"I just wanna set you on fire so I won't have to burn alone"... Elizabeth Bishop wrote stories, too.

So here I'm posting notes, as opposed to my original work, in the form of quotes from Elizabeth Bishop's prose. There's a lot to be said about her under-recognized fiction (and autobiographical) writing, but for now I thought I'd offer some salient nuggets to provide evidence concerning her aesthetic m.o. (I'm also reading the Complete Poems this week, and the prose makes a lovely companion for the poetry.)

“the writing coming off the pages of her diary, turning to life again, as it had happened.”[1]:

An Assortment of Elizabeth Bishop’s Prose Writings

“Primer Class”

Only the third and fourth graders studied geography. On their side of the room, over the backboard, were two rolled-up maps, one of Canada and one of the world. When they had a geography lesson, Miss Morash pulled down one or both of these maps, like window shades. They were on cloth, very limp, with a shiny surface, and in pale colors–tan, pink, yellow, and green–surrounded by the blue that was the ocean. The light coming in from their windows, falling on the glazed, crackly surface, made it hard for me to see them properly from where I sat. On the world map, all of Canada was pink; on the Canadian, the provinces were different colors. I was so taken with the pull-down maps that I wanted to snap them up, and pull them down again, and touch all the countries and provinces with my own hands. (10)

My initial experiences of formal education were on the whole pleasurable. Reading and writing caused me no suffering. I found the first easier, but the second was enjoyable–I mean artistically enjoyable–and I came to admire my own handwriting in pencil, when I came to that stage, perhaps as a youthful Chinese student might admire his own brushstrokes. It was wonderful to see that the letters each had different expressions, and that the same letter had different expressions at different times. Sometimes the two capitals of my name looked miserable, slumped down and sulky, but at others they turned fat and cheerful. (12)

“Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore”

Poems like “An Octopus” about a glacier, or “Peter,” about a cat, or “Marriage,” about marriage, struck me, as they still do, as miracles of language and construction. Why had no one ever written about things in this clear and dazzling way before? (123)

I got to Madison Square Garden very early–we had settled on the hour because we wanted to see the animals before the show began–but Marianne was there ahead of me. She was loaded down: two blue cloth bags, one on each arm, and two huge brown paper bags, full of something. I was given one of these. They contained, she told me, stale brown bread for the elephants, because stale brown bread was one of the things they liked best to eat. (I later suspected that they might like stale white bread just as much but that Marianne had been thinking of their health.) (125)

I do not remember her ever referring to Emily Dickinson, but on one occasion, when we were walking in Brooklyn on our way to our favorite tea shop, I noticed we were on a street associated with the Brooklyn Eagle, and I said fatuously, “Marianne, isn’t it odd to think of you and Walt Whitman walking this same street over and over?” She exclaimed, in her mock-ferocious tone, “Elizabeth, don’t speak to me about that man!” So I never did again. (143)

Surely there is an element of mortal panic and fear underlying all works of art? (144)

I find it impossible to draw conclusions or even to summarize. When I try to, I become foolishly bemused: I have a sort of subliminal glimpse of the capital letter M multiplying. I am turning the pages of an illuminated manuscript and seeing that initial letter again and again: Marianne’s monogram; mother; manners; morals; and I catch myself murmuring, “Manners and morals; manners as morals? Or is it morals as manners?” Since, like Alice, “in a dreamy sort of way,” I can’t answer either question, it doesn’t much matter which way I put it; it seems to be making sense. (156).

“The Sea & Its Shore”

Once, on one of our large public beaches, a man was appointed to keep the sand free from papers. For this purpose he was given a stick, or staff, with a long polished wire nail set in the end.

Since he worked only at night, when the beach was deserted, he was also given a lantern to carry.

The rest of his equipment consisted of a big wire basket to burn the papers in, a box of matches for setting fire to them, and a house…

As a house it was more like an idea of a house than a real one. It could have stood at either end of a scale of ideas of houses. It could have been a child’s perfect playhouse, or an adult’s ideal house–since everything that makes most houses nuisances had been done away with.

It was a shelter, but not for living in, for thinking in. It was, to the ordinary house, what the ceremonial thinking cap is to the ordinary hat. (171-2)

But the papers had no discernible goal, no brain, no feeling or race or group. They soared up, fell down, could not decide, hesitated, subsided, flew strait to their doom in the sea, or turned over in mid-air to collapse on the sand without another motion. (174)

His studies could be divided into three groups, and he himself classified them mentally in this way.

First, and most numerous: everything that seemed to be about himself, his occupation in life, and any instructions or warnings that referred to it.

Second: the stories about other people that caught his fancy, whose careers he followed from day to day in newspapers and fragments of books and letters; and whose further adventures he was always watching out for.

