A Cold Spring by Elizabeth Bishop

Source of book: I own the complete Elizabeth Bishop.

March is Women’s History Month, and, in addition to my official selection (stay tuned), I like to read works by female poets. Well, actually, I always like that. My first two poetic loves were Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. I fell in love with Elizabeth Barrett Browning in my teens. I have enjoyed a number of poets of the distaff set over the years. I think that because poetry was considered an acceptable outlet for intelligent and educated women in a time when more “serious” pursuits were off limits, many of the greatest minds ended up writing. 

I discovered Elizabeth Bishop as an adult, thanks to the work of former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, and both his Favorite Poem Project and his anthology, Essential Pleasures, which I highly recommend as an introduction to a wide range of poetry. You can read my post about Bishop’s North and South here. I won’t duplicate the biographical material from the previous post, but you can read more about her life there.

A Cold Spring is a short collection, as are all of Bishop’s works. She wasn’t a prolific writer, but what she did write is quite polished. I’ll just hit a few highlights.

First, her longer poem, “At the Fishhouses” is a tour de force of evocative description. In typical Bishop fashion, there is a sharp edge to things - she isn’t conventionally “nice,” and her descriptions bring to life the stinks and not-so-picturesque decay of her subjects. Cold, bitter, briny, and not quite safe. For example, this little bit:

If you should dip your hand in,

your wrist would ache immediately,

your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn

as if the water were a transmutation of fire

that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,

then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the could hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

The whole poem is beautiful, in that not-exactly-nice sort of way.

In a similar way, the titular poem, “A Cold Spring,” gives a brilliant series of descriptions, but in an unexpected and edgy way. Here is the opening:

A cold spring:

the violet was flawed on the lawn.

For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;

the little leaves waited,

carefully indicating their characteristics.

Finally a grave green dust

settled over your big and aimless hills.

One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,

on the side of one a calf was born.

The mother stopped lowing

and took a long time eating the after-birth,

a wretched flag,

but the calf got up promptly

and seemed to feel gay.

I am particularly fond of the phrases “a grave green dust” and “a chill white blast of sunshine.” Unforgettable and brilliant.

These poems seem to have been written primarily about her native New England, rather than her adopted home of Florida. The sea is a constant companion, as are the denizens of small villages. But Bishop was such an introvert that she scarcely seems to interact with the people. She communes with nature, and sings to the animals. Here is one particularly nice introverted poem.

“The Bight”

(On my birthday)

At low tide like this how sheer the water is.

White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare

and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.

Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,

the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,

the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.

One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire

one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.

The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock

already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.

The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash

into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,

it seems to me, like pickaxes,

rarely coming up with anything to show for it,

and going off with humorous elbowings.

Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar

on impalpable drafts

and open their tails like scissors on the curves

or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.

The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in

with the obliging air of retrievers,

bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks

and decorated with bobbles of sponges.

There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock

where, glinting like little plowshares,

the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry

for the Chinese-restaurant trade.

Some of the little white boats are still piled up

against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,

and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,

like torn-open, unanswered letters.

The bight is littered with old correspondences.

Click. Click. Goes the dredge,

and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.

All the untidy activity continues,

awful but cheerful.

I do not get the impression that Bishop thought much of the big city. The next poem was written about her sojourn in New York City, and the title refers to the cross street of her apartment.

“Varick Street”

At night the factories

            struggle awake,

            wretched uneasy buildings

            veined with pipes

            attempt their work.

            Trying to breathe,

            the elongated nostrils

            haired with spikes

            give off such stenches, too.

And I shall sell you sell you

sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me.

On certain floors

            certain wonders.

            Pale dirty light,

            some captured iceberg

            being prevented from melting.

            See the mechanical moons,

            sick, being made

            to wax and wane

            at somebody’s instigation.

And I shall sell you sell you

sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me.

Lights music of love

            work on. The presses

            print calendars

            I suppose; the moons

            make medicine

            or confectionery. Our bed

            shrinks from the soot

            and hapless odors

            hold us close.

And I shall sell you sell you

sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me.

That haunting refrain: “And I shall sell you sell you / sell you of course, my dear, and you’ll sell me.” It isn’t just about the city, but about consumerism, where we are all for sale. There is a solid argument to be made that cities have changed quite a bit since the 1940s. If anything, the factories have moved out to rural locations, and the political center of environment-destroying capitalism is now the small town in “red” states. My home city of Los Angeles, while still smoggy, is objectively much cleaner than it was when I was a kid. But Bishop captures a moment, and a feeling, and an idea of the individual as a cog in the money machine, that still haunts us today.

I’ll end with this short poem, perhaps my favorite in the collection. It is both introverted and deeply personal, and features Bishop’s skill at moving from the universal to the personal, from the nature metaphor to the details of a relationship. It is believed to have been written for Bishop’s lover, Lota Soares.

