WEBVTT 00:00.960 --> 00:09.180 Prof: Frost was born in 1879, I think; 00:09.180 --> 00:15.940 Hart Crane in 1899, representing almost another 00:15.935 --> 00:19.455 generation from Frost. 00:19.460 --> 00:27.680 Auden was born in 1906, Bishop in 1911. 00:27.680 --> 00:33.170 She's the latest, the youngest on our syllabus 00:33.173 --> 00:40.623 and she's almost two generations distant from Robert Frost. 00:40.620 --> 00:46.080 When I was a freshman at Yale in 1976, in April, 00:46.081 --> 00:50.731 Elizabeth Bishop came to read at Yale. 00:50.730 --> 00:56.570 She's, in a sense, a part of our world in a way 00:56.568 --> 01:04.308 that the poets that we've been reading really aren't quite. 01:04.310 --> 01:10.360 She was good friends with John Hollander, Penelope Laurans, 01:10.363 --> 01:15.063 on our faculty, Sandy McClatchy and others. 01:15.060 --> 01:22.610 She filled the art gallery lecture hall – 400 people. 01:22.610 --> 01:25.910 And this was at a moment, interestingly, 01:25.906 --> 01:30.046 when she was not yet at the height of her fame. 01:30.049 --> 01:36.589 She would become by the end of the century a figure as 01:36.593 --> 01:43.513 prominent, as often read and widely read and esteemed, 01:43.510 --> 01:48.680 as any of the poets we've been reading, which is a remarkable 01:48.676 --> 01:52.976 event in literary culture because Bishop would have 01:52.982 --> 01:56.162 seemed, to herself and to others 01:56.158 --> 02:01.538 through the course of most of her career, as an interesting 02:01.543 --> 02:04.703 poet but not as a major figure. 02:04.700 --> 02:09.330 And surely, she was herself uncomfortable with that kind of 02:09.330 --> 02:10.130 stature. 02:10.128 --> 02:15.888 She was, I think it's fair to say, excruciated by public 02:15.887 --> 02:21.537 occasions, including this one that I'm referring to. 02:21.539 --> 02:22.549 Listen to her read. 02:22.550 --> 02:28.100 I think there are some recordings of her on the Center 02:28.102 --> 02:31.142 for Language Study website. 02:31.139 --> 02:36.479 Bishop has a kind of exaggeratedly ordinary voice, 02:36.480 --> 02:42.480 in a sense, a very private voice that she was willing to 02:42.476 --> 02:47.596 put on stage but always only uncomfortably. 02:47.598 --> 02:52.698 So, in this particular reading, I'm remembering she had read 02:52.702 --> 02:57.632 for about 20 minutes and then looked across the stage with 02:57.632 --> 03:01.872 these 400 people in front of her at her host, 03:01.870 --> 03:05.420 Penelope Laurans: "Is that enough Penny?" she 03:05.424 --> 03:05.994 said. 03:05.990 --> 03:09.520 And of course, people wanted a lot more and a 03:09.520 --> 03:13.130 lot more of her, but she was reluctant to give 03:13.131 --> 03:15.941 it and uncomfortable giving it. 03:15.938 --> 03:21.568 Bishop, in a sense, belongs to poetry after modern 03:21.568 --> 03:25.358 poetry, poetry after modernism. 03:25.360 --> 03:28.340 In September, I'm going to give a lecture 03:28.341 --> 03:32.741 course on poetry after 1950, and we'll start with Bishop and 03:32.739 --> 03:37.359 pay a lot more attention to her than we have room to do in this 03:37.360 --> 03:38.330 course. 03:38.330 --> 03:43.160 But Bishop belongs, too, in any history of modern 03:43.155 --> 03:48.575 poetry and she provides, I think, an important endpoint 03:48.584 --> 03:53.314 to the work that we've been doing together. 03:53.310 --> 03:58.450 She provides, in a sense, a kind of extension 03:58.446 --> 04:05.446 of certain strains of modern poetry and also at the same time 04:05.450 --> 04:09.070 a kind of critique of them. 04:09.068 --> 04:19.148 Bishop went to Vassar and she was on the literary magazine 04:19.153 --> 04:20.573 there. 04:20.569 --> 04:27.819 In 1929, I think, she interviewed the important 04:27.822 --> 04:33.502 guest on the campus, T.S. Eliot. 04:33.500 --> 04:38.210 I would have liked to have been in the room. 04:38.209 --> 04:41.859 She wrote--well, I guess what I want to 04:41.863 --> 04:47.153 highlight is the fact that Bishop was in college reading 04:47.151 --> 04:52.441 Eliot and having Eliot visit when she was really forming 04:52.440 --> 04:54.940 herself as a writer. 04:54.940 --> 05:02.360 She wrote a paper for one of her courses called "Dimensions 05:02.358 --> 05:09.648 for a Novel," and this essay involved a reading of Eliot's 05:09.649 --> 05:12.209 essay, "Tradition and the Individual 05:12.211 --> 05:14.731 Talent," which you've read and which we've talked about. 05:14.730 --> 05:18.630 Bishop liked it; she was interested in it. 05:18.629 --> 05:25.579 In her account of the way in which she uses Eliot, 05:25.581 --> 05:34.661 she accents certain aspects of his ideas and downplays others. 05:34.660 --> 05:40.370 Let me quote from that essay. 05:40.370 --> 05:43.910 She says--this is on your handout: 05:43.910 --> 05:48.590 A constant process of adjustment [and that's Eliot's 05:48.591 --> 05:51.881 word, "adjustment"] is going on about the 05:51.875 --> 05:56.715 past--every ingredient dropped into it from the present must 05:56.721 --> 05:58.611 affect the whole. 05:58.610 --> 06:01.000 [You remember Eliot writing about that in "Tradition and the 06:00.999 --> 06:04.499 Individual Talent," where he talks about how new 06:04.495 --> 06:08.645 work reshapes everything that's gone before.] 