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Elizabeth Bishops poetry remains rather controversial to many modern literary critics. Many consider her an outstanding poet that is attentive to detail, while others believe that the authors lack of much literary production makes it difficult to analyze her poetry. It is also criticized that Bishop had no personal experience of severe life traumas and could not put the sensual personal experience into her poems. This reading log reflects the authors view and provides evidence that Elizabeth Bishop was an outstanding poet because of her writing vision technique.
The researcher needs to determine the method used to analyze Elizabeth Bishops poetry. Scholar Mary Elkins believes that to capture the essence of this undiscovered writers poetry, one must understand how she saw the world around her, picking out the smallest details from it and putting them into the work (44). Bishop uses the idea of active vision in all her poems. Perfectly this technique of writing can be analyzed by the researcher in the example of the poem At the Fishhouses.
To fully surrender to the act of seeing, the poems author must detach himself from what is happening to become a dispassionate observer. It can be seen at the beginning of The Fish, where, under the pressure of this gaze, the impenetrable wall that separates the poetic picture from the inner world begins to break down (Elkins 45). The concentration level on the object must be as high as possible to see some invisible but very important details at first glance.
Bishop makes extensive use of analogy in, for example, The Fish. She compares the brown skin of the fish to ancient, faded wallpaper, which depicts old and already actually dying roses (Bishop, 27). When small, seemingly inconsequential details Elizabeth notices are played along with the analogies the author has created, it takes the poem to a new level. The reader himself begins to penetrate aspects of the writers creation, discovering new horizons of awareness and learning the authors method of vision .
Some of the epithets and comparisons in Bishops poetry run as a thread through her work. The author pays much attention to the theme of existence and aging in the world around us. In her view, everything that exists for a certain amount of time is given new characteristics and details that vividly color Elizabeths poems. In the story At the Fishhouses, Elizabeth describes an old wooden capstan as cracked, with two long bleached handles and some melancholy stains, like dried blood, where the ironwork has rusted. (Elkins 47) When people read the poem, they are imbued with these little details that pierce attention and help readers become part of the story for the duration of the reading.
Bishops poem Jeronimos House is also a model of descriptive style in her works. According to scholars Desheng Chen and Chenxi Wang, this work can be considered a symbolic theme of Bishops poetry (213). The author is rather attentive and fond of small details, observing and describing the interior of the place of action in creation. An old French horn decorated with aluminum paint, untidy Christmas decorations, and a chilled lunch in a small kitchen makes for a rich story. The writer wanted a room where she could keep dear things, to go in and reminisce once in a while. The reader has transported to the scene thanks to Bishops taking on the role of observer, someone who saw things hidden at first glance, revealing them to the others.
After analyzing the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, read and exemplified in this log, a person can change their perception of the authors works. When one discovers this writers technique of seeing, one notices new details previously closed to the eye. The formal poetic structure merges the world of the individual, and the world depicted in the poem, integrating the reader into another dimension, making them one for a time.
Sometimes the peculiarity lies in the incompatibility of views of the reader and the writer in different levels of perception of the surrounding reality. Each person has a different life experience, which affects their adaptation of Elizabeth Bishops work in their mind. A careful and thoughtful reading of works that focus on evoking ones emotions and sensual feelings helps one to penetrate deeper into the behind-the-scenes action of the poem. At the same time, the blending of life experiences and perspectives of writer and reader creates a unique gamut of perception. It is made possible by Bishops ability to notice and emphasize the small details of a story, for from the small is the greater.
Works of visual art and the writers poetry have so much in common, the researcher can note after the analysis. When one looks at a picture of the stormy sea, he hears the sound of the surf and the cries of the seagulls and smells the scent of sea salt; his memories involuntarily come to mind. The same feeling arises after a detailed acquaintance with the works of Elizabeth Bishop. The main thing to understand is that she was an artist, able to use analogies and vivid visual details to turn a poem into a beautiful picture.
By and large, Elizabeths work occupies an important place in literary history, being the epitome of modernism. Her technique of seeing small but meaningful figurative details and integrating them into the text sets her apart from other descriptive poems. It has been noted by many scholars of Bishops work, as has been confirmed in this article.
Works Cited
Bishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 196.
Chen, Desheng, and Wang, Chenxi. Images and Their Implications in Elizabeth Bishops Poetry. 5th International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE 2019). Atlantis Press, vol. 341, No. 1, 2019, pp. 212-214.
Elkins, Mary Jay. Elizabeth Bishop and the Act of Seeing . South Atlantic Review, vol. 48, No. 4, 1983, pp. 43-57.
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