Elizabeth Bishop
(1911-1979)
Life
1911: Born: Massachusetts. Father dies.
1916: Mother is hospitalised.
1917: Lives with grandparents and later Aunt Maude.
1930-4: Attends Vassar College, NY.
1938: Moves to Key West, Florida.
1946: Wins Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award.
1951: Settles in Brazil. Meets Lota Macedo Soares.
1955: Wins Putlitzer Prize for Poetry.
1964: Awarded Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets.
1967: Lota dies. Lives in San Francisco for a year.
1970: Poet-in-residence at Harvard University.
1979: Dies in Boston.
Key Points
The Fish
The Armadillo
Filling Station
(1911-1979)
Life
1911: Born: Massachusetts. Father dies.
1916: Mother is hospitalised.
1917: Lives with grandparents and later Aunt Maude.
1930-4: Attends Vassar College, NY.
1938: Moves to Key West, Florida.
1946: Wins Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award.
1951: Settles in Brazil. Meets Lota Macedo Soares.
1955: Wins Putlitzer Prize for Poetry.
1964: Awarded Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets.
1967: Lota dies. Lives in San Francisco for a year.
1970: Poet-in-residence at Harvard University.
1979: Dies in Boston.
Key Points
- Influenced by various poetic movements such as symbolism and surrealism
- Influenced by child psychologists who unearthed unconscious thoughts from her own childhood
- Travel was a major theme and a lifelong passion
- Although an admitted feminist, she rarely engaged directly in this theme in her poetry
The Fish
- Subtle shift of power within the poem
- Fish described in a series of unusual similes
- Fish is deliberately not sentimentalised
- The observer slowly begins to empathise with the fish
- Human analogies are established although the fish retains its difference as a species
- The achievements of the fish become symbolic of a war hero
- The fish becomes a symbol of the separation between nature and humans
- The poem ends in a sort of epiphany and her choice to free the fish is inevitable
The Armadillo
- Bishop’s love of nature continues with this narrative poem set on St John’s Day (24 June) in Brazil
- The poem begins as a narrative admiring the colourful fire balloons
- However the tone changes as they turn dangerous and the animals below are carelessly and callously harmed
- The poet’s craft is exposed for what it is: ‘pretty mimicry’ – has she been taken in by them?
- The balloons may represent instruments of war and war set in motion by the forces of superstition (blind religious belief perhaps?)
Filling Station
- The speaker-poet adopts a tone of haughty superiority in the opening stanza, disgusted by the filthy scene
- The characters are introduced in the second stanza and the speaker begins to speculate about the father and sons
- It seems, despite the dirt, that someone seems to care for these people, as attention to detail has been given to certain objects – the flower and the cans
- This leads her to realise (in a kind of revelation) that there lies an affectionate presence behind everything, that somebody loves us all; perhaps a maternal kind of love (which was always absent in her life)
- The poem thus expresses an optimistic, tolerant view of life