Elizabeth Bishop creates vivid snapshots of intergenerational relationships in nostalgic poems about family

In her poems “At the Fishhouses,” “Poem,” and “Sestina,” Elizabeth Bishop uses vivid imagery to explore the cycles of life, family and relationships – those fleeting moments shared, unadorned and often cherished later upon reflection. “At the Fishhouses” is a free verse poem told as a descriptive narrative about an old man and an inquisitive sea lion a child meets in her family home of Nova Scotia. In “Poem,” Bishop describes a scene depicted in a tiny painting, (much like an Ekphrastic poem) to explore family relationships and a sense of place shared during different time periods, a place that invokes “life itself, life and the memory of it so compressed they’ve turned into each other.” In “Sestina,” a beautiful and elegant poem that reads naturally with its repeated words and six, six-line pentameter stanzas, “the old grandmother” and a child spend time together in the kitchen reading and sharing tea as the grandmother grieves.
While the poems are different – one uses a formal sestina structure, the other two are free verse the poems share the common theme of family and heritage and a philosophical ending. They also share other commonalities, such as detailed descriptions and imagery, specific references to life in Canada, repetitions of specific words and phrases common to each poem, as well as a similar way in which the poems begin. Together, as the speakers looks back in time, the poems offer a glimpse into family, intergenerational relationships, and the transference of knowledge, “historical, flowing, and flown” shared between young and old. As they evoke scenes from a time in the past, these poems also share a sense of loss and grief. (The antecedent to “Sestina,” is the death of a grandfather or loved one, which causes reflection; in “At the Fishhouses,” and “Poem” the antecedent is the reflection that occurs with a major life change, such as a move, as we grow older and look back on life. All of these instances compel the speaker to speak and reflect.)
The perspective of looking back on life is invoked in the way in which the poems begin, which also works to link the poems together, especially since “Sestina,” with its very formal structure at first appears to be very different from (and unrelated to) the other two poems. For example, while the poems all tell about people (an old man, grandfather and a child, an old grandmother and a child, and a child and a grandmother and great uncle) the poems do not begin with people. Instead each poem begins with a description of a scene, or in the case of “Poem” a description of a painting, which we later learn is a scene familiar to the speaker. This strategy works to distance the speaker from the time, the place, and the people, so we know the poems are about the past. It also sets the stage for creating a self in space and time, so that the poems can be read in a way that any reader can empathize, so that the reader steps into the poem. The third person point of view in the beginning of each poem also supports this universal effect as well.
To illustrate the similarities in the poem’s beginnings we first look at the opening lines. For example, “Sestina begins: “September rain falls on the house,” “Poem” begins: “About the size of an old-style dollar bill,/…this little painting…/” “At the Fishhouses” begins: “Although it is a cold evening,/ down by one of the fishhouses.” We see that all three begin with a description about something (rain, house, old-style dollar bill, painting, and fishhouses) before introducing the people, the primary subject of the poems. This strategy sets the tone for the poems, which is nostalgic, looking back in time. In addition, “Poem” and “At the Fishhouses,” both start with words that evoke distance or in media res, such as, “Although” (a subordinating conjunction which sets up contrast) and “About,” (an adjective) which tells us generally but not specifically what is to follow, and, when used as a beginning, has a different effect than it would if used later. For example, the tone and feeling would be much different if this poem began: “This little painting ….is about the size of an old-style dollar bill,” or if “Fishhouses” began with “An old man sits netting, although it is a cold evening.” These syntax choices, a switch in word order sets up the atmosphere of the poem. While “At the Fishhouses” and “Sestina” introduce a person within the first several lines, “Poem” waits until the third stanza, and after twenty-six lines, before the speaker makes an exclamation, “Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!” and we are introduced to a person.
