DWill wrote:Bishop isn't known for being autobiographical, and she isn't confessional, as her friend Robert Lowell came to be. But this poem seems to be autobiographical in the strictest way, with its focus on the plain facts of the moments in the waiting room. The poem tells of an epiphany the poet experienced, though it wasn't one of the joyful sort. Bishop presumably writes many years after this event, but she keeps her language appropriate to the thinking of a 7-year-old. It's interesting how the National Geographic might prepare her for the moment when she appears to realize that she is not just an "I"--Elizabeth--but is one of a larger group radiating out from her aunt, to whom she before felt no connection until her cry of pain, to humanity, represented by the strange people in National Geographic.

On my second reading of this poem I made a connection to Dr. Suess' book Oh, The Places You'll Go! In that book there is a place called the "waiting place" - which I take to be the mental or emotional space that one occupies at transition times in one's life. This poem captures something of the same idea.

This is a blurb about the book from Wiki:
The story begins with the narrator, relating the decision of the unnamed protagonist (who represents the reader) to leave town. The protagonist travels through several geometrical and polychromatic landscapes and places, eventually encountering a place simply called "The Waiting Place", which is ominously addressed as being a place where everyone is always waiting for something to happen. It is implied that time does not pass in the Waiting Place.

I wonder if the women's breasts are terrifying to her because she's a young girl and doesn't want to think of how her body will change. Another possibility in this poem is that she realizes both her own identity and her connection with others at the same time. Why it comes as such a shock I can't explain, unless before this point she was in the Piaget stage in which we naively assume we're the center of the world, and finding out we're not gives us a jolt.

Now for the question of being horrified by the picture of the African woman's breasts. Here are my thoughts. My guess is that photo in the National Geographic Magazine described in the poem was of a tribal woman with pendulous breasts. I remember sitting in an Anthropology class as a college student and seeing a photo of a tribal woman with very elongated breasts and feeling a little horrified. I think anyone would have some reaction to a photo like this, so I did not so read it as the young girl being horrified at the prospect of her own body's maturing. I read it as one of a series of photos in that magazine that edged the young girl toward realizing that there was a whole world beyond what her so far limited experience has allowed her to know. The fact that that photo is mentioned specifically by Bishop must signify something. I am thinking that because Bishop points out that girl is surrounded by adults in the waiting room and holds herself as seperate from them as a group that the realization is that she will become an adult and does in fact belong to that group or will some day. Being just shy of 7 the girl would not have the abiltiy to fully understand what being an adult means and based on the photographic evidence some women and maybe all woman have socking breasts and maybe there are other shocking things in the world.
Okay, I may have gone off the deep end - better go back are re-read the poem.

Wait, here is a question for you, DW or anyone else who might have an answer. In this line:
The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
---any idea what is meant by arctics? And I also want to say, I like this poem.

I think arctics are what my mother used to call galoshes (which made me cringe).

DWill wrote:I think arctics are what my mother used to call galoshes (which made me cringe).

What made you cringe the word galoshes, the actual object or trying to use them? I had galoshes when I was in Kindergarten are early elementary school. Trying to get them on over ones shoes is quite something. However, I love the sound and feel of the word in my mouth - one of my favorites. Such a fun word for a practical, but unfun object.

I found this:
In the upper U.S. Midwest, school children know the black rubber, over-the-shoe boot as "four-buckle arctics".
And for anyone who might be interested you can read more about galoshes here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galoshes

My mother would tell me to wear galoshes when all the other kids were wearing olive-drab rubber boots, almost knee-high. I finally got her to buy me a pair, and would wear them to school when there wasn't a chance of rain, my feet sweating happily all day. She also insisted I wear "chinos" instead of "dungarees." The pants were bought at Lord & Taylors. My brother and I had to try the pants on, and then an old tailor would mark the length with chalk and cuffs would be sewn. The legs were always way too long. This was in the era of "high waters." Mom meant well.

How interesting - didn't know about these 'arctics' but did have rubber overshoes in my childhood.
Why does my profile say 'pop up book fanatic'? MUST REVISITprofile!

kirkby wrote:How interesting - didn't know about these 'arctics' but did have rubber overshoes in my childhood.
Why does my profile say 'pop up book fanatic'? MUST REVISITprofile!

Fortunately or unfortunately we have no control over the little captions under our avatars. It changes with the number of posts you make.

I think we should take a look at the poem EB is most know for before we finish with this little project. I'll just post it and let others begin the discussion.

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

The smart academic who wrote the headnote on Bishop in the Norton anthology led off with this statement: "Elizabeth Bishop's fastidious eye inspects, with a precision like Marianne Moore's, the physical world." That seems a fair assessment of what she's up to in this poem. Bishop needed to get the description of the fish exactly right. I think she did. That's not all there is to the poem, of course. There's the ironic "victory" at the end, which normally might be the fisherman's victory, but here is the fish's--I suppose for its ability to survive and its enduring beauty.

I agree, EB captures the fish picture perfectly. I really like this set of lines, they instantly convey the elemental difference between fish and humans and the relationship between fish and humans - summoned up by me as yum!

While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,

Anyone up to try another? I am hoping there is enough energy left for EB to get through 2 or 3 more poems.

Visits to St. Elizabeths
by Elizabeth Bishop


[1950]

This is the house of Bedlam.

This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the time
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the roadstead all of board
reached by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the old, brave man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

These are the years and the walls of the ward,
the winds and clouds of the sea of board
sailed by the sailor
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the cranky man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
beyond the sailor
winding his watch
that tells the time
of the cruel man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a world of books gone flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
over the creaking sea of board
of the batty sailor
that winds his watch
that tells the time
of the busy man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is there, is flat,
for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat
that dances weeping down the ward
waltzing the length of a weaving board
by the silent sailor
that hears his watch
that ticks the time
of the tedious man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to feel if the world is there and flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances joyfully down the ward
into the parting seas of board
past the staring sailor
that shakes his watch
that tells the time
of the poet, the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the soldier home from the war.
These are the years and the walls and the door
that shut on a boy that pats the floor
to see if the world is round or flat.
This is a Jew in a newspaper hat
that dances carefully down the ward,
walking the plank of a coffin board
with the crazy sailor
that shows his watch
that tells the time
of the wretched man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.