Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

4. What impresses me about the 1956 volume is a wonderful awareness of the ambiguity of things. “Faustina,” for instance … the impossibility of knowing her thoughts, that they might be either. Or the end of “Roosters” in which the sun “climbs in” … “faithful as enemy or friend.” This kind of uncertainty perhaps characteristic of the time as well of perhaps you. The new poems, except for Questions of Travel and Brazil, January 1, don’t seem to spring from the same kind of uncertainty or urgency, but from a new climate and culture really. They have the same qualities of exact discription but the perspective is different. Even the poems about childhood — Sestina, and Cousin Arthur and Manners are “detached” (Is that what I mean?) from your old vision. They don’t seem quite “it” … while the Brazilian poems have almost a settled quality. Manuelzinho, for instance, and curious mixture of superstition and mysticism and absurdity of The Riverman.

Understand I am not criticizing these new poems. I like many of them very much — and besides, as you see, I can’t really say what I mean about them. Therefore I don’t think I’ll say as much about them as about the others. The Fish, The Imaginary Iceberg, The Map, The Man Moth, Cootchie, Florida these all seem to me masterpieces — better and better as I read them. But unless you think me terribly “dated” I would rather not deal with what probably should be called the “contemporary poetic scene”. It’s a dreary one, in general, I think, and I’m not sure that any of your poems have much to do with it.

I see that I have “gone all muzzy again,” as Mark would put it. Well, maybe you can help me out. I do want to thank you for your long letter and to assure you that I will quote nothing without asking you. There is a passage that I would like to use, if I may, or if you approve. It concerns what you say about the “always-more-successful surrealism” of everyday life. As you have it, it is like this:

“There is no “split.” Dreams, works of art, glimpses of the always-more-successful surrealism of everyday life, unexpected moments of empathy (is it?), catch a peripheral vision of whatever it is one can never really see full-face but that seems enormously important.” And then what you say of Darwin who builds an “endless heroic case” of observations “and then comes to a sudden relaxation, a forgetful phrase, and one feels the strangeness of his undertaking, sees the lonely young man, his eyes fixed on facts and minute details, sinking or sliding giddily off into the unknown…”

It is that point where rationality and irrationally meet that that your poems “catch fire” for me. Their resonance, their real perceptions — not just the fine descriptions — comes from the central awareness … the hardest and most elusive thing in the world to catch.

Two weeks ago I ran away to Ann Arbor to visit my father … and to be by myself for a while. While I was there I did a sort of Victorian Table of Contents of this whole book … all the ideas written out in outline form with references to poems etc.… now I’m fitting what I have already written into my outline (and throwing reams away). So it looks as if there may be a book after all in spite of viruses, ear-aches, and headcolds which seem to afflict my family — even the cat has a cold! I haven’t yet looked up the photography of your house — I will, I’m glad you told me about “L’Architecture d’Aujord’hui” I hope I have everything you suggested include incorporated into the chronology. No, I havn’t seen “The Trial” and I won’t after your description. And I’ve been re-reading Chekov. Yes, Yes, Yes. Have you written any stories about Brazil? Somehow I think you should … What is it that makes good prose but isn’t poetry — or perhaps it is.

I’m “baby sitting” with a friend’s little girl and my own — we take turns — and I wish you could see the raisins and graham crackers piling up around the typewriter. And milk spilling! I think the time for literature has come to an end. Again, thank you for your kindness and help and patience in reading my letters to you.

Answers to your questions of March 6th —[1964]

1. It was my greatgrandfather (maternal grandmother’s father) who was a sea captain. William Hutchinson. He was lost at sea — all hands — in a famous storm off Sable Island when my grandmother was 9 years old. No — Cape Sable, I think — they’re two different places, but Cape Sable would be on his way into the Bay of Fundy. Better not say. I made a trip to Sable Island (as I believe I’ve said) on a Canadian Lighthouse Service Boat, around 1949—

My maternal grandmother had four brothers; three were Baptist missionaries in India, the 4th a painter who spent most of his life in England, George Hutchinson. (Israel Zangwill’s “Our Lady of the Snows” is supposed to be about him but I haven’t read it.) One of the others was also President of Acadia College in N S, and another taught there, etc. The Hutchinsons seem to have had brains, talents, and were rather eccentric. As I think I said — one wrote bad novels, including the first novel in Telegu.

Great Uncle George went to sea at 14 or so (he is in “Large Bad Picture”) except he never taught school; I don’t know why I said that. For a few years. Even before then, he had started painting pictures of ships for the local ship-builders; Great Village was a ship-building place then, as many Nova Scotian villages were. But it came to an end around the turn of the century. Of the Bulmer side I don’t know very much. As I said — there were Tories from N.Y. state, given farms in N S at the time of the Revolution, and more recent Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and English additions. My maternal grandmother’s mother however was from England — London — which probably accounted for many anglicisms my grandma used, such as “hard as the knockers of Newgate.” I have a lot of notes from auntAunt Grace about this side of the family — the ship my greatgrandmother arrived in, her fearful trip, etc. — but I don’t believe they’d be of much interest to you, really.

On my mother’s side I had three aunts: Maud, Grace, and Mary. You don’t need to mention names, I think — I lived with Maud and was — and am — fondest of Grace. Mary is only 12 years older than I am — she is mentioned in both those stories. These last two are both living in Canada; Aunt Maud died about 1942—I’m not sure. She and her husband stayed near me for two or three winters, or parts of winters, in Key West. There was also a brother, Uncle Arthur — of the poem — Their father, my grandfather, was my favorite grandparent. He owned the local tannery, until local tanning vanished — the pits for it were still there, and part of the old shop, when I was small. Also small-scale farming, like everyone else, almost, in Great Village. He was a darling; sweet-tempered, devout, and good with children. (“Manners” is about him) He was a deacon of the Baptist church and when he passed the collection plate he would slip me one of those strong white peppermints that say (still, I think) CANADA on them.

Great Village is very small and well-preserved — the last time I saw it, at least—1951, like a small New England village, all white houses, elm trees, one large white church in the middle (designed I believe by great uncle George).* It is in the rich farming country around the head of the Bay of Funday: dark red soil, blue fir trees— burbirches, a pretty river running into the Bay through “salt marshes”—a few remains of the old Acadian dikes — it is Evangeline country — Cape Breton is quite different; sparsely populated, forested, full of lakes — supposed to be like Scotland, and more Gaelic is spoken there than anywhere else in the world. I spent a summer there—48, I think, when I wrote a few poems about it. My mother went off to teach school at 16 (the way most of the enterprising young people did) and her first school was in lower Cape Breton somewhere — and the pupils spoke nothing much but Gaelic so she had a hard time of it at that school, or maybe one nearer home — she was so homesick she was taken the family dog to cheer her up. I have written both a story and a poem about this episode but neither satisfy me yet.