Another language device which distances the speaker from the people in the poem is the pronoun use. The poems all begin in third-person point of view and are told mostly in this point of view. Also, the speaker states “the artist’s specialty” in “Poem,” refers to “the old grandmother,” “the child,” in “Sestina” and “an old man,” “the old man” and the people are never named specifically, except for “Uncle George,” and “Miss Gillespie,” even though the named persons are minor characters. In fact, “Sestina” is told completely in third person point of view. “Poem” is told in third person point of view in the first two stanzas, and then, with an exclamation, the point of view changes to first person beginning with the third stanza. This signals a change in tone and emotion, moving us suddenly up close as the speaker states: “Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!” A person is even named in this stanza, Miss Gillespie, and the words in this stanza are more specific such as “There it is.” “particular” and “Miss Gillespie.” In the next stanza of this poem, we also have dialogue, where the grandmother is speaking to the speaker, as in “Would you like this? I’ll Probably never/ have room to hang these things again./ Your Uncle George, no, mine, my Uncle George,/ he’d be your great-uncle, left them all with Mother /when he went back to England.” Here the poem becomes very specific, going so far as to clarify the uncle. In fact, the way the two mid-stanzas read in a faster tone, gives the poem an hourglass shape, a crescendo, as the final stanza cools down and becomes metaphoric. The third-person point of view is also used in the beginning of “At the Fishhouses” until about mid-way this poem switches to first person point of view when the speaker states: “He was a friend of my grandfather.”
There are specific words repeated in the poems, as well, which adds to the emotional intensity. In “At the Fishhouses,” the poem uses anaphora by repeating the line, “Cold dark, deep and absolutely clear,” twice in the last stanza, which amplifies the emotion of this stanza as if the speaker is telling us to really listen here. There is also a repeating effect in the words “evening after evening,” “over and over,” “above the stones” which seems to mimic the sea water as it laps at the shore, and also the way time keeps going on and on. This poem evokes the repeating cycles of life in this way, as it moves into the final portion of the stanza, where it speaks about the cold water, “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.”…It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:” and then concluding with “forever, flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.” This last line is supported by the previous lines and the repetitions of the words, which build up to this final statement.
Along with word repetition, the poems also use speech acts effectively. For example, in “At the Fishhouses,” the main speech acts are description and narrative. However, this changes with a change in point of view (from third person to second person) in the last stanza as the line states: “If you should dip your hand,” where the speech act is now an address rather than description and narrative. The agency also changes here, from the speaker (“I have seen it,”) in the previous line, to “you,” and “your” and then to “we” which signals the climax of this poem. “Sestina” uses several instance of dialogue, such as in the third stanza, “It’s time for tea now;” as the grandmother speaks; and then “It was to be, says the Marvel Stove,” to which the almanac replies, “I know what I know.” This also has the effect of personification in this poem.
The poems also share common structural devices which help to carry the emotional movement of the poems, with “Sestina” the more structured of the three. In the form of a sestina, “Sestina” is written in six stanzas of six pentameter lines each, ending with a three line coda or envoy, where the words “house,” “grandmother,” “child,” “stove,” “almanac,” and “tears,” repeat in each of the stanzas. The repetition of the words, especially the word “tears,” and where they are placed adds to the emotional spice of this poem. This poem reads in a narrative fashion, almost like an old children’s fable. We learn in the first stanza that the grandmother is sad, as she is “laughing and talking to hide her tears.” As the “tears” move about in each stanza – from being the grandmother’s tears, to the teakettle’s tears, to the teacup’s tears, to the button tears (referring to the dead husband), the poem builds to a climax in the last stanza, where “the little moons fall down like tears/ from between the pages of the almanac/ into the flower bed the child/ has carefully placed in the front of the house.” As the tears fall, the grief the grandmother has felt over the loss of her husband begins to subside, so that in the three-line coda, the grandmother “sings to the marvelous stove / and the child draws another inscrutable house.” In this resolution, we see life going on.
Life moves on in the other two poems as well, using a free verse outer form. Like “Sestina,” these two poems also use stanzas as a division of parts to create a structure which supports their emotional arc. “At the Fishhouses,” is written in three stanzas, two very long and a short stanza in the middle. “Poem” is written in five stanzas (two are long and three are short). The first short stanza describes the tiny painting in the most general terms, except for specifying the “seventy years.” The next long stanza describes the scene depicted in the painting, and the place, Nova Scotia; with the line “only there / does one see abled wooden houses/ painted that awful shade of brown.” After this introduction, the third stanza then introduces the speaker, in first person point of view. The final long stanza becomes thoughtful and reflective, as it summarizes the entire painting’s effect.
“At the Fishhouses” begins with one long stanza where we are introduced to “an old man” in the third line, and then for the next 27 lines, the speaker describes the scene near the sea with fishhouses, storerooms, the lobster pots, masts, jagged rocks and the “iridescent” fish scales. Not until line 32 do we meet the speaker, who tells us “The old man accepts a Lucky Strike./ He was a friend of my grandfather./ We talk of the decline in the population/…” The next short stanza acts as a bridge, as it describes tree trunks “laid horizontally” across “gray stones.” This bridge carries the story away from the old man, and to the curious seal, that surfaces to look at the child, and builds to the philosophical ending of the poem, in which the speaker states: “It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,/ drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts/forever, flowing and drawn, and since/ our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.”
