The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop

I learned that Bishop excels at taking the mundane and transforming it to something beautiful. Her poems are so beautifully written that one does not merely read her poetry, instead one can see her subject matter right in front of them. It would be easy to dismiss Bishop’s poetry as merely a descriptive look at the routine but Bishop’s poetry all holds a deeper meaning that really only becomes apparent when you look at Bishop’s own life. After losing her father at an early age and her mother’s institutionalization, Bishop led a largely nomadic lifestyle. Without a true home to call her own, a lot of her poems reflect Bishop’s musing on what makes a home and why humans feel the need to travel. She also examines how often times something that can seem so obvious, like returning home, can be the hardest thing in the world to do.

The poem The Prodigal is my favourite of Bishops’s poetry. The titular character in the poem reflects an image of the poet as one who is not in their own home and not surrounded by family. Although background reasons for this are not examined within the poem, it is clear that to return home would not be an easy decision. The prodigal has sought comfort in alcohol – ‘But sometimes morning after drinking bouts / (He hid the pints behind a two-by-four)’. Bishop herself battled alcoholism, a factor that contributed to her own isolation. The prodigal is isolated, battling an addiction and cannot face returning to their home. The situation outlined in the poem is the bleakest part of the biblical parable and yet Bishop writes it in such a way as the reader understands why staying away isn’t the hardest part of the story. Bishop has appealed to all of the reader’s senses in this poem. From the opening line ‘The brown enormous odour he lived by’ instantly sets a clear mental image for the reader. The smell is all consuming and one can only imagine it fills the nostrils to such an extent that it can almost be tasted. We can almost feel the ‘glass