The setting of "Filling Station" is distinctive not simply because it is unglamorous and unremarkable, but because of its liminality. By its very nature, the filling station is a stop on the way to another destination. For this reason, it is easy for the speaker to initially feel dismissive of both the setting itself and the people who occupy it. Her attachment to the family at the filling station is necessarily brief. At the same time, the speaker—evidently in limbo between her origin and her destination— is momentarily reliant upon them, left in a vulnerable state. These tensions and contradictions, and the question of travel in general, hang in the background of the poem, animating its conflicts. Here, we'll discuss several more well-known works in which travel and liminality play an important role.
Whereas Bishop's poem is set in the world of the automobile, within a landscape of roads and gas stations, Amy Levy's "Ballade Of An Omnibus" offers an interesting glimpse into another technological era: one defined by the public omnibus. An English Victorian writer, Levy described the omnibus as a humble and accessible, yet revolutionary form of transit—one granting unprecedented freedom to the poor as well as the rich, and to women as well as men. "Some men to carriages aspire;/On some the costly hansoms wait;" the poem begins, listing various aspirational, luxurious forms of transit from the period. And yet, Levy continues, "I envy not the rich and great,/A wandering minstrel, poor and free,/I am contented with my fate —/An omnibus suffices me." Like Bishop emphasizing the lowliness of the filling station, Levy takes note of the modest reputation of the omnibus. Yet it is this very modesty that, in the poem's framing, makes the omnibus such an exhilarating source of liberation.
W.H. Auden's "Night Mail," meanwhile, describes the movement of a train carrying mail through the countryside. It was initially written for a film of the same name, though it also stands alone as a work of poetry. This work, comprised in the first half of rhyming couplets, uses its meter and rhyme scheme to mimic the sound of a train traveling down train tracks. In doing so, Auden evokes not the excitement of Levy's omnibus, nor the mystery of Bishop's liminal filling station, but rather a certain incantatory, lulling routine. These early couplets describe the train passing through a rural landscape at night, thus contrasting the sleeping inhabitants with the movement of the train. Later in the poem, however, Auden abandons these couplets, instead writing in stanzas of irregular length with an inconsistent, frenetic rhyme scheme. Here, Auden describes the frenzy of rural residents receiving the mail from the train: the focus is no longer on the soothing regularity of travel itself, but rather on the excitement of the destination.
Rita Dove's "Vacation," meanwhile, explores a similar sense of liminality and unsettledness that characterize Bishop's "Filling Station." The poem takes place in an airport, with the speaker observing her fellow travelers gathered at the gate before they board their plane. "I love the hour before takeoff,/that stretch of no time, no home," Dove writes, before describing the other tired, irritable passengers. The poem suggests that travel, and the stress of being separated from home and its comforts, brings out people's vulnerabilities—and these vulnerabilities delight and intrigue the speaker. At the same time, the poem concludes with the speaker imagining her fellow passengers on vacation. Thus, the poem hints, travel is also a source of delight because it contains movement and potential. In the space of the airport, Dove's speaker seems to feel, anything is possible.
Because poetry can manipulate narrative time, poets have often used their craft to pause and deeply explore moments of transit and motion—precisely the types of activity that might otherwise be disregarded, treated as mere steps toward a destination rather than valuable moments in and of themselves. Each of these poets manipulates time to delve into the process of travel, and each does so to unique ends. Bishop explores the dehumanization that occurs when other people, such as the family at the filling station, are treated as mere means to reaching a destination rather than agents in their own right. Levy speaks of the omnibus's promise of radical equality. Auden playfully contrasts the lulling mechanical rhythm of a train with the emotional idiosyncrasies of the individuals receiving their mail. Finally, Dove mines the way that travel strips away polite facades, bringing out travelers' frailties while also freeing them from everyday constraints.
