Submarine Optics in Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop

Shortly before the release of the first underwater feature film, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916), a German submarine torpedoed several British ships. For the filmmaker, J.E. Williamson, the timing of the incident was fortuitous: “if the Kaiser had been our press agent he could not have timed his submarine exploit any better for our pictorial exposé and the success of the picture” (quoted in Starosielski 153). The First World War not only helped to promote underwater cinema; in the early decades of the twentieth century, new military technologies helped to bring the ocean depths into view even as they wrought major destruction upon them. Filmmakers such as Williamson sought to deny this material reality, constructing a vision of the submarine realm as a pristine environment that remained untouched by human activity. Yet the evidence is everywhere to be found—from footage depicting the slaughter of marine animals to scenes of naval divers trampling across coral reefs.

This chapter will argue that the writings of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop provide key insight into this optical sleight of hand, in which the impact of human activity on the undersea environment is made visible to audiences at the same time as they are directed not to see it. The first part of the chapter will examine Marianne Moore's First World War poem “The Fish” (1918) in light of her reading about, and critical reflections on, Williamson's “Submarine Movies.” It will examine how Moore's poem provides “repeated evidence” of the “marks of abuse” left on the ocean depths by human activity—the “dynamite grooves, burns, and / hatchet strokes” (Moore 2017, 39–40)—while directing responsibility away from human actors, whose palpable absence overshadows the poem.

The second part of the chapter will examine Elizabeth Bishop's 1946 poem “Little Exercise” in light of her experience working in a Naval Optical Shop at Key West during the Second World War. The poem borrows a series of optical instruments from the military through which to look out to sea, in turn calling into question whether such lenses serve to enhance or obscure the marine environment, as well as the human presence within it. Bishop employs a rhetorical device akin to paralipsis—which draws attention to that which it seeks to deny—in turn alerting the eye to what is being passed over. In doing so, her writing, like Moore’s, cultivates a form of ethical attention, encouraging readers to recognize the disparity between what is being made visible by these new optical technologies, and what they would like us to see.