Elizabeth Bishop Research Paper

Examining the Life of Elizabeth Bishop The life of Elizabeth Bishop was examined, along with her writing and poetic voice, in the video produced from the Voices and Visions series. The video provided extensive and unique insight into Elizabeth’s early life and how it affected her poetry. It discussed her personal relationships as well as her family, travel and literary accolades. In this paper, I will respond to the most interesting and unique aspects of Elizabeth Bishop’s personality, early life, and poetry. Elizabeth was born, and only 3 short months after, her father died. Only a few years later, her mother was committed in a sanitarium, where she stayed until she passed away. This left Elizabeth to be raised by her grandparents,
Some of her poetry was written from the point of view of a child, and some was written with a childlike tone and sensibility, such as The Map. One poem of Bishop’s that is very memorable to me is In the Waiting Room. This poem is written about a child who, while waiting in a waiting room while her Aunt Conseula sees a dentist, learns much about her own identity and how she fits among the other people in the waiting room, which gives her an understanding of how she fits among the rest of the world. This new identity that the young girl holds, she wants to hold onto, but it also scares her. This is really the first experience she has of her own identity. This was all brought about by the girl reading an article in a National Geographic magazine with images of women with wires around their necks and their breasts exposed freely, and these images frightened the young girl and let to the emotional experience that secured her own identity. One quote from the poem I found particularly impactful and really remarkable, “You are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them” (Bishop). This was such an intimate and important experience
I would believe that the same shock and awe she felt as a girl viewing the images in a National Geographic magazine contributed to her love and interest in traveling and living abroad. Elizabeth traveled to Brazil, and ended up staying for quite a few years, living in affluent homes in Rio de Janeiro. She spent much time traveling the amazon, and other undeveloped parts of the Brazilian jungle. She wrote about her experiences traveling, and what was unique about her travel writing was that she not only described the scenery, but she talked about many other parts of the travel experience that a reader would not expect to hear in a poem about travel. She wrote about her perceptions of other people who were traveling alongside her, how she believed their own life and experiences influenced how they felt and saw Brazil and the amazon. Her insights are unique, sensitive and intuitive. She also wrote about the poor in Brazil; beggars, tribes living in dilapidated homes on the Amazon, and those of the lowest economic status. Those who knew her felt that she identified with the poor, and was sensitive and hurt by the brutality in which the poor are treated. She often wrote about home, and felt that without a sense of home, there is no travel. This was an important dynamic of both her writing and her liking of