Third: the items he could not understand at all, that bewildered him completely but at the same time interested him so much that he saved them to read. These he tried, almost frantically, to fit into first one, then the other, of the two categories. (175)

Either because of the insect armies of type so constantly besieging his eyes, or because it was really so, the world, the whole world he saw, came before many years to seem printed, too. (178)

But the point was that everything had to be burned at last. All, all had to be burned, even bewildering scraps that he had carried with him for weeks or months. Burning paper was his occupation, by which he made his living, but over and above that, he could not allow his pockets to become too full, or his house to become littered.

Although he enjoyed the fire, Edwin Boomer did not enjoy its inevitability. Let us leave him in his house, at four one in the morning, his reading selected, the conflagration all over, the lantern shining clearly. It is an extremely picturesque scene, in some ways like a Rembrandt, but in many ways not. (180)

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[1] From “The Diary of ‘Helene Morely’: The Book & It’s Author”

Plain Clever: Seacole's Syntax To the (Reader's) Rescue.

Reading: The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857)

(This is a real gem of a memoir, for those unfamiliar.)

Syntactic Manipulation, Textual Domination.

Upon rereading The Wonderful Adventures..., I recalled a class discussion about Seacole’s moments of coyness/discretion that were conspicuously performative. I’m thinking, most specifically, about a conversation regarding her overly-playful holding-back of information (her age, e.g.), but I speak also to mentions of other descriptions of her attention to decorum. In many cases, her syntax becomes directly invested in this coyness, to the extent that her language feels rhetorically disordered, even muddled, or openly flat. In such instances, her words seem contrived with the specific intention to emphasize her devotion to decorum (which includes genuine humility) and her true capability and skill in her occupation. That is, Seacole capitalizes on her command of language by constructing clever pockets of logic that force her reader to at once acknowledge her capability and her humility while she maintains a mask of ignorance or simple-mindedness that covers her tracks. One noteworthy phenomenon is Seacole’s (over)use of parenthetical material to temper her statements with affirmations of personal pride. Even though she packages such claims for self-legitimacy as barely-significant afterthoughts, she often constrains her language to avoid appearing any way other than humble.

Several Examples:

And here I must pause to set myself right with my kind reader. He or she will not, I hope, think that, in narrating these incidents, I am exalting my poor part unduly. I do not deny (it is indeed the only thing that I have to be proud of) that I am pleased and gratified when I look upon my past life, and see times now and then, and places here and there, when and where I have been enabled to benefit my fellow-creatures suffering from the ills my skill could often remedy. (25-26)

This passage continues as Seacole attributes her personal “strength” to “Providence,” but she moves next to degrade “strength” to mere “usefulness” (26).

Also:

Need I be ashamed to confess that I shared in the general enthusiasm, and longed more than ever to carry my busy (and the reader will not hesitate to add experienced) fingers where the sword or bullet had been busiest, and the pestilence most rife. (75)

In this case, Seacole employs the familiar technique of shying from rhetorical accountability by assigning the reader’s discerning authority. Such a tactic really confounds the prose, however, as it once again disrupts sentential flow and thwarts grammatical continuity. The sentence must likely be reread to follow the initial logical trajectory to fruition, or at least to register the weight of the supposedly-central idea.

And most tellingly:

Of course, had it not been for my old strong-mindedness (which has nothing to do with obstinacy, and is in no way related to it–the best term I can think of to express it being “judicious decisiveness”), I should have given up the scheme a score of times in as many days; so regularly did each successive day give birth to a fresh set of rebuffs and disappointments. I shall make no excuse to my readers for giving them a pretty full history of my struggles to become a Crimean heroine!

My first idea (and knowing that I was well fitted for the work, and would be the right woman in the right place, the reader can fancy my audacity) was to apply to the War Office for the post of hospital nurse. (76)

The first aside allows Seacole to insert her preemptive rebuttal to possible accusations of obstinacy (a term of course used to undermine female resolve) while defusing it by enclosing it parenthetically. The effect, however, cannot be ignored – judicious decisiveness resounds to overshadow the polite prose that follows. The conclusion, of course, emphasizes her role as heroine as appropriate, intentional, and earned. The next set of parentheses enclose another aside of personal affirmation that, in its choppy list of proof-reasoning, distracts the reader from the main thrust of the sentence (her “idea… to apply”), and forces one to instead consider her aptness on her terms.

In his introductory preface to this work, Times correspondent W.H. Russell commends Seacole’s story as one of the “trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless woman”. He specifically notes her linguistic simplicity – she is not “verbose”, but “a plain truth-speaking woman” – in an introduction that lauds her vulnerability and her simple-mindedness. Such prefatory remarks to this work must indicate either Russell’s analytical naivety or his eagerness to sell Seacole’s story to those who might find her capability discomforting.

