Apartment in Leme -- Elizabeth Bishop

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1863) Apartment in Leme 1. Off to the left, those islands, named and renamed so many times now everyone's forgotten their names, are sleeping. Pale rods of light, the morning's implements, lie in among them tarnishing already, just like our knives and forks. Because we live at your open mouth, oh Sea, with your cold breath blowing warm, your warm breath cold, like in the fairy tale. Not only do you tarnish our knives and forks - regularly the silver coffee-pot goes into dark, rainbow-edged eclipse; the windows blur and mirrors are wet to touch. Custodia complains, and then you frizz her straightened, stiffened hair. Sometimes you embolden, sometimes bore. You smell of codfish and old rain. Homesick, the salt weeps in the salt-cellars. Breathe in. Breathe out. We're so accustomed to those sounds we only hear them in the night. Then they come closer but you keep your distance. 2. It's growing lighter. On the beach two men get up from shallow, newspaper-lined graves. A third sleeps on. His coverlet is corrugated paper, a flattened box. One running dog, two early bathers, stop dead in their tracks; detour. Wisps of fresh green stick to your foaming lips like those on horses' lips. The sand's bestrewn: white lilies, broken stalks, white candles with wet, blackened wicks, and green glass bottles for white alcohol meant for the goddess meant to come last night. (But you've emptied them all.) 3. Perhaps she came, at that. It was so clear! And you were keeping quiet: roughened, greeny-black, scaly as one of those corroded old bronze mirrors in all the world's museums (How did the ancients ever see anything in them?) incapable of reflecting even the biggest stars. One cluster, bright, astringent as white currants, hung from the Magellanic Clouds above you and the beach and its assorted lovers and worshippers, almost within their reach if they had noticed. The candles flickered. Worshippers, in white, holding hands, singing, walked in to you waist-deep. The lovers lay in the sand, embraced. Far out, saffron flares of five invisible fishing boats wobbled and hitched along, farther than the stars, weaker, and older. 4. But for now the sun. Slowly, reluctantly, you're letting go of it; it slowly rises; metallic; two-dimensional. You sigh, and sigh again. We live at your open mouth, with your cold breath blowing warm, your warm breath cold like in the fairy tale no - the legend. -- Elizabeth Bishop

Another glorious poem about the sea.

In the fragments of an essay collected as part of the newly released Edgar
Allan Poe and the Juke Box [1] (from which this poem is also taken), Bishop
writes that three qualities she admires most in poetry are Accuracy,
Spontaneity and Mystery. I can't say this poem is particularly mysterious,
nor does it feel particularly spontaneous to me (though there are a few nice
surprises). But it is accurate, undeniably so.

Bishop, a former protegee of Marianne Moore, has a lovely eye for detail and
her images have that rare quality of being both instantly recognisable and
dizzyingly beautiful ("Pale rods of light, the morning's implements,/ lie in
among them tarnishing already,/just like our knives and forks."). Reading
this poem, you can picture the scene perfectly - first the house near the
sea, its damp, ubiquitious presence; then the pre-dawn stroll on the beach;
then the luminous flashback to the previous night, with its hushed,
flickering imagery, and finally the sun rising and the return to the
everyday singled by the repetition of that second stanza.

It's a humbling thought that Bishop considered so lovely a poem unworthy of
being published.

Aseem

[1] A collection of unpublished (often fragmentary) poems and prose pieces
written by Bishop, put together by Alice Quinn and released recently by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Sestina -- Elizabeth Bishop

Guest poem sent in by Mark Penney

(Poem #1799) Sestina September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother sits in the kitchen with the child beside the Little Marvel Stove, reading the jokes from the almanac, laughing and talking to hide her tears. She thinks that her equinoctial tears and the rain that beats on the roof of the house were both foretold by the almanac, but only known to the grandmother. The iron kettle sings on the stove. She cuts some bread and says to the child, It’s time for tea now; but the child is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove, the way the rain must dance on the house. Tidying up, the old grandmother hangs up the clever almanac on its string. Birdlike, the almanac hovers half open above the child, hovers above the old grandmother and her teacup full of dark brown tears. She shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove. It was to be, says the Marvel Stove. I know what I know, says the almanac. With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway. Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears and shows it proudly to the grandmother. But secretly, while the grandmother busies herself about the stove, 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. Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house. -- Elizabeth Bishop

I was amazed to discover that Minstrels had never run this poem.