“The Shampoo”

The still explosions on the rocks,

the lichens, grow

by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.

They have arranged

to meet the rings around the moon, although

within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend

as long on us,

you've been, dear friend,

precipitate and pragmatical;

and look what happens. For Time is

nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair

in bright formation

are flocking where,

so straight, so soon?

--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,

battered and shiny like the moon.

Everything in this poem, from the line length to the like breaks at key moments, is carefully set up to enhance - and provide - the meaning. Again, we see the unexpected descriptions of nature, such as lichens as “explosions.” There is the contrast between the slow movement of time in nature, and the brevity of our own lives. I adore the description of gray hairs as “shooting stars...in bright formation.” Readers who want a more in-depth analysis of this poem might enjoy this one, by Kala Dunn.

I find Bishop to be rewarding every time I read her poems. They are best read aloud and savored.

North and South by Elizabeth Bishop

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

I have mentioned before that I read very little from the Twentieth Century during my high school years. In fact, I suspect that the curriculum we used didn’t acknowledge that anything had happened since the 1950s except to universally deplore it all. On the one hand, I can see the point of waiting until time has done its winnowing. It takes decades before the less worthy works become forgotten, and what one era finds great often ages poorly. This is, of course, why there is the illusion that everything - particularly literature - was greater in the past. (You can also see this in the memes going around comparing the lyrics of Bob Dylan to Justin Beiber.) There was plenty of garbage in every era, of course, but we tend to forget that because we don’t have to suffer through it anymore. A bit of a digression, I’m afraid. Back to our regularly scheduled review.

One of the most enjoyable books I read at the outset of my “career” as a book blogger was Robert Pinsky’s anthology of poetry, Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud. That book inspired me to make poetry more than an occasional part of my regular reading. It also introduced me to Elizabeth Bishop.

Bishop was an American poet, but that identification is far too simple. She was born in Massachusetts. Her father died when she was an infant, and her mother was institutionalized for mental illness a few years later. She was raised for a while by her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia. Later, her paternal relatives were able to gain legal custody of her, and, much to her distress, removed her from her home. The discontented Elizabeth was eventually permitted to reside with another maternal aunt. She attended Vassar College (which was then an all-female institution) as a music major. She was so terrified of performance that she gave it up, and and switched to English.

After her graduation, she lived a rather interesting life. She had a good sized inheritance from her father, which freed her from a need to earn a living. She taught some classes here and there, but spent most of the next several decades travelling and writing. This particular collection references Paris, among other cities in which she lived for a period of time. So really, she could be considered as much a citizen of the world as of any particular place within it. Officially, her residence was in Florida, and a number of her poems describe that state. 

Bishop was a very private person, and wrote little that could be considered autobiographical. In fact, from her poems, there is little one could learn about her visible life - her inner thoughts are on display, but they do not point back to her specifics. Likewise, she refused to be published in collections of “women’s” poetry, because she felt that her work should be judge on its merits without reference to her gender. The poems need not, in that sense, have been written by a women, but by a poet. And thus they read. I did not find them to feel strongly feminine, but just poetic.

North and South is Bishop’s first collection of poetry, published in 1946.

There are a few poems in this collection that are modern in form, without a discernable rhyme or meter; but many are fairly traditional. I appreciate good craftsmanship, both traditional and modern. From my very limited attempts at poetry in high school, I can attest that it is hard to write in a rigid form - but even harder to write anything that doesn’t sound strained or pretentious. In both the traditional and modern forms, Bishop writes with a language that feels natural, belying the many hours of work she must have put into them. Here are a few that I particularly liked.

“The Colder the Air”

We must admire her perfect aim,

this huntress of the winter air

whose level weapon needs no sight,

if it were not that everywhere

her game is sure, her shot is right.

The least of us could do the same.

The chalky birds or boats stand still,

reducing her conditions of chance;

air's gallery marks identically

the narrow gallery of her glance.

The target-center in her eye

is equally her aim and will.

Time's in her pocket, ticking loud

on one stalled second. She'll consult

not time nor circumstance. She calls

on atmosphere for her result.

(It is this clock that later falls

in wheels and chimes of leaf and cloud.)                        

The poem is basic iambic tetrameter, but I do like the ABCBCA rhyme scheme. And what of the idea itself? The huntress who cannot miss. I would presume that the cold winter air or wind is she, but what a bitter reflection. It is one that anyone who feels alienated surely knows. Those who “fit in” seem to have everything come to them easily. One could admire their aim, but their skill is an illusion. They are predestined to succeed by their nature. Bishop was an outsider for many reasons. An orphan and ex-patriot, an introvert in a profession and world that favors extroverts. Her gender and sexuality likewise cut against easy success and belonging. There are times I understand her idea. “The least of us could do the same.”

