This is The Poetry Foundation’s Essential American Poets Podcast. Essential American Poets is an online, audio poetry collection. The poets in the collection were selected in 2006 by Donald Hall when he was Poet Laureate. Recordings of the poets he’s elected are available online at poetryfoundation.org and at poetryarchive.org.

In this edition of the podcast, we’ll hear poems by Elizabeth Bishop. Born in 1911, Elizabeth Bishop was an only child. Her father died before she was a year old, and her mother was institutionalized for mental illness when Bishop was 5 years old. Bishop never saw her mother again. Brought up by a succession of relatives in Nova Scotia and then Massachusetts, Bishop attended Vassar College, where she connected with the poet Marianne Moore who would greatly influence Bishop’s poetry. Bishop’s early experience of dislocation was a pattern that repeated throughout her life. The title of her 1965 book, Questions of Travel, could stand as an epigraph for a life time of wandering. After graduation, she travelled widely in Europe and North Africa, living off a small family legacy. At mid-life she settled in Brazil for 14 years, before ultimately settling in the United States. Bishop worked as a painter as well as a poet, and her verse, like visual art, is known for it’s ability to capture scenes with vivid detail. Her experience of different landscapes makes for precise subtle impressions of the physical world in her poetry. Bishop was a perfectionist and did not write prolifically. Instead, she spent long periods of time polishing her work. “I’m not interested in big scale work as such”, she once told her closest literary friend, Robert Lowell. “Something needn’t be large to be good”. During her life time, Elizabeth Bishop was a respected yet somewhat obscure figure in American literature. Never one to seek the lime light, her profile nevertheless increased in her final years as her poetry was recognized by major awards and she began to give more readings. Since her death in 1979, many critics have referred to her as one of the most important American poets of the past century. The following poem was recorded in New York City in 1947.

 

Elizabeth Bishop: At four o'clock

in the gun-metal blue dark

we hear the first crow of the first cock

 

just below

the gun-metal blue window

and immediately there is an echo

 

off in the distance,

then one from the backyard fence,

then one, with horrible insistence,

 

grates like a wet match

from the broccoli patch,

flares,and all over town begins to catch.

 

Cries galore

come from the water-closet door,

from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor,

 

where in the blue blur

their rusting wives admire,

the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare

 

with stupid eyes

while from their beaks there rise

the uncontrolled, traditional cries.

 

Deep from protruding chests

in green-gold medals dressed,

planned to command and terrorize the rest,

 

the many wives

who lead hens' lives

of being courted and despised;

 

deep from raw throats

a senseless order floats

all over town. A rooster gloats

 

over our beds

from rusty irons sheds

and fences made from old bedsteads,

 

over our churches

where the tin rooster perches,

over our little wooden northern houses,

 

making sallies

from all the muddy alleys,

marking out maps like Rand McNally's:

 

glass-headed pins,

oil-golds and copper greens,

anthracite blues, alizarins,

 

each one an active

displacement in perspective;

each screaming, "This is where I live!"

 

Each screaming

"Get up! Stop dreaming!"

Roosters, what are you projecting?

 

You, whom the Greeks elected

to shoot at on a post, who struggled

when sacrificed, you whom they labeled

 

"Very combative..."

what right have you to give

commands and tell us how to live,

 

cry "Here!" and "Here!"

and wake us here where are

unwanted love, conceit and war?

 

The crown of red

set on your little head

is charged with all your fighting blood

 

Yes, that excrescence

makes a most virile presence,

plus all that vulgar beauty of iridescence

 

Now in mid-air

by two they fight each other.

Down comes a first flame-feather,

 

and one is flying,

with raging heroism defying

even the sensation of dying.

 

And one has fallen

but still above the town

his torn-out, bloodied feathers drift down;

 

and what he sung

no matter. He is flung

on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung

 

with his dead wives

with open, bloody eyes,

while those metallic feathers oxidize.

 

 

St. Peter's sin

was worse than that of Magdalen

whose sin was of the flesh alone;

 

of spirit, Peter's,

falling, beneath the flares,

among the "servants and officers."

 

Old holy sculpture

could set it all together

in one small scene, past and future:

 

Christ stands amazed,

Peter, two fingers raised

to surprised lips, both as if dazed.

 

But in between

a little cock is seen

carved on a dim column in the travertine,

 

explained by gallus canit;

flet Petrus underneath it,

There is inescapable hope, the pivot;

 

yes, and there Peter's tears

run down our chanticleer's

sides and gem his spurs.

 

Tear-encrusted thick

as a medieval relic

he waits. Poor Peter, heart-sick,

 

still cannot guess

those cock-a-doodles yet might bless,

his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness,

 

a new weathervane

on basilica and barn,

and that outside the Lateran

 

there would always be

a bronze cock on a porphyry

pillar so the people and the Pope might see

 

that event the Prince

of the Apostles long since

had been forgiven, and to convince

 

all the assembly

that "Deny deny deny"

is not all the roosters cry.

 

In the morning

a low light is floating

in the backyard, and gilding

 

from underneath

the broccoli, leaf by leaf;

how could the night have come to grief?

