Complete Poems, 1927-1979Author: Bishop, ElizabethGenre: Poetry Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Released: 1984 |
A Review by Nita Daniel
04/16/2002
Collected Poems is an easy work to pick up and put down. It is organized into books (in the order of the original publication dates) and includes some unCollected Poems, her translation work, and poems she wrote while in college. It sounds like a lot, but it isn’t; this life’s work occupies a slender 276 pages. Each book is short, and only a handful of the individual poems span more than two pages. This collection is infinitely browse-able.
North and South was originally published in 1946. It opens with “The Map," which is a fitting thematic introduction to Bishop, who loved exploring, traveling, and exploration. It’s a wondrously literal poem, in that it describes a map, but fanciful as well. “Mapped waters are more quiet than land is,” describes the homogenous appearance of water drawn on maps. “Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?” asks the same question I asked when I was about eight.
“The Map” is a good thematic introduction. However, it is not the predominant style of Bishop’s poems, which are very description-dense. If you are more adjective wary, of North and South’s offerings, you may prefer “Casabianca”. It’s a mere ten lines, but toys with two or three ideas in a circuitous manner.
Love’s the boy stood on the burning deckYou’ll have to read the second stanza yourself. Be warned that the brevity and repetition will probably cause you to inadvertently memorize it.
trying to recite “The boy stood on
the burning deck.” Love’s the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
My other two favorites from North and South are “A Miracle for Breakfast” and “Late Air”. The former is a sestina, a structure that relies on repetition as opposed to rhyme. “Miracle” lets the form use it well (not a typo, that’s the nature of a sestina; try writing one and you’ll see) and creates a great narrative picture. “Late Air” is another of those image and idea poems I fall for. It takes people’s conventional ideas of radio, pop music, and romance and turns those ideas sideways.
Of A Cold Spring, 1955, my favorites are “Insomnia”, “Letter to N.Y.”, and “The Shampoo”. They are all short, and all have a more personal bent. Don’t misinterpret this; Bishop is anything but a confessional poet. If personal makes you think Anne Sexton, think inward instead. Think of Wordsworth’s goal of expressing the ineffable, only with more brevity.
“Insomnia” captures the essence of staying awake, but leaves out conventional angst. Much, but not all of it: “where the shadows are really the body, /where we stay awake all night, /where the heavens are as shallow as the sea/is now deep, and you love me.” It shows her deft use of rhyme, rhyming not just end words, but rhyming a word within one line to another—a canny way of recalling something from an earlier stanza. Repeated readings offer various interpretations. Two of which are insomnia as a method of reflection on inversion and expectations and also as a description of a suicide.
“Letter to N.Y.” invokes homesickness for both a person and a place. The rhyme of the poem contributes to the sense of driving around and the grogginess of a late night. She addresses a “you” at the opening and close. The one at the close is coy, almost funny, in the way it pulls you out of the roundabout of the rest.
“The Shampoo” is probably one of Bishop’s most gentle poems. The first stanza describes lichen covered rock, the last an offer to wash a lover’s hair, and the middle ties the two together.
Questions of Travel has two much anthologized poems, “The Armadillo” and “The Filling Station”. I like “The Armadillo,” not for its inscription to Robert Lowell or its thematic elements, but for its conversational tone. The words roll over me until I care not one whit for what they mean. (A little research, however, will reveal quite a bit of meaning.)
“The Filling Station” is voyeuristic in exactly the sort of way many of my friends are on road trips. They don’t want people; they analyze them and whittle stories by looking at people’s stuff. It start “Oh, but it is dirty!” and keeps the station at arms length. It ends with statements that allude to a voyeur’s questions:
Geography III was Bishop’s last book, published in 1976. It opens with “In the Waiting Room”. A girl accompanies her aunt on a boring visit to the dentist. She browses a National Geographic while waiting, and accidentally gets sucked into her aunt’s experience,
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.
Without thinking at allIt shows that rhyme isn’t vital to building rhythm. It offers that exact sense of being almost-but-not-quite seven-years-old, while simultaneously addressing the more adult questions of identity.
I was my foolish aunt.
“The Moose” probably has the most coherent story of all of my favorite poems. It relies on imagery and ideas, true, but these are inextricably tied to the tale of a bus trip stopped in its tracks by a large moose. She gets the feel of being collected with strangers (on a plane, a bus, etc) perfectly. The moose doesn’t appear until the fourth page of the poem, but the timing is wonderful. It goes from being the bus trip to ‘the bus trip with the moose’—universal and specific all at once.
The poem that I end up hearing in my mind most often is “One Art”. It’s a villanelle about loss. It starts flippantly, even advising the reader to “lose something every day." Gradually, however, the items lost become more valuable and the viewpoint sours to a near-admission about how difficult “the art of losing is." It’s a great one to say aloud, because you can toy with the flippant attitude and highlight it at the end with the speaker’s admonishment to herself, where she says that it’s not a difficult art “though it may look like disaster.”
The last poem I’ll highlight is “Exchanging Hats," from the Uncollected section. I mention it because it’s simply funny. It revolves around “unfunny uncles” with a “slight transvestite twist” who find it amusing to try “on a lady’s hat.” Even though rhymes sound odd to many contemporary readers, the language and topic are flat-out accessible. It details the ludicrousness (not humor) of the activity and the disregard these dorks have for other people’s property (“what might a miter matter?”). It’s yet another fun poem to say aloud and is suitable for the younger set as well.
Keep in mind that Complete Poems is more complete than I am. It includes Bishop's Vassar poems and her translations of others’ work. If you find her as compelling and interesting as I do, consider also reading her Complete Prose or her collected letters, One Art.
Bishop has a great way with structure and proves poetry that uses formal structures (e.g., the villanelle and the sonnet) can be fun and needn't feel purely academic. She also proves that you don’t have to be confessional or write children’s verse to be accessible. If you’re shy about the more academic connotations poetry has, read it aloud. Make it yours. Bishop’s poetry, particularly, lends itself to this, and so what if you end up reciting “Casabianca” or “The Art of Losing” in the car? So what if people stare?
© Copyright ToxicUniverse.com 04/16/2002
