Elizabeth Bishop: The Lives of Objects

Elizabeth Bishop's ability to observe and render what is seen into poetry often leads to her categorisation as a simple descriptive poet, a label that hides more than it purportedly reveals. Observation and curiosity are at the heart of the genesis of her poetry, but they are only part of what Bishop writes. In this study I examine both these key attributes and question how they function in the context of the other sensations. Bishop plays with ideas of time in a non-linear fashion; memory and the manipulation of memory are important aspects that structure her poetry, aspects which I analyse as necessary components in the description of sensation. I suggest that Bishop crafts her poems so that they demonstrate characteristics that are more commonly attributed to art works; her care in the presentation of her poems is similar to that of careful choice of a frame around a work. As a traveller, Bishop was attuned to the qualities of departure and arrival, reflected in the themes of much of her poetry; I extend these ideas to look at the function of house and home in her poetry and the idea of the return as a key component in her later poems. Questions of repetition and completion inform these ideas of departure, arrival and return. Bishop's work as a translator, encompassing both her collaborative work with Octavio Paz and her life-long habit of translating from different languages and genres, underpins many of the chapters in this thesis. Thoughts familiar to translators such as the art of listening across cultures, the learning of a language, and the employment of words as tools in the construction of a language, invigorate my examination of her own poetry.