Elizabeth Bishop and Her Poem "Filling Station"
Elizabeth Bishop and Her Poem "Filling Station"
Elizabeth Bishop 's skill as a poet can be clearly seen in the thought- provoking poem entitled Filling Station. She paints the different language levels of poetry with the skill of an artist-- she seems to have an eye for detail as she contrasts the dark and dim reference of a filling station to a more homey, pleasant atmosphere. Bishop aptly arranges her words and expressions through the language devices of voice and metaphor. In Filling Station, Bishop uses tone of voice brilliantly, through the use of phonetics, to create the poem 's initial atmosphere. The opening seems to be offering a straightforward description of the filling station: "Oh, but it is dirty!/ -this little filling station,/ oil-soaked, oil-permeated/ to a disturbing, over-all/ black translucency". A closer inspection of the passage reveals quite a visual oil-soaked picture. This is created in large part by the oily sounds themselves. When spoken out-loud the diphthong [oi] in oil creates a diffusion of sound around the mouth that physically spreads the oil sound around the passage. An interesting seepage can also be clearly seen when looking specifically at the words "oil-soaked", "oil-permeated" and "grease- impregnated". These words connect the [oi] in oily with the word following it and heighten the spreading of the sound. Moreover, when studying the [oi] atmosphere throughout the poem the [oi] in doily and embroidered seems to particularly stand out. The oozing of the grease in the filling station moves to each new stanza with the mention of these words: In the fourth stanza, "big dim doily", to the second last stanza, "why, oh why, the doily? /Embroidered" to the last stanza, "somebody embroidered the doily". Whereas the [oi] sound created an oily sound of language throughout the poem, the repetitive [ow] sound achieves a very different syntactical feature.
The cans which "softly say: /ESSO--SO--SO--SO" create a
Elizabeth Bishop 's skill as a poet can be clearly seen in the thought- provoking poem entitled Filling Station. She paints the different language levels of poetry with the skill of an artist-- she seems to have an eye for detail as she contrasts the dark and dim reference of a filling station to a more homey, pleasant atmosphere. Bishop aptly arranges her words and expressions through the language devices of voice and metaphor. In Filling Station, Bishop uses tone of voice brilliantly, through the use of phonetics, to create the poem 's initial atmosphere. The opening seems to be offering a straightforward description of the filling station: "Oh, but it is dirty!/ -this little filling station,/ oil-soaked, oil-permeated/ to a disturbing, over-all/ black translucency". A closer inspection of the passage reveals quite a visual oil-soaked picture. This is created in large part by the oily sounds themselves. When spoken out-loud the diphthong [oi] in oil creates a diffusion of sound around the mouth that physically spreads the oil sound around the passage. An interesting seepage can also be clearly seen when looking specifically at the words "oil-soaked", "oil-permeated" and "grease- impregnated". These words connect the [oi] in oily with the word following it and heighten the spreading of the sound. Moreover, when studying the [oi] atmosphere throughout the poem the [oi] in doily and embroidered seems to particularly stand out. The oozing of the grease in the filling station moves to each new stanza with the mention of these words: In the fourth stanza, "big dim doily", to the second last stanza, "why, oh why, the doily? /Embroidered" to the last stanza, "somebody embroidered the doily". Whereas the [oi] sound created an oily sound of language throughout the poem, the repetitive [ow] sound achieves a very different syntactical feature.
The cans which "softly say: /ESSO--SO--SO--SO" create a
Bibliography: Bishop, Elizabeth. "Filling Station." An Introduction to Poetry. Eds. Dana Gioia and X.J. Kennedy. Eighth Edition. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994.