06:08.653 --> 06:14.323 Now what Mr. Eliot says about the sequence of works of art in 06:14.324 --> 06:19.714 a tradition, in history [and this is Bishop's extension of 06:19.711 --> 06:23.871 Eliot's idea] seems to be equally true of the 06:23.870 --> 06:28.880 sequence of events or even of pages or paragraphs in a 06:28.879 --> 06:30.959 novel…. 06:30.959 --> 06:34.699 but I know of no novel that makes use of this constant 06:34.699 --> 06:38.579 readjustment among the members of any sequence. 06:38.579 --> 06:42.699 So, what Bishop's doing is applying Eliot's idea of 06:42.702 --> 06:47.822 sequence in tradition to the way in which a literary work might 06:47.815 --> 06:51.125 itself unfold; that is, where every, 06:51.129 --> 06:55.929 as it were, new moment in a novel – here she's talking 06:55.925 --> 07:01.325 about a novel – affects a kind of readjustment of what's gone 07:01.331 --> 07:02.641 on before. 07:02.639 --> 07:10.109 It is, as she's imagining it, a literary form in which there 07:10.110 --> 07:16.690 is a kind of continual reorientation required by both 07:16.694 --> 07:19.484 reader and writer. 07:19.480 --> 07:25.470 She takes over specifically that phrase "constant 07:25.471 --> 07:32.211 readjustment" and identifies this as a kind of poetics, 07:32.211 --> 07:34.211 if you will. 07:34.209 --> 07:40.399 This is really an important idea in modern poetry generally. 07:40.399 --> 07:43.889 And you could look at Eliot's own poetry in, 07:43.891 --> 07:46.981 for example, "Prufrock" as exemplifying 07:46.976 --> 07:50.466 something of what Bishop is describing, 07:50.470 --> 07:56.150 that is, a poem that unfolds, disclosing at every point new 07:56.149 --> 07:59.869 principles of order and perspective. 07:59.870 --> 08:05.610 It's an idea that is in that sense central to modern poetry, 08:05.608 --> 08:11.148 but Bishop takes it and she pushes it in her own work much 08:11.151 --> 08:12.321 further. 08:12.319 --> 08:18.609 She creates in her poetry a radically relative point of view 08:18.610 --> 08:24.470 that is adjusted to a kind of metamorphic and decentered 08:24.473 --> 08:28.623 world, as she sees it – a world that 08:28.622 --> 08:30.712 is living in change. 08:30.709 --> 08:35.969 That phrase you might remember from the very end of "Primitive 08:35.971 --> 08:39.681 Like an Orb," Stevens's great, late poem. 08:39.678 --> 08:43.798 Bishop is, in many ways, a Stevensian poet, 08:43.798 --> 08:47.328 a poet of change, constant change. 08:47.330 --> 08:54.610 But significantly in Bishop's imagination, as in Auden's, 08:54.610 --> 09:00.330 there are no Stevensian giants, no major men, 09:00.330 --> 09:03.580 no large men reading. 09:03.580 --> 09:11.550 The poet in Bishop's poetry describes the world rather than 09:11.552 --> 09:13.342 creates it. 09:13.340 --> 09:22.270 The poet is not like God as the poet is in Stevens. 09:22.269 --> 09:28.159 The poet is much more like an ordinary person, 09:28.164 --> 09:35.244 a woman on stage in a skirt, speaking uncomfortably, 09:35.240 --> 09:39.300 if you like, to a large audience in an 09:39.303 --> 09:41.173 ordinary voice. 09:41.168 --> 09:45.658 Her poetry is, in fact, full of ordinary 09:45.657 --> 09:50.027 people, and this links her to Frost. 09:50.029 --> 09:57.249 There are generally few, oh, emblematic or archetypal 09:57.249 --> 10:05.019 figures such as you find in Yeats or in Moore's poetry or 10:05.024 --> 10:10.444 often, for that matter, in Auden's. 10:10.440 --> 10:18.630 There is in Bishop really no sublime, no Yeatsian ascent out 10:18.626 --> 10:25.146 of "the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." 10:25.149 --> 10:33.369 There's no Cranian verticality, no Icarus-like ascent of the 10:33.373 --> 10:34.213 sky. 10:34.210 --> 10:39.820 Instead, Bishop's poetics of description are what I would 10:39.818 --> 10:45.528 call a kind of horizontal poetics that moves laterally, 10:45.529 --> 10:48.579 that is earthbound and is concerned with, 10:48.580 --> 10:52.620 in a sense – this is her primary recurrent trope – 10:52.621 --> 10:56.661 mapping the world, giving an account of the 10:56.663 --> 10:58.343 earth's surface. 10:58.340 --> 11:04.010 It's a perceptual poetics that she's concerned with, 11:04.010 --> 11:10.240 something she calls "geography" or sometimes "travel." 11:10.240 --> 11:17.030 The poem that really inaugurates Bishop's mature 11:17.027 --> 11:24.967 writing and that she placed first in her first volume of 11:24.971 --> 11:28.661 poetry, North and South, 11:28.658 --> 11:33.578 and that subsequently was placed first in all collected 11:33.583 --> 11:38.423 volumes of her poems is the poem called "The Map." 11:38.418 --> 11:42.968 It's a kind of preface to her work and it's an inevitable 11:42.966 --> 11:45.886 place to start thinking about her. 11:45.889 --> 11:47.679 So, let's look at it together. 11:47.679 --> 11:51.169 11:51.168 --> 12:01.718 A poem written in--I believe at least begun New Year's Eve, 12:01.721 --> 12:07.181 1933 as Bishop left college. 