 

gilding the tiny

floating swallow's belly

and lines of pink cloud in the sky,

 

the day's preamble

like wandering lines in marble,

The cocks are now almost inaudible.

 

The sun climbs in,

following "to see the end,"

faithful as enemy, or friend.

 

The following poems were recorded at the Library of Congress in 1974.

 

Elizabeth Bishop: A new volcano has erupted,

the papers say, and last week I was reading   

where some ship saw an island being born:   

at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;   

and then a black fleck—basalt, probably—

rose in the mate’s binoculars

and caught on the horizon like a fly.

They named it. But my poor old island’s still   

un-rediscovered, un-renamable.

None of the books has ever got it right.

 

Well, I had fifty-two

miserable, small volcanoes I could climb   

with a few slithery strides—

volcanoes dead as ash heaps.

I used to sit on the edge of the highest one   

and count the others standing up,

naked and leaden, with their heads blown off.   

I’d think that if they were the size   

I thought volcanoes should be, then I had   

become a giant;

and if I had become a giant,

I couldn’t bear to think what size   

the goats and turtles were,

or the gulls, or the overlapping rollers   

—a glittering hexagon of rollers   

closing and closing in, but never quite,   

glittering and glittering, though the sky   

was mostly overcast.

 

My island seemed to be

a sort of cloud-dump. All the hemisphere’s   

left-over clouds arrived and hung

above the craters—their parched throats   

were hot to touch.

Was that why it rained so much?

And why sometimes the whole place hissed?   

The turtles lumbered by, high-domed,   

hissing like teakettles.

(And I’d have given years, or taken a few,   

for any sort of kettle, of course.)

The folds of lava, running out to sea,

would hiss. I’d turn. And then they’d prove   

to be more turtles.

The beaches were all lava, variegated,   

black, red, and white, and gray;

the marbled colors made a fine display.   

And I had waterspouts. Oh,

half a dozen at a time, far out,

they’d come and go, advancing and retreating,   

their heads in cloud, their feet in moving patches   

of scuffed-up white.

Glass chimneys, flexible, attenuated,   

sacerdotal beings of glass ... I watched   

the water spiral up in them like smoke.   

Beautiful, yes, but not much company.

 

I often gave way to self-pity.

“Do I deserve this? I suppose I must.

I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Was there   

a moment when I actually chose this?

I don’t remember, but there could have been.”   

What’s wrong about self-pity, anyway?

With my legs dangling down familiarly   

over a crater’s edge, I told myself

“Pity should begin at home.” So the more   

pity I felt, the more I felt at home.

 

The sun set in the sea; the same odd sun   

rose from the sea,

and there was one of it and one of me.   

The island had one kind of everything:   

one tree snail, a bright violet-blue

with a thin shell, crept over everything,   

over the one variety of tree,

a sooty, scrub affair.

Snail shells lay under these in drifts   

and, at a distance,

you’d swear that they were beds of irises.   

There was one kind of berry, a dark red.   

I tried it, one by one, and hours apart.   

Sub-acid, and not bad, no ill effects;   

and so I made home-brew. I’d drink   

the awful, fizzy, stinging stuff

that went straight to my head

and play my home-made flute

(I think it had the weirdest scale on earth)   

and, dizzy, whoop and dance among the goats.   

Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?   

I felt a deep affection for

the smallest of my island industries.   

No, not exactly, since the smallest was   

a miserable philosophy.

 

Because I didn’t know enough.

Why didn’t I know enough of something?   

Greek drama or astronomy? The books   

I’d read were full of blanks;

the poems—well, I tried

reciting to my iris-beds,

“They flash upon that inward eye,

which is the bliss ...” The bliss of what?   

One of the first things that I did

when I got back was look it up.

 

The island smelled of goat and guano.   

The goats were white, so were the gulls,   

and both too tame, or else they thought   

I was a goat, too, or a gull.

Baa, baa, baa and shriek, shriek, shriek,

baa ... shriek ... baa ... I still can’t shake   

them from my ears; they’re hurting now.

The questioning shrieks, the equivocal replies   

over a ground of hissing rain

and hissing, ambulating turtles

got on my nerves.

When all the gulls flew up at once, they sounded

like a big tree in a strong wind, its leaves.   

I’d shut my eyes and think about a tree,   

an oak, say, with real shade, somewhere.   

I’d heard of cattle getting island-sick.   

I thought the goats were.

One billy-goat would stand on the volcano

I’d christened Mont d’Espoir or Mount Despair

(I’d time enough to play with names),   

and bleat and bleat, and sniff the air.   

I’d grab his beard and look at him.   

His pupils, horizontal, narrowed up

and expressed nothing, or a little malice.   

I got so tired of the very colors!   

One day I dyed a baby goat bright red   

with my red berries, just to see   

something a little different.

And then his mother wouldn’t recognize him.

