“Bishop’s carefully judged use of language aids the reader to uncover the intensity of feeling in her poetry.” To what extent do you agree or disagree with the above statement?
Bishop's use of language helps the readers to have a better understanding of her emotions and feelings in her poetry. Bishop's poetry is mainly based on her past, for example we have Sestina which is when Bishop's mother passed away and she had to stay with her grandmother and everything was emotional at that time. We also have "First Death in Nova Scotia" which is Bishop's first encounter with death. Bishop would had been young at that time but she remembered her cousin death in a way it was linked with her mother's passing. Bishop has used descriptive detail in each of the poems to guide the readers in fully understanding the feelings of her poetry. In my answer I will examine Bishop's use of language and how it helps the reader in uncovering the intensity of feelings in her poetry.
Elizabeth Bishop has used her past memories, personal experience and her observations of nature to include in her poems.
Filling station
In Filling Station, the speaker appears to just arrived at a filling station and at first they notice the filling station as "oily and dirty" aswell as the men who worked in the filling station. A father is said to have "several" sons working with him in the station and are "greasy and "quite thorouhly dirty".
The speaker notice a "dirty dog, quite comfy" here at the filling station could mean despite the dirt, the speaker finds it a pleasent scene. In this family enviroment, complete with a dog, there are no mention of a women in this masculine setting. From looking around the speaker sees "comics books provide the only colour of certain colour". This detail highlights how difficult it is to know what colour anything here