Elizabeth Bishop was born on February 8th, 1911 in Worcester,
Massachusetts. Before she was 5 her father had died form Brights
Disease and her mother had been permanently committed to a mental
hospital. Because of this she lived for three years with her mother’s
parents in Great Village, NS and then with her paternal family in
Worcester and Boston. Of living with her family she said she always felt
like a guest. During high school she attended Walnut Hill School and
went on to four years at Vassar. It was there she met Marianne Moore,
who became her lifelong friend and greatly influenced her works.
Elizabeth Bishop lived all over the map. From New York to KeyWest Florida, she moved to Brazil for eighteen years. It was there she
met Lota de Macedo Soares, whom she fell in love with. When Soares
committed suicide in 1967, Bishop moved back to the States. There she
taught at the University of Washington, Harvard, New York University,
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
BIOGRAPHY CONTINUED
• Before she died on October 6th, 1979 she
published four volumes of poetry, among
other works of literature. These were
influenced by her experiences as an
orphan, a lesbian, a sufferer of alcoholism
and depression, and as a rootless traveler.
They were titled, North and South, A Cold
Spring, Questions of Travel, and
Geography 3.
After reading Elizabeth Bishop’s work, I have discovered that her poems
are very challenging to read and interpret. Her words are very literal in
their descriptions of situations; for example, the act of catching a fish.
However they can be interpreted many different ways. For example I read
several literary critiques of her work which all picked something different
out of one poem. Because of this when the reader is trying to process the
poem, many possible meanings go through one’s mind. This makes her
poems very challenging.
The one aspect I find aesthetically appealing about her work is her use of
antithesis or compare and contrast in some of her poems. For example,
in “Sonnet,” she speaks of a bubble in a level or a needle in a compass
and the containment it suffers, compared to the freedom of the mercury
of a broken thermometer or the reflected rainbow from the mirror.
ROBERT PARKER’S CRITIQUE
OF “THE FISH”
Perhaps many readers would take "The Fish," one of Bishop's
most admired poems, as her most conclusively confident poem.
There she catches a "tremendous fish" and surveys it closely in
one of the finest of those precise descriptions she is famous for.
Then, she says, "I stared and stared / and victory filled up / the
little rented boat," "until," in the poem's final words, "everything
/ was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! / And I let the fish go." Here
suddenly she catches what she wished for, and so no longer
needs to wish. To preserve the edge of wish, then, she must give
up what she has, so she can have again more truly by not
having. It recalls Faulkner's claim that Hemingway failed by
sticking to what he already knew he could succeed at, instead of
daring the failures that, by overreaching, make the truest
success.
CONT’D
On the other hand, Bishop does not sound convinced that she really
gains that much by catching her fish. For her cheerily sentimental word
"rainbow," with its repetition that, rather than giving emphasis, only
enhances the sense that she feels the word's inadequacy, together with
the sudden exclamation point and its redoubled effect of straining too
hard at the end of what had remained an understated, calm poem, all
seem to compensate for some fear of ordinariness in her
understatement and quiet. Her letting the fish go, dramatized by putting
it all in the final words, seems too willfully a striving for conclusive
wisdom. She can throw the fish back, if she likes, but to gloat over
throwing it back sounds too easily superior, since most of us, rather
than throwing fish back, enjoy eating them now and then. Instead of
ending with a wish for something to say, she seems not to know how to
end, and so she goes, in effect, fishing for profundity, violating at the
end the modesty and indirection that she was to win such admiration
for.
• My response to Robert Dale Parker’s critique of Elizabeth bishop’s, “The
Fish”
I find that I largely disagree with this overview of Bishop’s poem, “The
Fish.” Parker, it seems, cross examined this poem with the intention of
picking at something, anything really. He claims that her words, “rainbow,
rainbow, rainbow,” show gloating at her throwing the fish back. To me, this
is a very cynical way to look at the ending.
I interpreted this act of throwing back the battle worn fish, as simply a gift.
After her seeing the fish’s obvious victories with fishers’ before in the
grown over hooks, she of course feels a sense of pride and victory in
catching the fish. However, wouldn’t anyone also feel a sense of awe and
compassion for this fish, near his natural time to go, who, against all odds
and lines with hooks, has managed to almost live his full and natural life?
For parker to say Bishop takes the easy way by throwing it back, to me,
makes no sense. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply eat the fish, instead of
throwing back her prize and showing compassion? She trades the
glorifying act of cooking and eating the fish the good feeling one gets from
giving a gift rather than taking one. The rainbow sentiment represents that
feeling of peace, not the one of contempt and gloating Parker speaks of.
Sonnet
(1979)
Caught -- the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed -- the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!
Elizabeth Bishop
• The following poem, written by me, is meant to imitate
Elizabeth bishop’s poem, “Sonnet,” which can be found on the
previous slide. It replicates the structure of the poem in having
a sestet followed by an octave. I also tried to show the contrast
of tone in her poem. It turns from a very restricted feeling to
one of easiness and freedom. In my own poem the tone
changes from an urgent tone to one of quiet and calm. I also
tried to incorporate the personification in her work; for
example, “the broken thermometer’s mercury running away.” I
used, “the summer rain gently washing the trees.”
ViolentThe caged tiger,
Heart pounding out of chest;
And the unleashed storm,
Hammering and battering;
Fury made tempest.
CalmedThe summer rain,
Gently washing the trees;
And the lullaby
From the new mother
Of the newborn child;
Silencing the baby’s cries
Setting it to dreams.
Jennie Pick
• Biography of Elizabeth Bishop. Retrieved December 11th, 2005 from
the World Wide Web:
http://www.poemhunter.com/elizabethbishop/biography/poet-6705/
• Colwell, A. (2000, February). About Elizabeth bishop. Oxford
University Press. Retrieved December 11th, 2005 from the
World Wide Web: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets
/a-f/bishop/about.htm
• Elizabeth Bishop. Retrieved December 11th, 2005 from the
World Wide Web:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop
CONT’D
• Gioia, D. and Kennedy, X. (2002). Critical Overview. Longman
Publishers. Retrieved December 11th, 2005 from the
World Wide Web: http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/
Bookbind/pubbooks/long-kennedy_poetry_10/chapter9/
Deluxe.html
• Lensing, G. (1995). About Elizabeth Bishop. Oxford University
Press. Retrieved December 11th, 2005 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a-f/bishop/about.htm
• Parker, R. (1988). Robert Dale Parker. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. Retrieved December 11th, 2005 from the World Wide
Web: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a-f/bishop/fish.htm