This historical element is repeated in all three poems, where the speaker talks about family, and yet in all three poems, the family is mentioned only briefly, in the middle or toward the end of the poem. Most of the lines of the poems describe other things, scenery or things, leaving just a few brief lines in which to describe the uncle or the grandfather or the grandmother. And yet, despite these minimal brush strokes, surrounded be vivid scenery, a story is told about the family, within the images, so that we are left feeling as if we know the family members. For example, in “Poem,” we meet Uncle George, whose specialty was painting “steel-gray clouds,” and through a sketch, a word that is repeated twice in this poem, we find the connection between the speaker and an uncle she has never met. This poem too concludes with a philosophical ending, as it tells about “life and the memory of it cramped/” dim, on a piece of Bristol board,/ Dim, but how life, how touching in detail/ -the little that we get for free,/ the little of our earthly trust. Not much.” It’s as if the speaker is telling us that our entire lives are so small, a spec in comparison to the whole world and the expanse of time, they can be contained in a breath, in a sketch.
In the way life is contained in a single sketch, we see the poet’s imagination in these three poems as well. In “Poem” the speaker uses “A sketch done in an hour, “in one breath,” to tell a story about family which spans many years, across generations. In “At the Fishhouses,” with the water, the repeated words “silver” and the distinct divisions of the poem into three parts, with a tiny bridge in the middle, the poet uses imagination to describe the meaning behind a common scene a child would see at the sea, where the fishermen would net their nets. The word “silver” evokes the still, coldness of the place, and the way memories are elusive, which the poet uses the word “iridescent” to evoke. The water, the benches, the tree trunks, all are silver. Then, after the bridge, the poet uses the curious seal, and how it moves in the water, to move into the metaphor about knowledge, the “cold dark deep and absolutely clear,/element,” and in the next instance, “the clear gray icy water.”
All three poems also provide a distinct self in place and time, which grounds us and allows the reader to move through the poem. “Poem” while not telling us a specific year or month, does tell us there has been a span of “seventy years,” in the line in the first stanza: “Useless and free, it has spent seventy years/ as a minor family relic…” In the third stanza of this poem, we get a sense of time as well, in the lines “Those particular geese and cows are naturally before my time” “A sketch done in an hour,” “he went back to England,” “our years apart,” and “the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese,” which evokes a change has occurred since the sketch was made. “Sestina” tells us immediately that it is September when the poem begins. So with the month and the rain, the speaker provides the backdrop for the melancholy emotion of the poem. In “At the Fishhouses,” we learn late in the poem that there are “a million Christmas trees…waiting for Christmas,” and that along with the description telling us that it is “a cold evening,” could tell us that it is November or December. In all cases, in these poems, we get a sense of time and place that anchors us in the poem.
The poems also change in verb tenses too, which complements the structure and moves the emotional arc. For example, in “At the Fishhouses,” the poem begins in present tense, as in “it is a cold evening,” and it remains in this tense through the first two stanzas and into the third, until the fifth line, which changes to past tense with “He was curious about me.” There is another switch at the point where the poem changes to second person, with “If you should,” which is future tense. In “Poem” the tense change coincides with the change in the tone and emotion as well. The poem begins in past tense, with “has never earned,” then it moves to present tense as the scene is described in the second stanza. “Sestina” is told in present tense, which works with the fable like feel of the poem.
With regards to roads not taken, it is certainly possible that these poems could have been written in different points of view, or using different word orders, as I mentioned with the ways that the poem begins, or in different tenses. However, these elements work effectively the way these poems have each been constructed. “Sestina” is more immediate and rhythmic in the present tense, with verbs like “falls,” “thinks,” “shivers,” than it would be in past tense. Each poem uses the tenses and points of view in varying ways in the poem, to make the poems interesting and to follow the emotion of the poem.
With her vivid descriptions and imagery, and her imaginative use of structure and language, Bishop paints a picture that we step into, so that we feel the message and the meaning of the poems. Despite their different structures, it’s as if the three poems could be strung together into one poem, about the cycles of life, about family and history, about death and loss.