12:07.178 --> 12:12.268 Maybe you seniors will write your own "Map" next year. 12:12.269 --> 12:20.739 She didn't collect it in a book until 1946, which is her first 12:20.740 --> 12:25.300 book publication; like Stevens, 12:25.304 --> 12:32.714 like Frost, she's slow to gather her first poems. 12:32.710 --> 12:40.580 The poem begins with a marvelous, limpid clarity. 12:40.580 --> 12:45.100 Land lies in water; it is shadowed green. 12:45.100 --> 12:52.080 Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges 12:52.080 --> 12:55.600 showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges 12:55.600 --> 13:00.760 where weeds hang to the simple blue from green. 13:00.759 --> 13:05.619 Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, 13:05.620 --> 13:10.180 drawing it unperturbed around itself? 13:10.179 --> 13:15.039 Along the fine tan sandy shelf is the land tugging at the sea 13:15.035 --> 13:16.175 from under? 13:16.179 --> 13:20.069 13:20.070 --> 13:26.660 It's a deceptively declarative, flat voice, a voice of 13:26.658 --> 13:28.398 description. 13:28.399 --> 13:36.519 It is interestingly impersonal and intimate at once. 13:36.519 --> 13:43.219 It's as if we were so close to her she need not introduce 13:43.222 --> 13:44.422 herself. 13:44.418 --> 13:51.188 We are invited to look over her shoulder with her at the map. 13:51.190 --> 13:54.450 She doesn't, as I say, introduce herself or 13:54.451 --> 13:56.471 her subject really here. 13:56.470 --> 13:59.520 She just starts. 13:59.519 --> 14:04.369 The poem represents itself as happening now, 14:04.366 --> 14:09.096 as if it were recording the mind in action, 14:09.102 --> 14:13.502 a process, an action of perception. 14:13.500 --> 14:20.000 The poem was gathered first for publication by Marianne Moore, 14:19.995 --> 14:25.315 who was Bishop's friend and mentor – a friendship 14:25.318 --> 14:30.078 described in Bishop's long, beautiful, funny memoir, 14:30.076 --> 14:33.716 "Efforts of Affection," that I asked you to read when we were 14:33.717 --> 14:36.737 reading Moore; an essay that tells you a lot 14:36.735 --> 14:40.225 about Moore but also tells you a lot about Bishop. 14:40.230 --> 14:44.650 Moore, as her mentor, gathered this and two other 14:44.648 --> 14:50.168 poems and had it published in a volume in which an older poet 14:50.169 --> 14:55.889 presented a younger, as a teacher or mentor would 14:55.888 --> 14:58.518 present a protégé. 14:58.519 --> 15:02.399 Moore says about Bishop's poems a number of interesting things. 15:02.399 --> 15:07.709 I've sampled just these sentences on your handout. 15:07.710 --> 15:11.550 Some authors do not muse within themselves [but by 15:11.546 --> 15:15.146 contrast, Bishop does]; they [they, those other 15:15.153 --> 15:17.423 authors] "think" --- like the 15:17.421 --> 15:22.121 vegetable-shredder which cuts into the life of a thing. 15:22.120 --> 15:26.160 Miss Bishop is not one of these frettingly intensive machines. 15:26.158 --> 15:31.068 Yet the rational considering quality in her work is its 15:31.070 --> 15:34.890 strength [the rational considering quality] 15:34.889 --> 15:39.999 --- assisted by unwordiness, uncontorted intentionalness 15:39.999 --> 15:44.559 [phrases that only Marianne Moore could have produced], 15:44.558 --> 15:49.348 the flicker of impudence, the natural unforced 15:49.351 --> 15:55.091 ending. These are important qualities 15:55.086 --> 16:02.076 of Bishop's writing, although to highlight them is 16:02.076 --> 16:09.006 to risk a sort of misperception; that is, if Bishop presents 16:09.010 --> 16:13.110 herself as a kind of rational, considering intelligence in 16:13.110 --> 16:19.030 these poems, what she very rapidly uncovers 16:19.033 --> 16:28.403 is fantasy and the fantastic or fabulous or metaphorical. 16:28.399 --> 16:33.089 Just so, her poetry of perception and description 16:33.091 --> 16:39.061 rather than giving us a kind of poetics of objectivity that we 16:39.056 --> 16:43.256 might associate with Pound and Imagism, 16:43.259 --> 16:48.089 very quickly turns back on the perceiving subject to ask 16:48.091 --> 16:52.841 questions about the process of perception itself and to 16:52.835 --> 16:57.925 suddenly become a poetry very much about subjectivity. 16:57.928 --> 17:04.738 You can see this going on already in the lines that I've 17:04.737 --> 17:06.467 quoted here. 17:06.470 --> 17:14.130 Bishop no sooner says one thing than she elaborates it or 17:14.127 --> 17:16.177 questions it. 17:16.180 --> 17:20.130 "Shadows, or are they shallows," she says. 17:20.130 --> 17:25.210 She's formulated one idea, and then she asks a question 17:25.211 --> 17:30.011 about it, and then a further question about that. 17:30.009 --> 17:38.229 This is very much an image of, a poetics of a mind in action, 17:38.232 --> 17:40.702 a mind thinking. 17:40.700 --> 17:45.410 That is the drama that Bishop shares with us. 17:45.410 --> 17:51.900 In another early statement, this in a letter to a poet, 17:51.902 --> 17:57.552 Donald Stanford, she quotes a literary critic on 17:57.554 --> 18:02.984 Baroque – that is, seventeenth-century – prose 18:02.980 --> 18:04.470 which she liked. 18:04.470 --> 18:08.190 And this quotation is also on your handout. 