Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetics: The Fluidity and Mobility of the Interior/the Exterior

초록

This essay examines why Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry has a unique value on overcoming the human condition. The past and the present belong together like two sides of the same coin, but in her poems they share their territory with each other by merging and flowing. In Bishop’s works, the fluidity and mobility appear to help in dissolving the boundary between the interior and the exterior. To associate time with travel, Bishop adopts several metaphors such as “map,” “cry,” and “tears” not because of their meanings, but because of their fluidities. When we encounter the strong stimulus of environment, our eyes and noses respond to the stimulus without any emotional pain, sense of frustration and loss of the beloved people. For Bishop, the tears bring about the possibility of rendezvous for the past and the present. The essay focuses on the idea that Bishop breaks down such famous metaphors in her poem. Hence, I argue that her poems reveal her poetic postmodernity in the fluidity of waters by decentering the geographical center both in the landscape and the mindscape.

키워드