Elizabeth Bishop Essays
Painting Bishop’s Picture of Brazil: How Color Defines Colonialism College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
The Oxford English Diction defines ekphrasis as “a literary device in which a painting, sculpture, or other work of visual art is described in detail” (1). While this definition suggests ekphrastic writing to concern man-made works of art...
"Filling Station": A Revelation of Hidden Beauty 12th Grade
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
In Filling Station, Elizabeth Bishop presents her readers with an image of urban life that at first seems filthy and repulsive; however, through subtle manipulation of techniques including tone change, connotation and structural shift, she...
The New Vision of Nature in William Blake and the Romantics College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
There are a variety of different methods in which to express oneself artistically. Some of the most eminent are through fiction writing and painting, however, one of the most historically sensitive and perceptive means of expression is through...
Unveiling Costumes: The Feminine Body in Elizabeth Bishop's "Pink Dog"
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
Elizabeth Bishop
Pink Dog
(Rio de Janeiro)
The sun is blazing and the sky is blue.
Umbrellas clothe the beach in every hue.
Naked, you trot across the avenue.
Oh, never have I seen a dog so bare!
Naked and pink, without a single hair...
Startled,...
Explication of Elizabeth Bishop's "The Shampoo"
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
In her affectionate verse “The Shampoo”, Elizabeth Bishop addresses her lesbian partner Lota, whose great black tresses have begun to bear the signs of grey aging. Her tone is tender and her language contemplative—she marvels at the marks of age...
Elizabeth Bishop’s Personal Poetry
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
Elizabeth Bishop has often been linked to the poetical canon of the ‘confessional poets’ of the 1960’s and 70’s. Confessional poetry focused largely on the poet, exposing his/her insecurities and personal vulnerabilities. Bishop, however, was...
Hopkins and Elizabeth Bishop: Evidence of “God’s Grandeur” in “Filling Station”
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
In his essay “Action and Repose—Gerard Manley Hopkins’s influence in the Poems of Elizabeth Bishop,” Ben Howard notes the strong influence Hopkins had on poems like “The Prodigal” and “The Fish,” by Elizabeth Bishop. Another one of Bishop’s poems...
Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop: Two Small Fish in a Big Sea College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
It is no secret that Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop were close friends. Although written decades apart, poems titled “The Fish” were created by both authors. Upon reading Bishop’s poem against Moore’s, we can see that both of the poems deal...
"First Death in Nova Scotia": A Reading of Elizabeth Bishop 11th Grade
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
There are many things that children do not understand. Their lack of experience makes them ignorant to what is happening around them, and even oblivious to the presence of death. When someone a child knows dies, it is a really rough transition:...
Landscape in Elizabeth Bishop's "Cape Breton" College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
In “Cape Breton,” Elizabeth Bishop describes a landscape for the rigid cliffs and water that compose it, but also for its representation on a grander scale. The landscape is a representation of the peaceful world and how it is inevitably...
Powerfully Subdued: An Analysis of the Romantic View of Nature in “The Fish” 11th Grade
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
Nature often horrifies and frightens us. Whether it is a snake that has the potential to kill with one bite or a raging flood that can destroy an entire town in a matter of minutes, the natural world often causes us to cower in sight of its...
Bishop and Moore: An Exploration of Magic Realism College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
In The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer argues that contemporary science, while evolving from magical and religious attempts to understand and control the natural world, eclipses these frameworks[1]. To Frazer “magic” in the 20th century “is...
Waiting for Adulthood: Aging in “In the Waiting Room” and “At the Fishhouses” College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
Elizabeth Bishop ends her famous poem “One Art” with the lines, “It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like… disaster.” Although “One Art” lists many literal and symbolic forms of loss, the one that becomes...
Fading in the Anthropocene College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
In their poems “At the Fishhouses” and “For the Union Dead”, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell respectively examine the landscapes of their childhoods as a means of determining what is lost in mankind’s strives towards modernity and what...
Waiting for Adulthood: Aging in “In the Waiting Room” and “At the Fishhouses” College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
Elizabeth Bishop ends her famous poem “One Art” with the lines, “It’s evident the art of losing isn't too hard to master / though it may look like… disaster.” Although “One Art” lists many literal and symbolic forms of loss, the one that becomes...
Emergent Ecopoetics in Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” and Sylvia Plath’s “The Bee Meeting” College
The Fish
The works of Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath are often presented in stark, binary contrast to each other – Bishop as a generally reserved, often cryptic observer of the natural world and Plath as a brutally expressive, easily legible vessel of...
Oppression And Opportunity: The Fish College
The Fish
In our modern American society, oppression is something that still exists and has been detrimental to people, hurting their lives. The process of fishing can symbolize how regular people fair versus the clutches of oppression they cannot...
Emergent Ecopoetics in Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” and Sylvia Plath’s “The Bee Meeting” College
The Fish
The works of Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath are often presented in stark, binary contrast to each other – Bishop as a generally reserved, often cryptic observer of the natural world and Plath as a brutally expressive, easily legible vessel of...
Waiting for Adulthood: Aging in “In the Waiting Room” and “At the Fishhouses” College
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems
Elizabeth Bishop ends her famous poem “One Art” with the lines, “It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like… disaster.” Although “One Art” lists many literal and symbolic forms of loss, the one that becomes...
The Effects of Blindly Obeying Orders in The Farmer's Children 9th Grade
Elizabeth Bishop: Selected Prose
“The Farmer’s Children” by Elizabeth Bishop reveals her outlook on the children’s actions through literary techniques such as characterization. Upon being sent out to guard the barn’s machinery on a winter night, Cato and Emerson did not question...