In contrast to the dark edge of that poem is this next one, placed next to it in the collection.

“Wading at Wellfleet”

In one of the Assyrian wars

a chariot first saw the light

that bore sharp blades around its wheels.

That chariot from Assyria

went rolling down mechanically

to take the warriors by the heels.

A thousand warriors in the sea

could not consider such a war

as that the sea itself contrives

but hasn’t put in action yet.

This morning’s glitterings reveal

the sea is “all a case of knives.”

Lying so close, they catch the sun,

the spokes directed at the shin.

The chariot front is blue and great.

The war rests wholly with the waves:

they try revolving, but the wheels

give way; they will not bear the weight.

In this one, while the language speaks of violence, I find a bit of a humorous edge, rather than a bitter one. Anyone who has waded at a steep beach with imperfectly rounded shells and rocks knows exactly what she describes. I was curious about the fact that she put “all a case of knives” in quotes. It turns out that she is quoting an George Herbert poem, “Affliction IV,” in which he describes his thoughts as a case of knives.

Another delightful poem also treats on the subject of water, this time the riverfront of the Seine in Orleans.

“Quai d’Orleans”

Each barge on the river easily tows

    a mighty wake,

a giant oak-leaf of gray lights

    on a duller gray;

and behind it real leaves are floating by,

    down to the sea.

Mercury-veins on the giant leaves,

    the ripples, make

for the sides of the quai, to extinguish themselves

    against the walls

as softly as falling-stars come to their ends

    at a point in the sky.

And throngs of small leaves, real leaves, trailing them,

    go drifting by

to disappear as modestly, down the sea’s

dissolving halls.

We stand as still as stones to watch

    the leaves and ripples

while light and nervous water hold

    their interview.

“If what we see could forget us half as easily,”

    I want to tell you,

“as it does itself - but for life we’ll not be rid

    of the leaves’ fossils.”

I read it both as a beautifully description of a place and a moment and as a reflection of the way our experiences shape us. We carry the “fossils” of those memories that have made us what we are, and we carry them for a lifetime, even though they seem to have disappeared much as the ephemeral ripples or meteor traces.

Thus far, these poems have at least leaned toward a regular meter. Others, though, are true free verse, where the length of the line and the flow of the sounds reinforce and influence the meaning.

“Seascape”

This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as angels,

flying high as they want and as far as they want sidewise

in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections;

the whole region, from the highest heron

down to the weightless mangrove island

with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings

like illumination in silver,

and down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots

and the beautiful pea-green back-pasture

where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wildflower

in an ornamental spray of spray;

this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope:

it does look like heaven.

But a skeletal lighthouse standing there

in black and white clerical dress,

who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better.

He thinks that hell rages below his iron feet,

that that is why the shallow water is so warm,

and he knows that heaven is not like this.

Heaven is not like flying or swimming,

but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare

and when it gets dark he will remember something

strongly worded to say on the subject.

There is a razor edge of truth in this one, truth that I have come to embrace more and more as I grow older. There is more here than a contrast of nature and what man has made - although that contrast is part of the metaphor. I also do not think that this is ultimately about religion, although it can be read that way on the surface. I believe that Bishop is making a point about all dogmatic assertions of “the way things are.” The lighthouse has a neat and tidy explanation for, as Douglas Adams put it, “Life, the Universe, and Everything.” The seascape may not be heaven in the literal sense, but it isn’t made warm by hell either. The experience of a glimpse of heaven is, however, real in a significant sense. It is an experience of the same nature as Handel’s view of the heavens opening as he composed the Hallelujah.

To so neatly tie everything up in perfect theological and philosophical packages is to exterminate the sense of wonder and transcendence. There would be no room for a G. K. Chesterton in the lighthouse’s world. I am reminded a bit of the insistence by those in the cultic organizations that my wife and I spent time in that children not read fiction containing talking animals and the like, because such things were not “real.” The world - and heaven - were not like that. But really, is that true? Perhaps hope really is a thing with feathers perched in my soul. Perhaps the heron - or the condor - in the sky is a glimpse of something angelic. If one is to be as a little child to inherit the Kingdom, surely the imagination and the ability to see the Divine in what surrounds us is a key facet to that becoming.

I’ll mention a few others that I recommend from this collection. “The Man Moth” is probably Bishop’s best known poem, and for good reason. “The Fish” is also worthwhile, a tribute to sympathy for those who have survived much.

Bishop wasn’t a particularly prolific poet, but her poems show careful crafting, and unhurried contemplation. Like another of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson, Bishop was an introvert, and thus, I feel a certain camaraderie.

I enjoyed reading this collection, and intend to return to her poems as I continue my poetry project.