Elizabeth Bishop
English – Poetry Revision Notes
Covering:
-
The Fish
The Bight
At the Fishhouses
The Prodigal
Questions of Travel
The Armadillo
Sestina
First Death in Nova Scotia
Filling Station
In the Waiting Room
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1 Elizabeth Bishop – Poetry English Revision notes.
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2 Elizabeth Bishop – Poetry English Revision notes.
Table of Contents
The Fish .................................................................................................................................. 5
Summary ............................................................................................................................................ 7
Annotation ......................................................................................................................................... 7
The Bight .............................................................................................................................. 10
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 11
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 11
At the Fishhouses .................................................................................................................. 13
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 15
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 15
The Prodigal .......................................................................................................................... 18
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 19
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 19
Questions of Travel ............................................................................................................... 21
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 22
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 23
The Armadillo ....................................................................................................................... 25
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 26
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 26
Sestina .................................................................................................................................. 28
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 29
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 29
First Death in Nova Scotia...................................................................................................... 31
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 32
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 32
Filling Station ........................................................................................................................ 34
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 35
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 35
In the Waiting Room ............................................................................................................. 37
Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 39
Annotation ....................................................................................................................................... 40
Sample Answers .................................................................................................................... 43
Bishop’s carefully judged use of language aids the reader to uncover the intensity of feeling in her
poetry............................................................................................................................................... 43
Elizabeth Bishop poses interesting questions delivered by means of a unique style. .................... 45
Reading the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop........................................................................................... 46
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The poetry of Elizabeth Bishop appeals to the modern reader for many reasons.......................... 48
4 Elizabeth Bishop – Poetry English Revision notes.
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the
United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner
for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia
dedicated to her memory. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American
poets of the 20th century.
The Fish
Text
The Fish
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
5 Elizabeth Bishop – Poetry English Revision notes.