18:08.190 --> 18:12.760 "Their [that is, the writers of Baroque prose] 18:12.757 --> 18:16.067 purpose was to portray, not a thought, 18:16.070 --> 18:18.490 but a mind thinking…. 18:18.490 --> 18:22.160 They knew that an idea separated from the act of 18:22.162 --> 18:26.462 experiencing it is not the idea that was experienced. 18:26.460 --> 18:30.660 The ardor of its conception in the mind [that's my misprint] 18:30.664 --> 18:33.664 is a necessary part of its truth." 18:33.660 --> 18:39.580 The ardor of the conception in the mind is what Bishop wants. 18:39.578 --> 18:42.268 "Ardor" – that's an important word. 18:42.269 --> 18:48.659 It suggests passion, a certain amount of heat, 18:48.657 --> 18:51.637 emotion, and heart. 18:51.640 --> 18:56.290 In Bishop's case, this ardor is communicated 18:56.290 --> 19:01.380 sometimes through the deceptively cool manner of 19:01.375 --> 19:06.455 self-interrogation and in particular through the 19:06.460 --> 19:10.680 grammatical form of the question. 19:10.680 --> 19:15.840 Here in this very first paragraph of her poetry, 19:15.836 --> 19:19.016 Bishop is asking questions. 19:19.019 --> 19:23.729 There's a kind of level of clarity and detail in her 19:23.728 --> 19:29.268 observations that makes what's she's looking at interestingly 19:29.267 --> 19:31.757 unstable and uncertain. 19:31.759 --> 19:35.809 She turns back on it, asks questions about it. 19:35.808 --> 19:41.398 You could contrast Bishop's questions with Yeats's great 19:41.401 --> 19:47.221 rhetorical questions, a form that we stressed in 19:47.223 --> 19:54.733 reading "Leda and the Swan" and other late Yeats poems. 19:54.730 --> 20:00.240 In general, thinking about Bishop's relationship to Yeats, 20:00.243 --> 20:03.633 you could say that romance quest, 20:03.630 --> 20:09.440 which is this essential structure that's behind all of 20:09.441 --> 20:14.381 Yeats's poetry, romance quest has come down in 20:14.375 --> 20:18.975 Bishop to the act of asking questions, 20:18.980 --> 20:22.970 raising questions, here in this poem and very 20:22.972 --> 20:28.422 frequently in other Bishop poems questions specifically about 20:28.417 --> 20:32.947 boundaries, about the way in which we 20:32.948 --> 20:40.678 categorize and frame the world, how we draw lines and separate 20:40.676 --> 20:45.616 and connect things at the same time. 20:45.618 --> 20:51.138 As we do, one thing seems to turn into another; 20:51.140 --> 20:56.700 opposites interact, opposites are involved. 20:56.700 --> 21:03.190 Notice the pair of opposites that she's stressing here. 21:03.190 --> 21:06.870 Land and water: these are primary categories 21:06.867 --> 21:11.657 that her poetry centers itself on over and over again. 21:11.660 --> 21:13.910 Bishop is a poet of the seashore. 21:13.910 --> 21:20.020 There are poems throughout her career that station themselves 21:20.016 --> 21:23.066 on the beach, in particular; 21:23.068 --> 21:31.678 a place of unstable, uncertain dynamic boundary. 21:31.680 --> 21:37.000 You can see the same kind of play of similarity and 21:36.997 --> 21:42.737 difference between terms in Bishop's poetry on a formal 21:42.740 --> 21:48.270 level already working here in this first stanza. 21:48.269 --> 21:52.039 It is rhymed poetry, isn't it? 21:52.038 --> 21:55.678 But what an interesting set of rhymes! 21:55.680 --> 22:06.610 Green, edges, ledges, green; under, itself, shelf, under. 22:06.608 --> 22:13.858 These are rhymes where it seems as though words are a little too 22:13.855 --> 22:15.805 close together. 22:15.808 --> 22:20.128 They're repeated, "green," or maybe a little too 22:20.126 --> 22:21.226 far apart. 22:21.230 --> 22:25.400 In the second stanza then, the rhyme scheme gives way 22:25.397 --> 22:26.277 entirely. 22:26.278 --> 22:31.868 And this is like Bishop to set up one pattern and then drop it. 22:31.868 --> 22:35.038 The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and 22:35.036 --> 22:35.596 still. 22:35.598 --> 22:38.588 Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo 22:38.589 --> 22:40.759 has oiled it. 22:40.759 --> 22:46.019 We can stroke these lovely bays, under a glass as if they were 22:46.018 --> 22:50.428 expected to blossom, or as if to provide a clean 22:50.428 --> 22:52.648 cage for invisible fish. 22:52.650 --> 22:57.040 The names of seashore towns run out to sea, 22:57.038 --> 23:00.778 the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains 23:00.778 --> 23:05.198 -- the printer here experiencing the same excitement 23:05.200 --> 23:09.750 as when emotion too far exceeds its cause. 23:09.750 --> 23:14.690 These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger 23:14.690 --> 23:18.350 like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods. 23:18.349 --> 23:22.009 23:22.009 --> 23:27.639 Then the rhyme scheme returns, and, again, it's a peculiar one 23:27.638 --> 23:33.178 that includes not just a rhyme but a repetition of particular 23:33.176 --> 23:34.096 words. 23:34.098 --> 23:40.278 Mapped waters [she says] are more quiet than the land 23:40.277 --> 23:45.307 is, lending the land their waves' 23:45.307 --> 23:51.517 own conformation: and Norway's hare runs south in 23:51.517 --> 23:56.137 agitation, profiles investigate the sea, 23:56.144 --> 23:57.914 where land is. 23:57.910 --> 24:03.340 Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their 24:03.342 --> 24:04.342 colors? 