Elizabeth Bishop's Ineffable Atmospheres - Essay Example

Elizabeth Bishop’s Ineffable Atmospheres Elizabeth Bishop could easily be accused of using too many ‘painted adjectives’ in her poems, a comment that was once considered a criticism. “As to twentieth-century poetry we will have fewer painted adjectives impeding the shock and stroke of it. At least for myself, I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither” (Pound, 1918). However, Bishop’s poetry, written with a grace and flow that paints an alarmingly clear picture of more than just the obvious words, depends upon the use of adjectives and other literary devices to evoke an ineffable mood or emotion that is difficult to describe in any other way. Trying to reduce her sentiments into the confined language of Imagism would have lost a great deal of the subtext of her poems, which is where a great deal of her meaning resides. It is through these devices that the life of the poet emerges, making statements of alienation, isolation and frustration even while discussing something as innocuous seeming as the moon. Not scrimping on the use of extended metaphors to express her ideas, Bishop is a master of the lyrical phrase. By looking at poems such as “The Man-Moth,” “The Fish,” “Filling Station” and “Pink Dog,” one can get a sense of how the use of adjectives within her poetry provides Bishop with the power to capture overwhelming life experiences in allegorical settings. Inspiration for many of Bishop’s poems starts with the experience of emotional reaction, such as the sudden and unexpected delights of daily life. “The Man-Moth” is actually a poem that arose out of a misprint in the New York Times for the word “mammoth.” (Rzepka, 2001). For Bishop, this was a perfect example of the New York persona and an irresistible opportunity to poke a little fun at The Big Apple. Despite the teasing tone of the piece, with such phrases as “when the Man-Moth / pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface” (9-10) and “The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way / and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed” (29-30), this poem provides a glimpse into the postmodern feelings of isolation and alienation that had become associated with the big cities of the modern world. Here, the Man-Moth “cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards” (32) and “does not dare look out the window” (36). Through this descriptive language, she indicates that the motion of individuals trapped within the city’s subways and patterns are not traveling forward, yet are not exactly traveling backward either. That the individual doesn’t have the nerve to look out the window indicates they are fearful of what they might find, even should it be nothing more than their own reflection, which has now become alien to them. Finalizing her poem, Bishop capitalizes her statement regarding the emptiness of the Man-Moth in her description of his eye. “It’s all dark pupil, / an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens / as he stares back, and closes up the eye” (42-44). There is no individual here, no subjectivity. When one attempts to establish a connection, they are met with a tight stare before the eye is closed against them. The indescribable loneliness and sense of disoriented fearful searching that characterizes much of the modern world is suddenly evoked with this description. In “The Fish,” Bishop describes the sudden flash of wisdom to be gained through every day experiences. The poem describes the hassle-free capture of a venerable old fish and what the speaker observes as she observes him hanging from her line. The fish hasn’t fought at all to prevent being reeled in and his skin hangs in strips “like ancient wallpaper” (11), the pattern reminding her of “full-blown roses / stained and lost through age” (14-15). These images conjure up thoughts of the family home, old and empty now that the children are grown and gone, maintenance no longer a priority in this advanced age, yet comfortable with its old familiarity. The fish is coated with barnacles, lime and sea-lice, with strings of seaweed attached to his underside. Through this imagery, Bishop is not only telling us about the ancient nature of the fish she caught, but also about the nature of the outer life, in which an individual can sit around gathering all this coating about them, yet still remain nothing more than a fish. In describing the various parts of the fish, Bishop indicates just how average he is, containing “coarse white flesh” (27), “big bones and the little bones” (29), “shiny entrails” (31) and a “pink swim-bladder” (32). This fish is not an individual, he is a sum of his parts and nothing more. However, this fish has a surprise for her in the five strands of fishing line seen dangling from its jaw. “This fish, with his hook-filled mouth, emerges as a symbol of pain, an occasion for the speaker to confront that which is normally repressed and unseen. But with her elaborate, lyrical description, the speaker can be read as an artist who is able to translate this anguish into a ‘fivehaired beard of wisdom.’ As she celebrates her mastery over the fish, the poem ends triumphantly with the paradoxical suggestion that creativity is produced through destruction: suffering, Bishop concludes, can be the impetus for the imagination” (“Elizabeth Bishop”, n.d.). The deep realization regarding the necessity of pain as a source for imagination is reflected in the flash of the scales while the relation to the average individual is inextricably made without being explicitly stated. Like the deliberate play on the typography mistake in the New York Times that led to the development of “Man-Moth,” “Filling Station” is a playful exchange on how words that sound the same but have different meanings can lead one into much deeper thoughts than the surface seems to indicate. After describing the very dirty conditions of this family filling station in which everything is “oil-soaked, oil-permeated / to a disturbing, over-all / black translucency” (3-5), the speaker finally arrives at some comic books that provide a little color as “They lie / upon a big dim doily / draping a taboret” (23-25). The repetitive nature of the dirty and oily theme has the reader progressing through the poem in a rather sing-song sort of way. “When Bishop proceeds to the metaphysical question – ‘Why, oh why, the doily?’ – the very question seems generated by the literal pattern of the poem: ‘doily’ includes ‘oily.’” (Blasing, 1987). This doily has been “Embroidered in a daisy stitch, / with marguerites, I think” (31-32). Bishop makes the observation that someone had to embroider the daisy, someone had to water the plant that sits next to it, yet that someone doesn’t seem to be affected by the overwhelming pervasiveness of the oil surrounding these things, even going so far as to arrange the oil cans “so that they softly say: / ESSO – SO – SO – SO / to high-strung automobiles” (38-40). The postmodern idea of the individual arising from the objectifying influences of the city can be read into these lines as the flimsy embroidered doily does its best to hold up under the weight of the metropolis’ dirt and grime and the people work not to make the environment comfortable or clean, but simply to meet the needs of the “high-strung automobiles.” This reduces humanity to nothing more than the tools with which the mechanics of modern society repair breakdowns in the system. With these descriptive phrases removed and reduced down to their most component parts as Pound might suggest, these inexpressible underlying ideas are lost forever. The final line of the poem, “Somebody loves us all,” serves to neatly sum up this experience in the idea that although we are all alone in trying to deal with the dirt, perhaps there is someone out there leaving small traces of their actions, echoing Bishop’s own internal struggle to believe in a higher power. In “The Pink Dog,” Bishop offers a stance on the ability of the individual to survive in the modern society. Bonnie Costello describes the dog as a dehumanized image of the physical body (1991). By advising the dog to cover itself with a Carnival costume, the speaker in this poem is acknowledging that one cannot remain completely subjective in the modern day world. Instead, it is necessary to take on the form and shape of the surrounding culture or “go bobbing in the ebbing sewage, nights / out in the suburbs, where there are no lights” (Bishop, 17-18). The costume is necessary “for the sake of its survival in a culture that wishes to deny the mortal body” (Costello, 1991). Without the costume, the reality of the individual proves too frightening for most as Bishop describes: “Of course, they’re mortally afraid of rabies, / You are not mad; you have a case of scabies / but look intelligent” (Bishop, 7-9). Any action that is different from the culturally prescribed action of the modern is viewed as crazy, different, bizarre and undesirable. One simply cannot allow any differences to show if they are to be a part of the culture around them. The surface levels of this poem reveal a playful stance on the triplet rhymes throughout and the joyful ideas of the Carnival, yet the descriptive adjectives and metaphors convey an almost indescribable deeper sense of meaning and introduce philosophical questions that merit discussion. Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, through the subjective meanings and creative couplings of adjective and through other literary devices, creates a sense of the ineffable experiences of life as it is experienced by a great many individuals living through the postmodern society. It is with the adjective that she paints a picture to be seen with the mind’s eye that can then be translated into more specific, metaphysical considerations. While she entertains our vision, Bishop works to expound on the inequalities of life as she sees them, namely the isolation and alienation she has found in the modern city. Although she supposedly has the right to do and be what she wants to be, she demonstrates in poetry like “Pink Dog” that she knows to truly allow one’s subjective self to show through in everyday society will accomplish nothing but get one thrown into the tidal rivers. Despite these feelings of isolation, Bishop continues to seek for a protective higher power in poems such as “Filling Station,” and concluding that it is perhaps not so caring anymore as the only traces left are a plant, a trebuchet and an old, oil-stained embroidered doily. However, the cans are all ordered neatly to speak to the cars, so perhaps this benevolent being that takes such care isn’t gone, but is merely overwhelmed. Meanwhile, examples of strength and accomplishment can come from unexpected places, such as the capture of a fish on a warm afternoon and noticing that he has five fishing lines trailing out of his mouth from previous catches that he’s managed to evade as in “The Fish.” These moments of triumph and recognition are what help us maintain our individuality even in the mind-numbing constrictions of everyday life. Her lyricism and imagery as seen in “The Man-Moth” could not be excluded and still retain its subtlety of meaning and graceful allusions. Through these descriptions and allusions, reading these poems and allowing the descriptions and possibilities to sink in naturally awakens an ineffable experience in us. Works Cited Bishop, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems 1927-1979. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983. Blasing, Mutlu Konu. “The Re-Verses of Elizabeth Bishop.” American Poetry: The Rhetoric of its Forms. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Ch. 6, pp. 107-108. Costello, Bonnie. “Attractive Mortality.” Elizabeth Bishop: Questions of Mastery. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. Ch. 2, pp. 85-86. “Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Fish’: A Psychoanalytic Reading.” n.d. Bedford St. Martin’s. June 7, 2007 Pound, Ezra. “A Retrospect.” Pavannes and Divisions. (1918). June 7, 2007. Rzepka, Charles. “The Honourable Characteristic of Poetry”: Two Hundred Years of Lyrical Ballads.” 2001. Boston University. June 7, 2007. . Read More