1. Elizabeth Bishop: Biography 1.Questions of Travel 2.The Armadillo 3.First Death in Nova Scotia 4.Filling Station 5.In the Waiting Room 6.Sestina

2. Elizabeth Bishop – the early years Bishop was born February 8,1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts Her father died when Bishop was only 8 months old Bishop's mother soon was committed to a mental asylum Bishop was sent to live with grandparents in Nova Scotia

3. Education Elizabeth gained a degree from Vassar college in 1934. The same year her mother died in the asylum. The two were never reunited.

4. Elizabeth spent two years travelling from 1935 to 1937. France Spain Italy North Africa

5. 1938 Moves to Key West, Florida 1951 Publishes her first collection of poems, North Et South; Wins Houghton Mifflin Poetry Award 1955 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1964 Awarded Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets 1970 Poet in residence at Harvard University, Massachusetts

6. Elizabeth was most influenced by Marianne Moore her close friend and mentor. Marianne Moore

7. Great ability to describe situations, objects, emotions and ideas clearly and precisely Had a difficult childhood that influenced her writing Close observer of the natural world Regarded art as being genderless Interested in the shape and texture of the world Deeper themes underlie surface description Writes about travel, childhood experiences, the ‘are’ of writing

8. Elizabeth died aged 68 years old on 6 th October 1979 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

9. Questions of Travel (1965)

10. Questions of Travel The poem takes a quizzical look at the notion of travel and why we feel the need to do it. It also questions our ability to understand other people’s cultures.

11. There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams hurry too rapidly down to the sea, and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. --For if those streaks, those mile- long, shiny, tearstains, aren't waterfalls yet, in a quick age or so, as ages go here, they probably will be. But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling, the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, slime-hung and barnacled. Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres? What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around? The tiniest green hummingbird in the world? To stare at some inexplicable old stonework, inexplicable and impenetrable, at any view, instantly seen and always, always delightful? Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too? And have we room for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

12. But surely it would have been a pity not to have seen the trees along this road, really exaggerated in their beauty, not to have seen them gesturing like noble pantomimists, robed in pink. --Not to have had to stop for gas and heard the sad, two-noted, wooden tune of disparate wooden clogs carelessly clacking over a grease-stained filling-station floor. (In another country the clogs would all be tested. Each pair there would have identical pitch.) --A pity not to have heard the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird who sings above the broken gasoline pump in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque: three towers, five silver crosses. --Yes, a pity not to have pondered, blurr'dly and inconclusively, on what connection can exist for centuries between the crudest wooden footwear and, careful and finicky, the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear and, careful and finicky, the whittled fantasies of wooden cages. --Never to have studied history in the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages. --And never to have had to listen to rain so much like politicians' speeches: two hours of unrelenting oratory and then a sudden golden silence in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes: " Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home? Or could Pascal have been not entirely right about just sitting quietly in one's room? Continent, city, country, society: the choice is never wide and never free. And here, or there... No. Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?"

13. Personal experience Bishop had no experience of what a stable and happy home life might be like. ‘wherever that may be’ (line 67) Poignant reminder of the deep loneliness at the heart of so many of her poems.

14. Language Blend of poetic and the conversational Convey the notion of someone thinking aloud Many variations of tone Speculative Tentative Humorous Lyrical

15. The Armadillo St. John’s Day, 24 June, is the winter solstice ( the shortest day of the year) in Brazil. In order to honour the saint, it was custom of the local people to send up fire balloons into the sky. These helium filled balloons carried paper boxes, which then self ignited. The idea was to let them drift towards the shrine of St John in the mountains. The practice was declared illegal although it still occurred widely. Bishop wrote to a friend in 1955 that she was in two minds about the fire balloons. She admired them as they lit up the sky but she was horrified at the damage they caused.

