Friday, 2 December 2016

READING A POEM A DAY 2 2.12.2016 Five Flights Up Elizabeth Bishop



It's the morning after the night before. The poet looks down upon a yard.

The dog she sees is little. The bird is unknown. The branch it sits upon is usual. The enormous morning is ponderous, meticulous. The scene setting and the descriptions are simple and clear, generally, though they occasionally falter and weaken.

Perhaps, in his sleep, the bird too inquires.

The bird still sits there. Now he seems to yawn.

It is the dog, not the bird, who reveals the weakness in Bishop, in all humans.

He bounces cheerfully up and down
rushes in circles in the fallen leaves

Thus are we in Autumn. He gains another adjective (to save the scansion of the line?).

The little black dog runs in the yard

and feels the edge of his owner's tongue.

His owner's voice arises, stern,
You ought to be ashamed!”

But Bishop knows better.

Obviously, he has no sense of shame

for, like the bird, the dog knows

....................................... everything is answered,
all taken care of,

It is the morning of a next day, a new day she can't face, because of yesterday, weakly bound by parentheses that hem in the poet herself.

(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)

How would Bishop write about herself were it not for birds and dogs, viewed from on high?








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