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November 12, 2007
Elizabeth Bishop Poems
Seeing “The Fish” displayed in these two alternative forms has reinforced the importance of the visual representation of a poem for me. The spatial arrangement of words can almost alter the meaning of a poem or lend it a different perspective. When greater space is left between words and after certain lines, a stronger emphasis is put on this certain part of the poem. These spaces become visual pauses, and it is as if the author is giving the reader a much needed moment to interpret the line. They are signals for the reader to interact with the poem in a way that they normally wouldn’t have had there been no line break.
These pauses become more evident when the poem is read aloud. To hear the pace of the poem means to re-interpret it. It creates a new medium through which we can move through the poem. For instance, in the second arrangement of “The Fish,” words are scattered throughout the page, and our eyes move from the very left, sometimes stopping in the middle, and then end at the right. This unpredictable flow reminded me of the movement of water, perhaps relevant to the fish in the poem.
In Bishop’s “Sestina,” the words “house,” “grandmother,” “child,” “stove,” “almanac,” and “tears” are each utilized at the end of every line. These are the six words that repeat in a circular pattern for six lines of each of the six stanzas, except for the last one. This idea of tears that the grandmother is trying to hide is revealed in the way the rain falls on the house, the way the tea kettle releases tears on the stove, the way the grandmother’s tea cup is filled with “dark brown tears,” and the picture the child draws of the man with buttons resembling tears. All of these things are seen through the eyes of the child in the poem, who can obviously sense the grandmother’s own tears. The repetition of these words gives multiple identities to each of the words. In each of the stanzas, their uses change and a range of meaning can be detected. For instance, the grandmother goes from sitting by a stove and a child, to crying tears, to hearing rain beating down on the house like tears, and then back to sitting by a stove—only this time, she is singing to it, which is what the iron kettle was initially doing on the stove. It is as if she is back to where she started, only she is doing something new and something has changed. We are back at a moment with the grandmother and stove, yet circumstances have changed and something new has been included on the map of this sestina.
Posted by pbali at November 12, 2007 12:01 AM
Comments
I find much to agree with in these observations. And much to pursue further.
I am wondering whether or not you think that the negative spaces that become more evident in open landscaping of a poem could contain something in addition to pause, or in some cases, even instead of pause? When pauses are enhanced with negative space,
what happens in these visually emphasized pauses? What are the possibilities for happens to the linking mechanism from part of poem to part of poem?
Posted by: thyliasm at November 26, 2007 01:28 PM
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