16. This is the time of year when almost every night the frail, illegal fire balloons appear. Climbing the mountain height, rising toward a saint still honored in these parts, the paper chambers flush and fill with light that comes and goes, like hearts. Once up against the sky it's hard to tell them from the stars -- planets, that is -- the tinted ones: Venus going down, or Mars, or the pale green one. With a wind, they flare and falter, wobble and toss; but if it's still they steer between the kite sticks of the Southern Cross, receding, dwindling, solemnly and steadily forsaking us, or, in the downdraft from a peak, suddenly turning dangerous. Last night another big one fell. It splattered like an egg of fire against the cliff behind the house. The flame ran down. We saw the pair of owls who nest there flying up and up, their whirling black-and- white stained bright pink underneath, until they shrieked up out of sight.

17. The ancient owls' nest must have burned. Hastily, all alone, a glistening armadillo left the scene, rose-flecked, head down, tail down, and then a baby rabbit jumped out, short-eared, to our surprise. So soft! -- a handful of intangible ash with fixed, ignited eyes. Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry! O falling fire and piercing cry and panic, and a weak mailed fist clenched ignorant against the sky!

18. First Death in Nova Scotia (1965)

19. First Death in Nova Scotia Like ‘Sestina’ it is one of the poems Bishop wrote in her fifties in which she recaptures childhood memories. She had recently undergone psychoanalysis to help her recognise the causes of her struggles with depression and alcoholism

20. F.D.i.N.S This poem tells of Bishop’s first disturbing encounter with death It is interesting to note that it contains one of the few direct references to her mother Bishop was not quite four when her cousin Arthur died.

21. Filing Station (1965)

22. Oh, but it is dirty! --this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it's a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty. Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy. Some comic books provide the only note of color-- of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia. Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.) Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: ESSO--SO--SO--SO to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.

23. Filling Station Sees beyond surface Optimistic or pessimistic? Light-hearted tone disguises serious point Lends itself to different interpretations Conversational language Asks questions Descriptive

24. Interpreting the poem Although it is simply written, it can be read on a number of levels. It can be interpreted as an expression of Bishop’s optimistic view of life, despite her personal difficulties, especially the lack of a mother in her childhood. She seems to suggest that a mother’s presence may always be felt, even if she is not actually there.

25. Regret The mother is nowhere to be seen. Has she gone away or simply given up the battle against oil and grease? Might this be an indirect expression of grief for Bishop’s deprived childhood? From this point of view, the final line is somewhat ironic as not everybody has ‘somebody’ to love them.

26. Allegory = story with a symbolic meaning Filling station = a little world in itself Full of disorder and sordidness

27. In the Waiting Room (1976)

29. In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo to keep her dentist's appointment and sat and waited for her in the dentist's waiting room. It was winter. It got dark early. The waiting room was full of grown-up people, arctics and overcoats, lamps and magazines. My aunt was inside what seemed like a long time and while I waited and read the National Geographic (I could read) and carefully studied the photographs: the inside of a volcano, black, and full of ashes; then it was spilling over in rivulets of fire. Osa and Martin Johnson dressed in riding breeches, laced boots, and pith helmets. A dead man slung on a pole "Long Pig," the caption said. Babies with pointed heads wound round and round with string; black, naked women with necks wound round and round with wire like the necks of light bulbs. Their breasts were horrifying. I read it right straight through. I was too shy to stop. And then I looked at the cover: the yellow margins, the date. Suddenly, from inside, came an oh! of pain --Aunt Consuelo's voice-- not very loud or long. I wasn't at all surprised; even then I knew she was a foolish, timid woman. I might have been embarrassed, but wasn't. What took me completely by surprise was that it was me: my voice, in my mouth. Without thinking at all I was my foolish aunt, I--we--were falling, falling, our eyes glued to the cover of the National Geographic, February, 1918.

30. I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world. into cold, blue-black space. But I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them. Why should you be one, too? I scarcely dared to look to see what it was I was. I gave a sidelong glance --I couldn't look any higher-- at shadowy gray knees, trousers and skirts and boots and different pairs of hands lying under the lamps. I knew that nothing stranger had ever happened, that nothing stranger could ever happen. Why should I be my aunt, or me, or anyone? What similarities boots, hands, the family voice I felt in my throat, or even the National Geographic and those awful hanging breasts held us all together or made us all just one? How I didn't know any word for it how "unlikely"... How had I come to be here, like them, and overhear a cry of pain that could have got loud and worse but hadn't? The waiting room was bright and too hot. It was sliding beneath a big black wave, another, and another. Then I was back in it. The War was on. Outside, in Worcester, Massachusetts, were night and slush and cold, and it was still the fifth of February, 1918.