Like it says, it’s a sestina; Minstrels has run a couple before, notably the
awesome Shrinking Lonesome Sestina by Miller Williams [Poem #904]. There’s an
explanation of the form there; if that’s not enough for you, you could also
try googling "sestina", which will send you to all kinds of sites that’ll
have you writing them in no time.

I love this one because it uses the form so gloriously.  Look at the six key
words:  house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, tears.  Five homey,
mundane, comforting, cozy words, and "tears".  That choice right there tells
you that there’s something going on beneath the surface, that not all is
right with the world of grandmother and child and crayons and tea.  After
the second stanza, the tears aren’t even literal, but we’re still seeing
other things (the rain, the tea, the moon figures in the almanac, seeds)
likened to tears.  There’s an all-pervasive sadness there, even though the
surface imagery of the poem is so very cheery and homey.

And the relationship between grandmother and child is captured so
beautifully, too.

Classic Elizabeth Bishop; you wouldn’t mistake it for anyone else.

--Mark

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The Fish -- Elizabeth Bishop

Guest poem sent in by Melanie Albrecht

(Poem #1780) 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 its 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 which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. --- It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip --- if you could call it a lip --- grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels --- until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go. -- Elizabeth Bishop

I just love this poem. I love how she describes the fish without overt
romanticism, but it comes across as beautiful anyway. The fish is homely,
his skin hangs in strips, and he is infested with sea-lice. His eyes turn
towards her, but she doesn't anthropomorphise it: it's just like tipping an
"object toward the light". But still, his ugly skin is like wallpaper with
roses, and his eyes are backed with tinfoil! Lovely.

Through the poem, she moves from describing the fish's physical presence to
seeing human-like virtues in him. The fish is venerable, sullen, grim, wise,
and victorious. His victory over circumstance fills the nasty rented boat
with rainbow - how can she *not* let him go?

Regards, Melanie

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Visits to St. Elizabeth's -- Elizabeth Bishop

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1563) Visits to St. Elizabeth's This is the house of Bedlam. This is the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. The is the time of the tragic man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a wristwatch telling the time of the talkative man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the honored man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the roadstead all of board reached by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the old, brave man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls of the ward, the winds and clouds of the sea of board sailed by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the cranky man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board beyond the sailor winding his watch that tells the time of the cruel man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a world of books gone flat. This is a Jew in a newsapaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board of the batty sailor that winds his watch that tells the time of the busy man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is there, is flat, for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward waltzing the length of a weaving board by the silent sailor that hears his watch that ticks the time of the tedious man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to feel if the world is there and flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances joyfully down the ward into the parting seas of board past the starting sailor that shakes his watch that tells the time of the poet, the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the soldier home from the war. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is round of flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances carefully down the ward, walking the plank of a coffin board with the crazy sailor that shows his watch that tells the time of the wretched man that lies in the house of Bedlam. -- Elizabeth Bishop

        1950.

I've never been a big fan of Bishop. She has an incredible eye for images
(describing a baby rabbit fleeing a fire as 'a handful of intangible ash /
with fixed, ignited eyes' -- "The Armadillo") and an almost unmatched
ability to sketch a scene or a sensation so that it's visible / tangible
(consider 'We stand as still as stones to watch / the leaves and ripples /
while light and nervous water hold / their interview' -- "Quai D'Orleans" or
'Hear nothing but a train that goes by, must go by, like tension' -- "Four
Poems") but for me her poems often fail to come together into a coherent
whole. They remain beautiful yet insubstantial, like a loose nosegay of
impressions that withers easily and is forgotten.

The only exceptions to this are poems where Bishop starts off with a conceit
or a clever idea (see for instance, the incredible Gentleman of Shallott or
The Man Moth, which features on Minstrels as Poem #1395). Here Bishop is at
her best - combining an easy playfulness with touches of exquisite yearning
to create poems that are so solipsistic you don't know how seriously to take
them. "Visits to St. Elizabeth's" is an excellent example of this - a poem
of ceaseless and inspired variation that combines some truly heartbreaking
images ('This is a boy that pats the floor / to see if the world is there,
is flat') with a structure that comes out of a children's rhyme. What makes
this poem stunning is the the deftness with which Bishop pulls off that
structure (just try running This is the house that Jack built upto twelve
lines and see how quickly it becomes tedious) making each new stanza more
exhilarating than the last. Minor variations in the lines from stanza to
stanza create the illusion of revelation - each repetition promises more
clues to the poems true meaning, but it is a meaning never quite grasped.
The overall effect is that of an exquisite piece of baroque music - some
Bach variation - that tempts and teases and leaves you gasping for more
while at the same time convinced that there's something you've missed.

Aseem.

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