Elizabeth Bishop's voices

Abstract

Though often considered a poet of solitude and loneliness, Elizabeth Bishop was deeply interested in the voices of other people, places and things - particularly those that are difficult to interpret, or which do not seem to express anything in particular. This thesis argues that these voices represented for Bishop a form of expression that might create unexpected moments of sympathy, or convey ambivalent emotional states, without actually revealing concrete details about the speaker, a quality which Bishop incorporated into her impersonal, evasive poetic voice.

While visual perception is undoubtedly important to Bishop’s work, the act of listening ought to be recognised as equally crucial to her aesthetic. Listening, in Bishop’s writing, is often associated with uncertain states of consciousness, and that uncertainty was essential to achieve the ‘self-forgetfulness’ and loss of ego that Bishop described as part of her ideal for poetry. That link between sound and self- forgetfulness is also present in Bishop’s approach to translation, which involved a kind of negative capability, wherein Bishop was guided, in a state of ‘enchantment’, by the sound of the original language, while allowing her poetic voice to bleed through. Sound is also important to Bishop’s readings of her work, which evince a subtle, quietly hypnotic musicality, despite her dislike of performing her work; Bishop’s ‘performance’, moreover, with its interruptions and self-corrections, continues the play of evasion and intimacy that characterises her poetry. This thesis considers these three strands of Bishop’s work - her original poems, her translations, and her readings - in relation to her notion of the ‘voice’, how it conveys meaning, and what that meaning might be.

Date of Award	12 May 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Stephen H Cheeke (Supervisor) & Michael Malay (Supervisor)