In her essay on Elizabeth Bishop's "Filling Station," Molly Peacock speaks of the function of description—of listing objects, sense impressions or remembered events—in this way:. When you can't make sense of the world in any other way, merely to describe what you see before you leads to understanding. Description becomes knowledge. Details inform you of the shape of the world. Shape means perspective. If you are in a state of disorientation, you will gain a point of view. A point of view makes a sense of humor possible.
One thing that seduces me in Bishop's poems like this one or "The Moose" or "At the Fishhouses" is her way of examining what might easily be overlooked and finding there layers of image and memory, humor and, finally, mystery. Bishop looks long enough to see not only the oily furniture and the dingy doily, but also the "big hirsute begonia" and the embroidered flowers "marguirites" on the doily.
Each a potential source of beauty, the doily marred by grime, the begonia by its heavy, hairy leaves. Bishop simply lists what she is noticing, until she sees both its beauty and its ugliness. Why the taboret? Why, oh why the doily? Simply by looking long enough to see what is there, Bishop has taken the poem to another level—both in tone and in content. She has written herself into surprise. Frost also famously said that a poem should "begin in delight and end in wisdom," this poem begins in a kind of Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.
Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves. Built on the Johns Hopkins University Campus. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. Progressing onto the people who run and possibly own the station, the speaker surveys father and sons with a hawk eye, noting the dirty, too short monkey suit of the father, the greasiness of the sons, who are 'saucy' bold and lively but also dirty.
The first question appears, related to the family and the dirt no doubt. How can real people actually live here? There is no definitive answer, the question is rhetorical and anyways, you get the feeling that the speaker isn't going to ask directly. That's it for the dirt and grime. The speaker moves on to more positive and optimistic observations which includes comic books of color - the reader doesn't get to know the exact color - suggesting a family life with at least a bit of fun in it.
It can't be all work and no play at the filling station for this family? The doily is large, it covers a small table taboret which, the speaker whispers in an aside, has been set up like a theater stage, these family things being nothing but props in readiness for a performance.
Now the questions arrive thick and fast as the speaker, having taken all these things on board, describing them all in great detail, feels the need to pepper the reader and herself with questions three. As if to affirm to the reader this very fact the speaker again whispers, in parentheses, the minutest technical details regarding the embroidery stitch and crocheting.
Marguerites, by the way, are a special kind of daisy. Those three awkward yet necessary questions are nearly answered fully in this last stanza, eight lines, four complete sentences, with the word somebody repeated four times. Yes, somebody did work on the doily, water the plant note the joke oils it, maybe and also arrange the Esso cans - a creative soul who perhaps isn't around at this moment?
Note the language and the intention It could be. Elizabeth Bishop was very aware of losing things her father at an early age and mother when she was a teenager and then a lover later on in life and feeling deep loss. So this poem is far more than mere description of a dirty filling station.
It tells the story of life at a place a modern community needs to survive fuel and oil ; hints at a hard working family missing a vital element - the mother. And that final line introduces the idea that, if there was no all-encompassing love, the whole scene would fall apart, combust. Filling Station is a free verse poem of 41 lines, made up of six stanzas.
There is no set rhyme scheme and no regular meter metre in British English , so the beats and stresses vary from line to line, like with everyday conversation. Initially, the tone is one of disgust and slight shock as the speaker's first impression upon arrival kicks in. Safety is a priority, so there is a cautiousness underlying. The speaker is incredulous, perhaps the dirtiness is an affront? But the tone does change. The more the observation deepens the more optimistic the language, resulting in a final line that could be based on pure relief.
There are some interesting sound patterns within these stanzas, repeated phrases and words reinforcing a strong sense of disgust at and puzzlement with the grubby filling station. Note the following :. Marine Biology. Electrical Engineering. Computer Science. Medical Science. Writing Tutorials. Performing Arts. Visual Arts. Student Life. Vocational Training.
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