Five Looks at Elizabeth Bishop by Anne Stevenson

Author:Anne Stevenson [Anne Stevenson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780372242
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

uninterruptedly

talking in Eternity:

names being mentioned,

things cleared up finally;

what he said, what she said,

who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;

the year he remarried;

the year (something) happened.

She died in childbirth.

That was the son lost

when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.

She went to the bad.

When Amos began to pray

even in the store and

finally the family had

to put him away.

When suddenly the moose appears, disrupting this stream of memories (all of which, notice, relate to Elizabeth Bishop’s own story) the driver jolts the passengers awake, putting on his brakes. By this time, both they and we, as readers, are prepared for something ‘otherwordly’ to happen. And in fact, it does happen; the moose does appear from another world, though the revelation, far from being supernatural, is just the reverse. The moose becomes the natural focus of the passengers’ ephemeral, dream-like wanderings:

Taking her time,

she looks the bus over,

grand, otherworldly.

Why, why do we feel

(we all feel) this sweet

sensation of joy?

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