Elizabeth Bishop: The Restraints of Language

Doreski's book examines Elizabeth VBishop's rhetorical strategies as they shape the formal and thematic movements of her poetry and stories. It deals with her poetic not as a visual or geographical one, but as a series of linguistic stratgegies designed to create the maximum illusion of representation whilst resisting the romantic devices of self-revelation and solipsistic narration. Her poetry emphasizes control over language, voice and personality, yet becomes autobiographical in a more profound way than has usually been assumed. Unlike other recent studies of Bishop, this concerns itself less with her visual imagery than with her poetic, which is Emersonian and Worsworthian, yet critiques the romantic use of transcendence and epiphany. Bishop takes advantage of the inadequacies of language, and with a post-modern sense of limitation explores silences and bridges them with the mundane - thus leaving an air of emotional intimacy without committing itself to the banality of full exposure. Finding the poems and stories mutually illuminating, this study moves back and forth among Bishop's works, but acknowledges the intelligent ordering of the volumes Bishop published in her lifetime.