24:04.338 --> 24:07.838 -- What suits the character or the native waters best. 24:07.838 --> 24:12.638 Topography displays no favorites; 24:12.640 --> 24:14.880 North's as near as West. 24:14.880 --> 24:19.070 More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' 24:19.073 --> 24:20.263 colors. 24:20.259 --> 24:23.379 24:23.380 --> 24:31.040 It's a poetry like aspects Yeats's – no,, 24:31.040 --> 24:40.350 like aspects of Moore's, that presents itself with a 24:40.345 --> 24:50.195 kind of resolute clarity and simplicity and lucidity of 24:50.195 --> 25:00.225 language that sometimes seems to feel like prose. 25:00.230 --> 25:09.290 There is a lyric power here but it's got at through a language, 25:09.291 --> 25:15.141 again, close to that of ordinary life. 25:15.140 --> 25:19.920 As Bishop observes the boundaries that she's talking 25:19.924 --> 25:25.564 about here – the sea and the shore – she's also concerned 25:25.555 --> 25:30.995 with another set of opposed terms and ones that will follow 25:30.997 --> 25:35.837 her throughout her poetry; and that is the difference 25:35.837 --> 25:39.367 between the real and representation and the ways in 25:39.373 --> 25:44.073 which representation, that which is represented, 25:44.068 --> 25:49.148 can take on a certain kind of reality itself, 25:49.145 --> 25:56.065 as she fancifully allows the forms of the map to do here. 25:56.068 --> 26:03.028 The map really becomes a world and not only a representation of 26:03.029 --> 26:09.989 it, and the poet plunges really imaginatively into it--takes us 26:09.990 --> 26:12.570 with her, as she does, 26:12.571 --> 26:17.721 entering the versions of life that it suggests to her. 26:17.720 --> 26:22.170 In that third stanza there, though, as she returns to that 26:22.173 --> 26:26.583 peculiar rhyme scheme, there's a certain kind of 26:26.583 --> 26:31.043 holding back, a gathering of her intelligence 26:31.040 --> 26:37.020 in reflection on the process that she's been engaged in. 26:37.019 --> 26:42.339 What emerges there is a kind of key idea, the one I've already 26:42.337 --> 26:45.997 mentioned, geography or topography here. 26:46.000 --> 26:54.080 Geography, topography: they display "no favorites." 26:54.078 --> 27:00.448 They represent a poetics that is non-hierarchical in its 27:00.453 --> 27:06.253 orientation and, again, this is a link to Moore. 27:06.250 --> 27:12.700 Bishop is interested in a point of view that takes no sides, 27:12.695 --> 27:16.075 except to suggest, to insist on, 27:16.084 --> 27:21.224 the relativity of all cognitive categories. 27:21.220 --> 27:25.120 "North's as near as West": it always is, 27:25.118 --> 27:25.918 right? 27:25.920 --> 27:31.200 That is, it's as near to the perceiver, whose perspective is 27:31.201 --> 27:35.231 constantly shifting, constantly readjusted. 27:35.230 --> 27:39.840 I talked about perspectivism in Auden. 27:39.838 --> 27:46.458 Well, Bishop has a hold on the same idea and will make it even 27:46.457 --> 27:50.577 more central, make it more thematically 27:50.579 --> 27:54.919 central to her work than even Auden. 27:54.920 --> 28:04.360 The opposition that she ends with is the one between the 28:04.355 --> 28:09.325 historian and the mapmaker. 28:09.328 --> 28:14.248 She presents herself here clearly on the side of the 28:14.252 --> 28:20.142 mapmaker, one whose colors – colors of rhetoric – are more 28:20.142 --> 28:25.072 delicate than the historian's and on the side of the 28:25.065 --> 28:27.925 historian; who could we place? 28:27.930 --> 28:31.960 Perhaps Yeats, perhaps Pound, 28:31.963 --> 28:37.483 perhaps Eliot; certainly Bishop's great 28:37.480 --> 28:41.360 contemporary, Robert Lowell. 28:41.358 --> 28:46.998 Bishop presents herself as engaged in a poetics of 28:46.996 --> 28:53.896 geography and of mapmaking that is more delicate than that of 28:53.898 --> 28:55.968 the historian. 28:55.970 --> 29:02.780 In that word, "delicacy," there is certainly 29:02.784 --> 29:07.384 some implication of gender. 29:07.380 --> 29:11.780 The opposition between the mapmaker and the historian: 29:11.780 --> 29:16.770 well, it would be too simple to call it an opposition between 29:16.765 --> 29:21.495 woman and man, and yet gendered terms are 29:21.499 --> 29:26.109 there in Bishop's language, I think. 29:26.108 --> 29:32.958 This poem, as I suggested, is composed in 1933 after 29:32.959 --> 29:41.289 Bishop has left Vassar and has made friends with Moore who will 29:41.285 --> 29:46.115 be a central figure in her life. 29:46.118 --> 29:53.058 If, in some sense, emotion might exceed its cause, 29:53.060 --> 29:58.300 might lead Bishop to get carried away, 29:58.303 --> 30:05.673 there were lots of reasons why this might be so. 30:05.670 --> 30:15.650 Bishop grew up at first in Nova Scotia. 30:15.650 --> 30:21.530 She is a Canadian poet as much as an American poet – a poet 30:21.527 --> 30:26.227 of uncertain national identity, you might say. 30:26.230 --> 30:31.000 Her father died when, I believe, she was five. 30:31.000 --> 30:37.690 Her mother in grief went mad and was institutionalized, 30:37.689 --> 30:44.869 and Bishop was separated from her, so that she grew up very 30:44.874 --> 30:47.604 much as an orphan. 