Elizabeth Bishop Leaving Certificate Poetry
6th Year Revision Booklet Newbridge College
Elizabeth Bishop – First Death in Nova Scotia Techniques
Repetition: Bishop uses repetition which highlights the eerie, depressing atmosphere that she is trying to create. She does this in the very first line of the poem as well as throughout. ‘In the cold, cold parlour.’ Allusion: Bishop alludes to ‘Edward, Prince of Wales, with Princess Alexandra.’ She is using this to try and distract from the main thing which is the death of her cousin. This is a typically childish thing to do, which highlights the age of Bishop when the events of this poem occurred. This is also used later in the poem to create some sort of fairytale ending for her cousin. Cadence and contrast: Bishop uses this to highlight the child’s confusion in the poem while also conveying the harshness of the tragedy of the situation with the harsh ‘c’ sound. ‘Cold and caressable.’ The repetition of Arthur throughout is almost as if the child is calling her cousin’s name, wanting him to come back, not understanding that he can’t. Imagery: Bishop uses childlike imagery to get the point of view of a child across as she is trying to emphasise this throughout. ‘A little frosted cake.’
Imagery In “Filling Station” In the first stanza the imagery created is all very grim and dismal. Bishop repeats the word “oil” and uses the word “black”. All giving off the imagery of black.
"Be careful with that match" This quote suggests a sense of danger and uncertainty which is then continued throughout the poem. Bishop uses this foreshadowing to help us envisage a dangerous place. This pessimistic note at the start of the poem makes us feel uneasy about the place being described. “Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit”. The imagery created here portrays a sense of middle-class society. “On the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy”. Here Bishop uses contrasting imagery to describe this odd family place. The colloquial word “comfy” suggests she finds the scene pleasant despite the “dirtydog”.
“Some comic books provide the only note of color-of certain color”. This imagery portrays how impossible it is to know what colour anything here really is. This proves to be an important image later on in the poem when Bishop says “somebody loves us all”. It seems as though the book s were put there intentionally to try and spruce up the place. “Somebody embroided the doily. Somebody waters the plant”. Here we envisage possibly a women’s presence for the first time throughout the poem”.
The Fish- A commentary
In this poem Bishop doesn’t examine the beauty or power of nature; instead she assumes an almost ecological angle in her endeavors to bridge the gaps between human and natural worlds. She personifies and hence exposes “The Fish” as not merely that, but also as a fellow living creature in the world. With creative similes “like ancient wallpaper” she allegorizes the fish to something we as humans are familiar with. Empathy is subsequent to cognizance, and in liberating the fish in the concluding lines of the poem, Bishop asserts its moral right to life, a concept that was highly unusual at the time. Bishop was influenced by the ideas of the Surrealist movement and their distorting the distinction between the world of imagination and reality. This is visible in “The Fish” where we can eventually barely distinguish the fish from the “battered and venerable” portrait of a war general figure with a “beard of wisdom”. Eventually, we are jolted into reality by the reminder of the corporeality of the fish in the last line, conforming to the idea of a concluding epiphany.
Bishop employs vivid “dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails” and onomatopoeic “the sun-cracked thwarts” imagery to give the reader an accurate depiction of an actual experience she had while in Florida in the 1930’s. Her characteristic eye for detail is displayed in this poem, with aesthetic descriptions that almost convince the reader they are present.
Techniques ‘He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight.’ – Repetition, Bishop is stating the fact that the fish did not struggle, it was almost like the fish had given up on life. ‘Coarse white flesh packed in like feathers’ ‘Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper’ – similes are used throughout the poem to describe the fish in a beautiful way. The Imagery of pain can be seen a lot through the poem - the fish is described as ‘battered and venerable’ and his gills were ‘crisp with blood that could cut so badly’ we can see that the fish is suffering is a main theme in this poem. ‘Frightening gills fresh’ – the cadence that is used in the poem sets a calming feel and gives the poem a certain flow. Bishop can see and feel the fish’s pain; it seems that she is using the fish to describe how she is feeling. The fish is seen as ‘venerable’, trapped and seems to have lost the will to fight. ‘I looked into his eyes whish were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellower’ – Bishop can feel an emotional attachment to the fish. The colours that Bishop used in her poetry manage to paint a vivid image in our heads. The use of the ‘dramatic reds and blacks’ work well as these colours could not be more different and because of this it means we can see them perfectly in our minds. ‘Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow’ – the repetition used here brings a positive splash of colour to the event, it brings hope to the end of the poem.
Sestina- The structure Bishop chooses the form of a sestina to deal with the painful topics in this poem. The lines are grouped into six sestets with six lines each and the poem ends with a concluding tercet of three lines. The six words that end each line of the first stanza are repeated in a different order at the end of lines in the following stanzas. Bishop uses this form and structure of poetry to great effect in this poem: Using the form of a sestina Bishop plays and investigates the idea that we as humans need structures around us, ‘rigid’ ‘inscrutable house’. We endeavour to predict and control nature and to protect ourselves from the rain ‘foretold by the almanac’. We have a need for these structures around us. The structure of the poem itself in facts mirrors this, she use the formality and structure of sestinas to convey this rudimentary human instinct.
One of the foremost characters of the poem is Bishop as a child. As we see with much of her work she uses her creative imagery and childlike language to convey a sense of unknowing and innocence. However in this poem the innocent feel is intensified. The structure of a sestina involves an almost childlike repetition just as a child’s game might. She uses the structure here to great effect to evoke the sense of the importance of the child’s presence in the poem. In this poem Bishop discusses many painful and emotional issues. Pathetic fallacy is used to convey a deep tender underlying atmosphere of this pain and emotion. The strict structure of sestina lets Bishop deal with these topics in such a way that her grief is also contained.