Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) was born in Massachusetts but raised in Nova Scotia by her maternal grandmother. While she originally attended Vassar College with the intention of studying music to become a composer, she was reportedly terrified of performing and subsequently switched her major to English.

Bishop is frequently described as a “poet’s poet.” Her work is characterized by technical mastery and a “tight” structural integrity, utilizing precise, almost scientific language in her descriptions.

There are four primary elements that generally characterize Bishop’s poetry:

• A Painter’s Eye: In addition to her writing, Bishop was an accomplished painter. This visual sensibility is evident in the vivid, highly detailed descriptive elements of her verse.
• The Intersection of the Ordinary and the Strange: She often begins a poem within a domestic or commonplace setting, gradually allowing a sense of the surreal or the uncanny to settle in.
• Emotional Reticence and Restraint: Unlike “confessional” contemporaries such as Sylvia Plath, Bishop rarely “spills” her emotions directly. Instead, she practices restraint, allowing objects and landscapes to carry the emotional weight of the poem.
• Themes of Loss, Belonging, and Travel: Her body of work frequently explores the tension between the displacement of travel and the search for a sense of home.

Here is her poem ‘Little Exercise.”

Enjoy!

LITTLE EXERCISE
 by Elizabeth Bishop


Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep in,
listen to it growling.

Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys
lying out there unresponsive to the lightning
in dark, coarse-fibred families,

where occasionally a heron may undo his head,
shake up his feathers, make an uncertain comment
when the surrounding water shines.

Think of the boulevard and the little palm trees
all stuck in rows, suddenly revealed
as fistfuls of limp fish-skeletons.

It is raining there. The boulevard
and its broken sidewalks with weeds in every crack
are relieved to be wet, the sea to be freshened.

Now the storm goes away again in a series
of small, badly lit battle-scenes,
each in "Another part of the field."

Think of someone sleeping in the bottom of a row-boat
tied to a mangrove root or the pile of a bridge;
think of him as uninjured, barely disturbed.

LISTENING WITH A PENCIL AND MY EAR

The poem “Little Exercise” exemplifies many of the hallmark characteristics of Bishop’s work. In it, we see a common storm evolve into something much more profound. A palpable tension builds throughout the poem, yet it is achieved entirely through her meticulous descriptions of mangrove keys and broken city sidewalks. Ultimately, a sense of loneliness pervades the entire piece.

As a final note, Bishop was profoundly influenced by Marianne Moore. This influence is particularly visible in the penultimate stanza with the use of the quoted phrase: “Another part of the field.” This reflects Moore’s own habit of incorporating external “found” text and precise, clinical observations into her poetry.