30:47.598 --> 30:51.268 Much has been made of her biography. 30:51.269 --> 30:58.469 I wouldn't encourage you to because Bishop herself treats it 30:58.471 --> 31:04.571 as an important frame and resonance for her poetry, 31:04.573 --> 31:09.093 but not as a rule as its subject. 31:09.088 --> 31:13.968 There is, I think, simply the important point to 31:13.965 --> 31:20.295 be made that here is a poet who grew up with a certain primary 31:20.295 --> 31:24.855 sense of dislocation and disorientation, 31:24.858 --> 31:30.488 and an acute sense of divided identity: biographical facts 31:30.491 --> 31:35.331 that, in a sense, lead us very quickly into the 31:35.330 --> 31:41.250 ethical and cognitive problems that are central to Bishop's 31:41.252 --> 31:46.012 work, and I think to this problem in 31:46.005 --> 31:52.165 particular: how do you hold yourself together? 31:52.170 --> 31:58.420 It's an important one and one that we all in various ways 31:58.423 --> 32:00.213 struggle with. 32:00.210 --> 32:04.950 Bishop finds various ways to raise that question, 32:04.953 --> 32:07.923 to figure it and explore it. 32:07.920 --> 32:13.580 One early, amusing, and suggestive instance is the 32:13.582 --> 32:18.322 poem called "The Gentleman of Shalott." 32:18.318 --> 32:25.118 And I'd like to look at that with you to get a little more 32:25.117 --> 32:31.317 sense of Bishop's poetics and some sense of her early 32:31.320 --> 32:34.900 self-conception as a poet. 32:34.900 --> 32:38.010 Remember the idea that she's taken from Eliot: 32:38.007 --> 32:42.217 she wants to imagine a kind of writing that would include time 32:42.219 --> 32:45.359 in it, that would include change in 32:45.364 --> 32:49.844 it, and in which the organization of the whole would 32:49.835 --> 32:53.425 be constantly subject to readjustment; 32:53.430 --> 33:00.400 a text that would incorporate flux, a text that would be 33:00.402 --> 33:07.502 determined locally rather than by some global and general 33:07.500 --> 33:09.530 perspective. 33:09.528 --> 33:13.768 The, I think, unstable orders of a poem like 33:13.769 --> 33:19.489 "Prufrock" are important for Bishop in that Prufrock is, 33:19.490 --> 33:22.990 in fact, a figure behind this one of Bishop's, 33:22.991 --> 33:25.251 "The Gentleman of Shalott." 33:25.250 --> 33:30.650 Bishop's character is a kind of dandy, like Prufrock. 33:30.650 --> 33:35.860 Bishop is also at the same time playing with Tennyson and his 33:35.863 --> 33:38.473 poem, "The Lady of Shalott." 33:38.470 --> 33:44.360 A kind of gender switch has occurred in Bishop's poem. 33:44.359 --> 33:45.809 What does it mean? 33:45.808 --> 33:49.848 Well, I'll leave you to ponder it, but I think that one way to 33:49.849 --> 33:53.829 understand her joke here – I'm not going to write about the 33:53.825 --> 33:57.215 lady of Shalott, I'm going to write about the 33:57.220 --> 34:01.810 gentleman of Shalott – one way to understand her joke here is 34:01.805 --> 34:06.165 to suggest that this poem is in part about what it means for 34:06.166 --> 34:12.356 Bishop to be a woman poet, and it implies that that meant 34:12.356 --> 34:19.496 for her a certain kind of gender switch, a sex change, 34:19.500 --> 34:26.940 and one that might introduce a certain amount of stress, 34:26.943 --> 34:29.653 as well as comedy. 34:29.650 --> 34:34.850 Well let's listen to some of it. 34:34.849 --> 34:37.989 Which eye's his eye? 34:37.989 --> 34:41.959 Which limb lies next the mirror? 34:41.960 --> 34:47.580 Her joke is that the gentleman of Shalott, like the lady of 34:47.583 --> 34:54.393 Shalott, is fixated on a mirror, but the mirror that is in place 34:54.391 --> 34:58.811 here is one that, as she'll describe it, 34:58.807 --> 35:03.027 goes down the body, splits this figure, 35:03.032 --> 35:06.502 and creates a kind of divided figure. 35:06.500 --> 35:10.510 Which limb lies next the mirror? 35:10.510 --> 35:13.230 For neither is clearer nor a different color 35:13.230 --> 35:15.530 than the other, nor meets a stranger 35:15.530 --> 35:19.850 in this arrangement of leg and leg and 35:19.849 --> 35:22.399 arm and so on. 35:22.400 --> 35:26.530 To his mind it's the indication 35:26.530 --> 35:29.890 of a mirrored reflection somewhere along the line 35:29.889 --> 35:32.879 of what we call the spine. 35:32.880 --> 35:35.360 He felt in modesty his person was 35:35.360 --> 35:36.860 half looking-glass, for why should he 35:36.860 --> 35:38.840 be doubled? 35:38.840 --> 35:41.480 The glass must stretch down his middle, 35:41.480 --> 35:44.890 or rather down the edge. 35:44.889 --> 35:50.719 But he's in doubt as to which side's in or out 35:50.719 --> 35:52.839 of the mirror. 35:52.840 --> 35:56.170 There's little margin for error, but there's no proof, either. 35:56.170 --> 35:58.910 And if half his head's reflected, 35:58.909 --> 36:03.239 thought, he thinks, might be affected. 36:03.239 --> 36:07.909 This is poetry that presents itself as light verse. 36:07.909 --> 36:12.629 In that way, it's again like much of early 36:12.626 --> 36:19.526 Auden, and yet it is a poem that is secretly very serious. 