 

Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food

and love, but they were pleasant rather

than otherwise. But then I’d dream of things   

like slitting a baby’s throat, mistaking it   

for a baby goat. I’d have

nightmares of other islands

stretching away from mine, infinities   

of islands, islands spawning islands,   

like frogs’ eggs turning into polliwogs   

of islands, knowing that I had to live   

on each and every one, eventually,   

for ages, registering their flora,   

their fauna, their geography.

 

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it   

another minute longer, Friday came.   

(Accounts of that have everything all wrong.)   

Friday was nice.

Friday was nice, and we were friends.   

If only he had been a woman!

I wanted to propagate my kind,   

and so did he, I think, poor boy.

He’d pet the baby goats sometimes,

and race with them, or carry one around.   

—Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.

 

And then one day they came and took us off.

 

Now I live here, another island,

that doesn’t seem like one, but who decides?

My blood was full of them; my brain   

bred islands. But that archipelago

has petered out. I’m old.

I’m bored, too, drinking my real tea,   

surrounded by uninteresting lumber.

The knife there on the shelf—

it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.

It lived. How many years did I   

beg it, implore it, not to break?

I knew each nick and scratch by heart,

the bluish blade, the broken tip,

the lines of wood-grain on the handle ...

Now it won’t look at me at all.   

The living soul has dribbled away.   

My eyes rest on it and pass on.

 

The local museum’s asked me to

leave everything to them:

the flute, the knife, the shrivelled shoes,

my shedding goatskin trousers

(moths have got in the fur),

the parasol that took me such a time   

remembering the way the ribs should go.

It still will work but, folded up,

looks like a plucked and skinny fowl.

How can anyone want such things?

—And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles

seventeen years ago come March.

 

Elizabeth Bishop: This one will have to be changed as you’ll see, somehow, I don’t know how, at the end. But I’ll read it the way it is now. It’s called “Filling Station”.

 

Elizabeth Bishop:

Oh, but it is dirty!

—this little filling station,

oil-soaked, oil-permeated

to a disturbing, over-all

black translucency.

Be careful with that match!

 

Father wears a dirty,

oil-soaked monkey suit

that cuts him under the arms,

and several quick and saucy

and greasy sons assist him

(it’s a family filling station),

all quite thoroughly dirty.

 

Do they live in the station?

It has a cement porch

behind the pumps, and on it

a set of crushed and grease-

impregnated wickerwork;

on the wicker sofa

a dirty dog, quite comfy.

 

Some comic books provide

the only note of color—

of certain color. They lie

upon a big dim doily

draping a taboret

(part of the set), beside

a big hirsute begonia.

 

Why the extraneous plant?

Why the taboret?

Why, oh why, the doily?

(Embroidered in daisy stitch

with marguerites, I think,

and heavy with gray crochet.)

 

Somebody embroidered the doily.

Somebody waters the plant,

or oils it, maybe. Somebody

arranges the rows of cans

so that they softly say:

esso—so—so—so

to high-strung automobiles.

Somebody loves us all.

 

Elizabeth Bishop: This is a Nova Scotian poem about the east coast of Nova Scotia called “At The Fish Houses”, south of Halifax where it’s a very rugged coast line.

 

Although it is a cold evening,

down by one of the fishhouses

an old man sits netting,

his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,

a dark purple-brown,

and his shuttle worn and polished.

The air smells so strong of codfish

it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.

The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs

and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up

to storerooms in the gables

for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.

All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,

swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,

is opaque, but the silver of the benches,

the lobster pots, and masts, scattered

among the wild jagged rocks,

is of an apparent translucence

like the small old buildings with an emerald moss

growing on their shoreward walls.

The big fish tubs are completely lined

with layers of beautiful herring scales

and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered

with creamy iridescent coats of mail,

with small iridescent flies crawling on them.

Up on the little slope behind the houses,

set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,

is an ancient wooden capstan,

cracked, with two long bleached handles

and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,

where the ironwork has rusted.

The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.

He was a friend of my grandfather.

We talk of the decline in the population

and of codfish and herring

while he waits for a herring boat to come in.

There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.

He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,

from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,

the blade of which is almost worn away.

 

Down at the water’s edge, at the place

where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp

descending into the water, thin silver

tree trunks are laid horizontally

across the gray stones, down and down

at intervals of four or five feet.

 

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

element bearable to no mortal,

to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly

I have seen here evening after evening.

He was curious about me. He was interested in music;

like me a believer in total immersion,

so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.

I also sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

He stood up in the water and regarded me

steadily, moving his head a little.

Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge

almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug

as if it were against his better judgment.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,

the dignified tall firs begin.

Bluish, associating with their shadows,

a million Christmas trees stand

waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended

above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,

slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,

icily free above the stones,

above the stones and then the world.

If you should dip your hand in,

your wrist would ache immediately,

your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn

as if the water were a transmutation of fire

that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,

then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the cold hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

 

(APPLAUSE)

 

That was Elizabeth Bishop recorded at the Library of Congress in 1974, and used by permission of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. You’ve been listening to the Essential Poets Podcast, produced by The Poetry Foundation in collaboration with poetryarchive.org. To learn more about Elizabeth Bishop and other essential poets, and to hear more poems, go to poetryfoundation.org.