31. In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo to keep her dentist's appointment and sat and waited for her in the dentist's waiting room. It was winter. It got dark early. The waiting room was full of grown-up people, arctics and overcoats, lamps and magazines. My aunt was inside what seemed like a long time and while I waited and read the National Geographic (I could read) and carefully studied the photographs: the inside of a volcano, black, and full of ashes; then it was spilling over in rivulets of fire. Osa and Martin Johnson dressed in riding breeches, laced boots, and pith helmets. A dead man slung on a pole "Long Pig," the caption said. Babies with pointed heads wound round and round with string; black, naked women with necks wound round and round with wire like the necks of light bulbs. Their breasts were horrifying. I read it right straight through. I was too shy to stop. And then I looked at the cover: the yellow margins, the date. Suddenly, from inside, came an oh! of pain --Aunt Consuelo's voice-- not very loud or long. I wasn't at all surprised; even then I knew she was a foolish, timid woman. I might have been embarrassed, but wasn't. What took me completely by surprise was that it was me: my voice, in my mouth. Without thinking at all I was my foolish aunt, I--we--were falling, falling, our eyes glued to the cover of the National Geographic, February, 1918.

32. Interpreting the poem Many questions in the poem philosophicalThey are simply phrased, but they are nonetheless profoundly philosophical. speculatesBishop speculates about the nature of existence and how extraordinary it is to be one’s self as well as part of the human race. She becomes aware of how arbitrary location is, and how it may determine culture and custom

33. The title Suggests further possible interpretations The chid is literally ‘in the waiting room.’ Metaphorically she is waiting to take her place as an adult, as a conscious member of the human race with all its complexity. Sinister - waiting for the human fate of death that we all must eventually experience.

34. Sestina (1965)

35. It was originally given the title ‘Early Sorrow,’ which offers us an insight into the origin of the poem and the nature of the experience depicted in it. It was among the first poems that Bishop wrote about her childhood. She was in her fifties, living in Brazil, before she was able to write about her traumatic experiences as a child in Nova Scotia, just before her mother’s final departure to the psychiatric institution in which she was to spend her life.

36. It is thought that psychoanalysis helped Bishop to retrieve buried memories of that time. The poem shows her awareness of the crucial role of a fantasy world in communicating a child’s emotions as well as the significance, for children, of the objects that can be named.

37. Tone What is left unsaid is almost as significant as what is said No grief or sorrow is directly expressed There is an underlying atmosphere that is painfully emotional Where are mother and father? Concept of ‘home’ - to not have been entirely happy

38. Form = Sestina Difficult and archaic – highly stylised and formal 6 unrhymed stanzas of 6 lines 7 th stanza of 3 lines = envoi Only 6 words are used at the end of the lines –‘house,’ ‘grandmother,’ ‘child,’ ‘stove,’ ‘almanac,’ tears.’ Involves great control and discipline of one’s material. It allows for ritual repetition, almost as a child’s game does. Suited to the theme of the poem – childhood sorrow. Formula - grief repeated and contained When Bishop changed the title of the poem, she drew attention to the form of the poem so that effectively it becomes a subject in the poem.

39. Themes Moments of insight Humankind and nature Childhood Addiction Exile and homelessness

40. ‘Bishop’s narrative style and her use of conversational language make her poems accessible to the reader.’ Would you agree with this view? Bishop’s poems reveal a great deal about her life, especially her childhood, and her personality. Her descriptions are always vivid and fresh, in line with her desire to see things in a new way. The reader can see how, as a painter as well as a poet, she was interested in the shape, colour and texture of things around her, as reflected in her use of language. Her poems are hardly ever purely descriptive, there is almost always a deeper theme.

41. Bishop’s narrative style and her use of conversational language make her poems accessible to the reader. She often creates the impression of someone thinking aloud, reflecting on the world about her, on her own experience and the issues it raises. She is preoccupied with what it means to be human in a world that she sees as uncertain and constantly changing. The reader can relate to the philosophical nature of her poems, expressed in a unique and attractive style.