36:19.530 --> 36:24.640 Well, much of the lightness as well as the seriousness of the 36:24.641 --> 36:28.221 poem depends on its formal organization. 36:28.219 --> 36:32.599 These lines are, well, aren't they about half as 36:32.601 --> 36:36.051 long as a normative line of poetry? 36:36.050 --> 36:40.380 And they're rhymed, but they're rhymed in a most 36:40.376 --> 36:43.136 interesting and playful way. 36:43.139 --> 36:46.459 In fact, the poem has a lot of play in it. 36:46.460 --> 36:50.950 The pleasure that it gives is one of a certain mild 36:50.947 --> 36:56.747 exhilaration and uncertainty, of a pattern that includes and 36:56.748 --> 37:00.868 that in fact tolerates, or even generates, 37:00.873 --> 37:06.513 dramatic change in line length and surprising rhymes. 37:06.510 --> 37:10.030 The gentleman is, in a sense, trying to hold 37:10.032 --> 37:11.592 himself together. 37:11.590 --> 37:17.700 The idea is repeated by the poet trying to hold her lines 37:17.704 --> 37:20.984 together in rhymed couplets. 37:20.980 --> 37:25.880 Bishop is, in general, a very interesting poet 37:25.876 --> 37:27.396 technically. 37:27.400 --> 37:31.030 Here, as elsewhere, how relaxed, 37:31.032 --> 37:37.242 how unpretentiously casual, how disorientingly casual, 37:37.244 --> 37:39.944 even, the voice is! 37:39.940 --> 37:45.470 There isn't here or elsewhere in Bishop Frost's tension 37:45.472 --> 37:48.242 between speech and meter. 37:48.239 --> 37:54.819 Rather, as in this case, each keeps getting adjusted to 37:54.818 --> 37:56.278 the other. 37:56.280 --> 38:00.170 It's important; there's almost no blank verse, 38:00.166 --> 38:02.676 no iambic pentameter in Bishop. 38:02.679 --> 38:07.319 The canonical heroic meter doesn't appear here, 38:07.322 --> 38:11.162 except, I think, possibly in one or two 38:11.157 --> 38:12.467 examples. 38:12.469 --> 38:16.609 There are in Bishop free verse poems. 38:16.610 --> 38:18.200 There's meter and rhyme. 38:18.199 --> 38:22.629 There are often poems that move in and out of these forms, 38:22.632 --> 38:26.762 much as "The Map" begins in rhyme, moves out of rhyme, 38:26.755 --> 38:28.695 and returns to rhyme. 38:28.699 --> 38:34.219 The poems don't seek Moore's highly idiosyncratic crafted 38:34.221 --> 38:36.391 formal arrangements. 38:36.389 --> 38:41.579 Instead, Bishop's practice is probably closest to Auden's, 38:41.579 --> 38:46.589 who's got a form for every occasion and a form for every 38:46.586 --> 38:47.676 purpose. 38:47.679 --> 38:51.589 But Auden's forms are always in a sense pre-set, 38:51.592 --> 38:54.592 drawn from an existing repertoire. 38:54.590 --> 38:56.250 What is right for this occasion? 38:56.250 --> 39:00.490 A ballad – I will do a ballad, a sestina, 39:00.489 --> 39:03.619 elegiac quatrains, et cetera. 39:03.619 --> 39:08.199 That's the way in which Auden presents himself. 39:08.199 --> 39:14.239 And Auden adheres strictly to his forms, and he uses those 39:14.235 --> 39:20.585 forms to shape and interpret the occasions of his writing. 39:20.590 --> 39:23.460 In Bishop's case, it's really just the other way 39:23.460 --> 39:24.010 around. 39:24.010 --> 39:29.890 What she does is alter her forms under the pressure of the 39:29.887 --> 39:35.247 occasions of her writing, her purpose and subject. 39:35.250 --> 39:38.820 Nothing in Bishop is pre-set. 39:38.820 --> 39:43.720 Everything is provisional, in the process of being remade, 39:43.717 --> 39:48.607 and in the process of constant readjustment on a technical 39:48.614 --> 39:53.344 level as well as on the perceptual level that I began by 39:53.340 --> 39:55.060 talking about. 39:55.059 --> 40:00.819 This is a vision really of what the world is like and how 40:00.815 --> 40:03.895 writing might respond to it. 40:03.900 --> 40:09.490 All of these things are going on in this little poem, 40:09.494 --> 40:15.634 "The Gentleman of Shallot", and with a sense of comedy. 40:15.630 --> 40:18.830 If the glass slips he's in a fix-- 40:18.829 --> 40:20.579 only one leg, etc. 40:20.579 --> 40:23.879 But while it stays put [so long as 40:23.880 --> 40:27.190 we accept this provisional arrangement] 40:27.190 --> 40:31.270 he can walk and run and his hands can clasp one 40:31.269 --> 40:33.169 another. 40:33.170 --> 40:35.340 The uncertainty he says he 40:35.340 --> 40:38.080 finds exhilarating. 40:38.079 --> 40:43.229 He loves [and here's that phrase from the essay on Eliot] 40:43.230 --> 40:45.900 that sense of constant re-adjustment. 40:45.900 --> 40:49.150 He wishes to be quoted as saying at present: 40:49.150 --> 40:54.570 "Half is enough." A kind of motto that Bishop 40:54.572 --> 40:57.152 might have adopted, too. 40:57.150 --> 41:02.930 Let's look at another version of this figure, 41:02.927 --> 41:08.177 this time not a person but a creature, 41:08.179 --> 41:16.689 and I mean specifically the sandpiper who appears in a much 41:16.692 --> 41:22.712 later book, Questions of Travel, 41:22.710 --> 41:29.450 from a book written largely in the 1950s and early 1960s. 41:29.449 --> 41:34.449 "Sandpiper" is on page 131. 41:34.449 --> 41:41.879 Again, it is a poem that takes place on the shore. 