of meaning and song, poised flawlessly against the next."

Red Mobile, 1956, Painted sheet metal and metal rods, a signature work by Calder

Date post:	29-Jun-2020
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	23 times
Download:	0 times

The Unseen Poem and Elizabeth Bishop - Dublin Academy...The Unseen Poem and Elizabeth Bishop No part...

Documents