Elizabeth Bishop: Poems Literary Elements

Bishop constantly wished to distance her own biography from the work itself, and as such we can never trust the narrator's of her poems are truly her speaking. Bishop deliberately toys with the critic's temptation to do so, and In the Waiting Room the narrator is actually given the name 'Elizabeth'.

Bishop toys with a variety of forms and meters within this collection. In a poem such as 'One Art', she uses a playful, almost sing song rhyme scheme and in 'Sestina' she plays upon the strict metrical regulations of the sestina poetic form. And yet, 'In the Waiting Room' is written almost entirely in free verse, reflecting its fluid, questioning themes.

In the Sandpiper the bird becomes an extended metaphor for the poet in search of inspiration, as it constantly seeks out a new and fresh gem in a sea of well trodden material - comparable to the search for originality in the sea that is the literary canon.

The “ESSO-SO-SO-SO” of Filing Station is an assonance that produces a synaesthesia of sorts and lulls the reader into a sense of comfort.

The irony of the natural world blurred with industrial waste is utilised in Bishop’s ‘The Fish’ as the leaking of oil – a typically unromantic image – is conceived as an object of beauty as the refraction of light transforms it into “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow”. The scene is both vivid and hyper-realistic, emphasised through emphatic repetition.

Modernist poetry collection

No fixed time of place within the collection

A tone of precision - one that is almost scientific - pervades her works.

Varies between poems

The natural world and man are often put at odds with one another and yet at times the are assimilated with one another - Bishop explores the possibility that man is both against nature and a part of it and this pervades works such as 'The Fish' and 'The Armadillo".

When Bishop's poems reach a climax it is often one that is due to some kind of existential struggles - the search for meaning within the natural world. This is particularly pertinent in 'In the Waiting Room' whereby the metaphysical anguish of the narrator causes her to see the room - and her world - as waves shifting around endlessly.

Bishop foreshadows the danger posed by the Chinese Lantern in 'The Armadillo' by clarifying that such balloons - despite there beauty - are "illegal".

In 'One Art' Bishop tries to convince the reader that the loss of cities, a life, houses and generally the concept of losing itself isn't a "disaster" - and she understates the devastation of such events to achieve a sort of playfulness within the poem, further emphasised through its sing-song rhyme scheme.

Bishop constantly alludes to other texts. For example, 'The Fish' takes its title from an earlier poem by Marianne Moore - a poet who acted both as a mentor and maternal figure to the poet throughout her life and thus both are self consciously positioned in direct conversation with one another.

There is a distinct lack of metonymy and synecdoche in Bishop's oeuvre, which forms a crucial component to her scientifically precise language: the poet does not obscure words, rather she looks for the words that convey most pertinently and accurately what it is she is trying to say.

Bishop gives human qualities to a sandpiper in The Sandpiper as the bird becomes a symbol for the poet constantly in search for inspiration the sea that is the literary canon.

Bishop occasionally exaggerates to achieve a mysterious, almost magical effect: the supposed beauty of the rainbow in The Fish is an exaggeration of an image that would normally be seen as disgusting and toxic.

In Bishop’s ‘Filling Station’ the arrangement of cans “ESSO-SO-SO-SO” is both intensely realistic but also produces an effect comparable to synaesthesia, as the sibilance of “so” gives the inanimate cans an auditory and visual presence, emphasised by “softly say” in the line preceding.