Elizabeth Bishop: Creating a Mental Picture

Elizabeth Bishop has written a multitude of skillfully crafted poems throughout her lifetime. She writes her pieces based on her life experiences, while leaving secrets that lie beneath each line, inside of each word. Studying Elizabeth Bishop, we find that many admire her work. Though many love her poems, the real question is whether they are worth the small investment of time it takes to sit down and read them.

Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911 to family like any other, but things quickly changed. By the time she was eight months old, her father had died while her mother was placed in a mental institution, not even five years later (1916). Due to this misfortune, she was shipped off to Nova Scotia to live with her maternal grandparents for a little while. Despite being happy, she was eventually sent back to Worcester to live with her paternal grandparents. Through many moves, Bishop winded up staying with her paternal aunt who resided in the city of Bishop to finish her basic education. In 1929, Bishop began at Vassar college and was introduced to her first, of many, poetic friend and mentor and began writing.

Due to Bishop being relocated multiple times at the beginning of her life, it continues to be a trend throughout the rest of her life. She aimlessly traveled at times, and even participated in study abroad programs for school, yet she always seemed to end up with a feeling of displacement no matter how long she stayed in one place. Her poems are her way of sharing her travels and experiences with the world. Through her poetry she tries to show us descriptions of the places she went and memories that were important to her. Knowing her background is important for us to understand so that we are able to depict how she views the world. Bishop loved to share her impression of the physical world, trying to avoid going too much into her person life. She uses vivid imagery with the hopes to place the reader right in her footsteps.

In the poem The End of March she does this very well.

“The rackety, icy, offshore wind

numbed our faces on one side; (Bishop, lines 5–6)

She uses vivid imagery and very descriptive words to help us build the scene in our heads. If we were to close our eyes and listen to it, there would be very little difficulty picturing what she is describing to us. Like all her poems, she is admiring the beauty of nature, and yet there is something deeper hiding.

Not only does Bishop create a vivid picture in our mind, but she also knows how to give her reader a poem with a fun rhythm. For example, in “The Moose” it reads,

“From narrow provinces

of fish and bread and tea,

home of the long tides

where the bay leaves the sea

twice a day and takes

the herrings long rides,” (Bishop, lines 1–6)

Here she shows us her capability of being able to have lines that rhyme despite it being inconsistent throughout the poem. Her poems are very vivid and full of purpose. Bishops writing style is centered around strict poetry forms, but we sometimes find ourselves following along with an internal rhyme that you almost miss with the first glance of the poem.

While writing her poems, Bishop tried to avoid anything personal in poems that could the readers a true look into her life. Despite doing so, she gives hints about her true feelings on certain aspects of her life, sometimes it just takes reading a little closer to see it. In “Five Flights Up” the end of the poem reads,

“Obviously, he has no sense of shame.

He and the bird know everything is answered,

all taken care of,

no need to ask again.

— Yesterday brought to today so lightly!

(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)” (Bishop, lines 21–26)

This poem reflects on the internal battles she continued to face as an adult when reflecting on her childhood. She not only introduces us to the battle she faced, but she also shows her readers the lessons she learned from her childhood.

The silent battles inside one’s head are always the most difficult to talk about. In the poem “In the Waiting Room”, Bishop connected one of her internal battles to a physical memory. In the poem it reads,

“The waiting room was bright

and too hot. It was sliding

beneath a big black wave,

another, and another.” (Bishop, lines 70–74)

Not only is Bishop describing to us how the room felt, she also talks about this wave that overtakes the room. We have learned that she likes to introduce her readers to the trauma she faced during her childhood. The question is, what lesson does she want us to learn?

Elizabeth Bishop is a very well-rounded writer who loved to write about her traveling experiences. Her poems are written with the hopes to transport the reader back in time. Just like every other she put a lot of time and effort into putting out work with the hopes that people would find it worthy of reading. When it comes to reading poems that are very descriptive, have very vivid imagery, and are very good at hiding personal feelings behind her physical attributions to the world, these poems are worth the time effort to read them.