41:41.880 --> 41:49.300 Instead of the gentleman of Shalott in his fussy way, 41:49.295 --> 41:56.275 and yet practical way, getting along in the world, 41:56.282 --> 42:02.132 we are introduced to a finicky bird: 42:02.130 --> 42:06.360 The roaring alongside he takes for granted, 42:06.360 --> 42:11.820 and that every so often the world is bound to shake. 42:11.820 --> 42:16.860 He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, 42:16.860 --> 42:22.450 in a sense of controlled panic, a student of Blake. 42:22.449 --> 42:28.439 Another poem that is stationed on a shifting boundary, 42:28.438 --> 42:31.488 the boundary of the tide. 42:31.489 --> 42:36.109 Bishop is engaged here in a kind of playful, 42:36.112 --> 42:41.702 active revision of the visionary innocence celebrated 42:41.702 --> 42:43.962 by William Blake. 42:43.960 --> 42:49.890 I quote the lines on your handout that Bishop is referring 42:49.885 --> 42:52.315 to: To see a world in a grain 42:52.318 --> 42:55.818 of sand [this is the beginning of "Auguries of Innocence"], 42:55.820 --> 42:59.390 And heaven in a wildflower, Hold infinity in the palm of 42:59.394 --> 43:02.854 your hand, And eternity in an hour. 43:02.849 --> 43:05.849 Well, here, Bishop is sort of playfully saying: 43:05.849 --> 43:08.849 well, what kind of figure is really Blakean? 43:08.849 --> 43:11.129 What kind of figure wants to see the world in a grain of 43:11.128 --> 43:11.418 sand? 43:11.420 --> 43:15.260 Well, a sandpiper, looking for his food. 43:15.260 --> 43:18.270 The beach hisses like fat. 43:18.269 --> 43:23.089 On his left, a sheet of interrupting water comes and 43:23.094 --> 43:25.574 goes and glazes over his dark and 43:25.570 --> 43:26.640 brittle feet. 43:26.639 --> 43:30.979 He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes. 43:30.980 --> 43:33.940 - Watching, rather [and this is again Bishop 43:33.940 --> 43:38.070 correcting--proceeding by correcting her perception], 43:38.072 --> 43:40.852 the spaces of sand between them, 43:40.849 --> 43:44.339 where (no detail too small) [and again the sandpiper, 43:44.342 --> 43:45.622 like the poet, is 43:45.619 --> 43:48.339 focused on detail] the Atlantic drains 43:48.340 --> 43:50.740 rapidly backwards and downwards. 43:50.739 --> 43:55.349 As he runs, he stares at the dragging 43:55.349 --> 43:56.009 grains. 43:56.010 --> 43:58.910 The world is a mist. 43:58.909 --> 44:04.509 And then the world is minute and vast and clear. 44:04.510 --> 44:06.910 The tide is higher or lower. 44:06.909 --> 44:09.169 He couldn't tell you which. 44:09.170 --> 44:13.260 ["North's near as West."] His beak is focussed; 44:13.260 --> 44:16.510 he is preoccupied, looking for something, 44:16.514 --> 44:18.204 something, something. 44:18.199 --> 44:20.899 Poor bird, he is obsessed! 44:20.900 --> 44:25.720 The millions of grains are black, white, 44:25.724 --> 44:29.474 tan, and gray mixed with quartz grains, 44:29.465 --> 44:31.345 rose and amethyst. 44:31.349 --> 44:36.369 44:36.369 --> 44:43.539 The poem's own structure shifts interestingly in terms of its 44:43.543 --> 44:49.763 line lengths and Bishop's ways of using enjambment or 44:49.759 --> 44:52.389 end-stopped lines. 44:52.389 --> 45:00.419 The world is – well, the place is a world of vast 45:00.418 --> 45:05.878 forces, of roaring, and of mist, 45:05.880 --> 45:12.110 and yet it's also minute and clear – all of these things at 45:12.108 --> 45:14.598 once or in succession. 45:14.599 --> 45:19.829 The bird's perspective can't tell us whether the tide is 45:19.829 --> 45:25.249 higher or lower because he is, as it were, in the picture: 45:25.251 --> 45:28.201 he's always wherever it is. 45:28.199 --> 45:33.329 It is a position again of constant readjustment. 45:33.329 --> 45:36.049 What is he looking for? 45:36.050 --> 45:40.190 "Something, something, something." 45:40.190 --> 45:47.380 A calculatedly vague word, a word that we see Frost using 45:47.375 --> 45:51.605 in "For Once, Then, Something." 45:51.610 --> 45:57.230 Instead of moving here towards generalization, 45:57.228 --> 46:03.468 the poem moves towards more detail: towards a list, 46:03.469 --> 46:08.339 a series finally of colors, simply. 46:08.340 --> 46:16.020 In a sense, Bishop moves away from the black and white to 46:16.023 --> 46:20.413 other shades, shades that involve 46:20.414 --> 46:24.124 combinations of colors. 46:24.119 --> 46:31.819 The question is really, how can the world be seen 46:31.815 --> 46:33.575 serially? 46:33.579 --> 46:35.839 How can it be made? 46:35.840 --> 46:41.560 How can it be seen as a series of perceptions, 46:41.559 --> 46:45.119 and yet be able to cohere? 46:45.119 --> 46:49.789 This is a fundamental question of Bishop's poetry. 46:49.789 --> 46:52.779 It is, as it were, the complement of the question: 46:52.775 --> 46:55.025 how can you hold yourself together? 46:55.030 --> 46:57.770 Well, how can you hold the world together, 46:57.768 --> 47:01.508 how can you hold the world that you perceive together? 47:01.510 --> 47:07.200 Bishop's great poem on this subject is the travel poem, 47:07.199 --> 47:13.099 "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance," 47:13.099 --> 47:21.999 which I promise to talk about on Monday.