Reflections on Elizabeth Bishop’s Poem-The Moose

“The Moose” reminds us of Wallace Steven’s “The Snow Man” which is made up of only one sentence segmented in different lines. Reading “The Moose” from the very beginning we cannot find the subject of a complete grammatical sentence until we come to the second line of the fifth stanza. We know it’s “a bus” that “journeys west” and “waits”. Later on the bus starts …

Elizabeth Bishop paints the natural scenes in her unique fascinating way,which are on the tip of her pen endowed with liveliness and ever-changing beauty. She opens the poem with long seascape, which is so beautifully written in rhyme depicting the place where the bus starts as “narrow provinces/ of fish and bread and tea, / home of long tides.” The poet uses a human metaphor for the bay, seeing it as the host of a family through the words: “leaves”, “takes”, “coming in” and “not at home”. This homely image shortens the distance between the seascape and its observers. The poet then exert her keen observation and wild imagination by applying images as “herrings”, “bay”, “river”,“wall of foam”, “sunlight”, “sea”, “flat’s lavender”, “mud” and “rivulets” , we can visualize the sea under the glory of the sunlight―shining red magnificently, dyeing red everything beside her. The words “veins” and “burning” here are more than creatively used; they give rise to infinite imagination. Elizabeth Bishop’s work is not just like a painting. The poet frequently surprises and greatly impresses the readers by her choice of words like this.

The bus keeps going on the “gravelly roads”… Looking out of the window of the bus we can see a changing picture of “ rows of maples”, “farmhouses”, “churches” that is just like white “clamshells” and “birches” which is “silver” …in the golden brilliance of the sunset. We have been enchanted by the multi-colored picturesque scenes. The participles “flashing, glancing and brushing” mirror not only the dazzling pink the “windshield” shines in the afternoon rays of the sun and it’s reflection on the blue enamel, but also the speed of the bus, producing a magic effect on the readers by the combination of a blaze of colors and swiftness.

Up to now the first sentence has just been over and from the seventh stanza we know: “The bus starts…” We can not only see “the light grows richer”―suggesting it is getting darker and “the fog comes closing in”, perceive it’s “shifting” now and then, but also smell its salty which reminds people of the sea. Elizabeth Bishop goes on to employ the images of animals and plants to show delicately the fineness of the nature : The “crystals” of the fog which is “cold” and “round”, “form and slide and settle/ in the white hens’ feathers, / in gray glazed cabbages, /on the cabbage rose” and “lupines”. Then in stanza nine we encounter most wonderful scenes:

the sweet peas cling

to their wet white string

on the whitewashed fences;

bumblebees creep

inside the foxgloves,

and evening commences.

“cling to” and “creep” here are fine vivid touches in this picture. Furthermore, the images projected by these two verbs seems to be so familiar to us, one might be easily thinking of some moments in his ordinary life as the evening wears on and getting those images (about plant and animal)and moments (in human life) connected.

When the night comes and everybody seems bored and sleepy, “a gentle, auditory, slow hallucination begins…” in the noises the bus has made through its way, the poetess seems to have heard a conversation―grandparents’ voices. We have also noticed a sudden shift of verb tense here in the poem which we should pay special attention to. It might be telling something about the past, so close, while so far in the poet’s memory―grandparents’ voice.

What’s the voice about?

Grandparents’ voice seems to be hearing without an end, which is so familiar to Elizabeth Bishop and therefore is one essential part of her childhood. They are talking about “names” and “things”-- people they know and things have happened to them. Subjects are he and she. They marry, remarry, give birth to a child. Deaths and sickness, being a major theme of the conversation, is something nobody could escape from, which is only well known to time. Later on he “took to drink” and she “went to bad…” even he has been put into confinement. We hear a “Yes” uttered with “a sharp indrawn breath”. Only when one fully understands this “Yes”―“half groan, half acceptance”, can he aware of the depth of the pain of human sufferings.

At this moment readers might feel heavyhearted with these remote while eternal voices whispering the truth of life in the night air.

Elizabeth Bishop is a master of swift, unexpected transitions, and this poem moves too as surprisingly from the sea to farm and woods, from late afternoon sunshine to fog and moonlight, from passengers to animals and the moose, from amusement to wonder, from quiet pathos to joy.

All at once an unexpected scene takes place: a moose steps out of the dark wood: She, so huge and plain as if coming from the other world, stands in the middle of the road then approaches and sniffs at the bus’s hot hood and the looks the bus over taking her time―no hurry in her steps and actions, so elegantly. She is just so curious what she has seen. Some passengers exclaim in whispers, the quiet bus driver is rolling his eyes and shifting gears. We can hear voices of man, woman, and child…“Perfectly harmless…”“Sure are big creatures.”“It’s awful plain.”“Look, it’s a she!” “Curious creatures,”“Look at that,would you?”The poet just feels shocked by the appearance of the moose and impressed by what the

moose has done and then at this moment as an calm observer she cannot help asking herself why people feel sweet sensation of joy? The appearance of the moose soon brightens the atmosphere and puts an end to all that melancholy silence, where does this joy come from?

In this poem Bishop uses a number of the images of animals to convey some message to the readers. “A collie supervises” as if he were watching and making sure everything goes well. The fog’s “cold, round crystals form and slide and settle in the white hen’s feathers.” “Bumblebees creep inside the foxgloves and evening commences” reminds us of an image of a person who feels tired after a day’s hard work goes to bed at night. “A dog gives one bark”, here the dog is just serving as the solemn guardian in rubber boots. “The dog tucked in her shawl” like a lady.All these images of animals, together with the host of the family―the bay intentionally dwarf the human being in the face of the nature.

People are living in a world of quick steps, doing everything in a rush… The “brisk” woman in this poem functions as a typical representative of the human beings in modern society. At the end of the poem we see the moose under the moonlight and “there is a dim smell of moose, an acrid smell of gasoline”. The word “acrid” reveals a lot here, which might be a strong objection to the industrialized society. Finally we may perceive the poet’s considerable respect for the nature as a deep lover and calm observer of it.

Elizabeth Bishop’s poems are known for their dream-like swift transitions and extremely wild imagination. As an acute observer, she’s paid great attention to the details of the subject precisely―be it an animal or a natural scenery or just an episode of everyday life. She searches in depth the human feelings and reveals its complexity as multi-dimensional as possible. She goes to the past and takes some instant as a starting point of her psychological journey. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poems we can easily track down the poet’s childhood memories, which seems unfading in her mind. “The Moose” is an ode of the wonder of nature intermingled with a touch of her childhood memory―grandparents’ voices, telling of the truth of life.

References:

[1]Ellmann, Richard, and O’clair, Robert, ed. “The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry”. New York: Norton, 1973.