You Don't Have to Light My Fire Because It's Already Lit and Burns For You, Subtly.

In the first Inscription “One’s-self I Sing,” Whitman introduces Leaves of Grass with a lofty, confidant assessment of the grand project to follow. While often we dwell upon Whitman’s poetics of subjectivity, it’s important to remind ourselves, as we move through Leaves of Grass, of his greater Democratic goals. Hardly a solipsistic autobiographer, Whitman focuses intently on recording, translating, and celebrating the consciousness of the nation. In doing this, though, he doesn’t simply give glimpses/examples that he feels characterizes his America. While he employs these observational techniques quite often, he also attempts to craft a poetics of oneness with his readers, promising to tell them what they are, and why and how.

Thus, he writes “One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person / Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse” – he writes not of himself here, but “one’s-self”… and the later, larger “Song of Myself” sings a song of and for the masses: “Of life immense in Passion, pulse, and power / Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine / The Modern Man I sing.”

Leaves of Grass shows significant investment in (and reflection upon) this poetic goal to discover his readers, as they are and as he imagines them to be. He emphasizes most of all the deep connection between his readers (or his masses) and himself, as he the poet/prophet has been called and inspired to produce voluminous poetic documentation on their behalf. As he writes in “O You to Whom I Often and Silently Come”: “Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is / playing within me.”

"all that blab"

Reading: Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

Brief Intro: I decided that Leaves of Grass is too rich and varied to post upon the work as a whole without overgeneralizing or summarizing. Instead, I thought I'd post a close analysis of poems that I found particularly interesting or moving this time around. Not surprisingly, the poem I had the most to say/think about was "As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life," namely as it feels so modern and theoretically connected to 20th C. poets and their projects. So here I reflect upon the conflated voice(s) of that poem:

Whitman's Sound Poetry?

As a poem that begins amid contemporaneous motion and documentation, “As I Ebb’d With the Ocean of Life” flows into and out of the consciousness of the speaker. The poem moves as both component and product of this greater consciousness, just as the poet-speaker considers himself a distinct individual and also part of some greater whole. One manifestation of this conflict seems to be in the poet’s understanding of his own voice, of its quality and significance. The tension here builds, appropriately, as the poem progresses: the “pride” of the “electric self” (7) diminishes as the poet feels helpless finding the “real Me,” and the poems he utters become “arrogant” and foolish (34). As the poem delves in to these complexities and conflicts of self-awareness, the poem charts the dissolution of distinct sound articulation, and considers the obvious paradox of poems as silent songs. That is, this poem shows the reality that poems are merely words on a page meant to represent sounds that are then meant to represent consciousness of some kind, but it more importantly wonders whether this distant representation of reality really documents some song of the poet or song of life.

In the first section of the poem, the poet exists as part of the “ocean of life” (1), but he hears distinct sounds that are not his. As the ocean meets the shore, its voice is composed of the sounds of the “ripples” and these components’ voices are “hoarse and sibilant” (3). In other words, the voice that the poet hears emerging from this ocean of life is made up of smaller voices that are rough and deep, raucous and husky, hissing and whistling. They are unclear, indistinct – the voice of the ocean cannot be discerned as clear sounds. This ocean’s roar, like white noise, moves with the “sound of breaking waves” (16), but it also hints at disapproval with its harsh, hissing tones. Even when he considers himself to be a part of this ocean, then, he hears judgment in its voice(s).

In contrast to the indistinct sounds that surround him, the poet utters. He sends out his words to articulate some clear message amid the muddled musical background. The second section moves to point out his foolishness – his attempt at clarity becomes an “arrogant” failure, for no “real” articulation exists “amid all that blab” (33-34). He hears “peals of laughter” at his “every word”: the disapproval now definite, though still not from a singular source (38). Disapproval moves him to silence, to run from the oppression caused when he “dared to open his mouth to sing at all” (43). The third section begins with the poet in close proximity with these “oceans both” (44). The image of the open mouth at the end of the second section, however, forces the double pronunciations and meanings of the homograph “close” (44). In other words, the image is one of the poet becoming close in proximity with the oceans, but it can also be the poet closing his mouth. In the latter option, the poet closes his mouth with the oceans and gives himself over to become a true part of it, an indistinct sonar component that contributes without pride. All components “murmur alike” in one low and continuous voice, each ego subdued. This murmuring, the “murmuring / I envy”, communicates the “secret” sounds that the poet longs to understand, to translate (61-62). These sounds are also the ones he fears, however, as the murmurs seem to also be sounds of accusation or complaint. The final section mourns, then, that the poet must lose his distinct voice to become one with the ocean of life. As the mutable world rushes around him, though, the poet opens his mouth and sings his song – he gets the distinct voice until his “I” (1) becomes the “we” that “lie in drifts at your feet” (77).