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At the Fishhouse

作者Author / Elizabeth Bishop 依莉莎白‧碧沙普

Study Questions

1. There are three stanzas in "The Map." The first and third stanzas are octaves following the rhyme scheme of abbacddc . The second stanza, obviously, is in free verse. What are differences between the second stanza and the other two stanzas? Does the speaker change his/her tone from the first stanza to the second and from the second to the third? What does the change of tone imply?

2. Besides the possible change of tone from stanza to stanza, images in "The Map" seem to be always changing. How do the images change in this poem? What may the changing images suggest?

3. The speaker asks questions. Why does he/she doubt? What does he/she doubt? What does his/her doubtful tone suggest? Are the questions answerable?

4. As the first poem in Bishop's first poem collection, North & South, "The Map" plays a crucial role in Bishop's poetry career. How do the title and the motion of mapping echo with Bishop's life experiences? If the speaker is the "map-maker," do he/ she feel satisfied when he/she make the map? If we connect the speaker to Bishop, what are the possible reasons making she feel uncertain?

Discussion

1. The second stanza of "The Map" is special. If the first and the third stanza are like the longitude and latitude that a "map-maker" should follow, the second stanza will be like an area where the "map-maker" can describe landscapes with his/her vivid imagination more freely.

In the second stanza, the speaker shows the possible change for he/she and we readers to have interactions with the landscapes. Both in the first and the third stanza, the speaker seems to describe the interactions between the land and the sea far above from the bird's eye view. The speaker seems to be nearer to the land and the sea. Also, with his/her imagination, he/she decides the " Labrador 's yellow," the "moony Eskimo," "glass"-like sea, and even the "names of seashore towns" and "cities" (Bishop 3).

Moreover, there indeed are some physical contacts between the "we," readers and the speaker, and the landscapes. In the second stanza, "we can stroke these lovely bays" and feel "as if they were expected to blossom." With the speaker's imaginative descriptions, readers have chance to join to see, to feel, and even to interpret the landscapes for the first time in this poem (Bishop 3).

The speaker's tone in the first and third stanza is doubtful. His/ her tone in the second stanza is more certain and even playful. The speaker's change of tone from doubtful to certain and back to doubtful. This change of tone suggests that the speaker, as a "map-maker," is facing a struggle between reality and imagination. This struggle, as the matter of fact, exists in every interpretations of the nature, every process of map-making.

2. Images in the first stanza move in the similar rhythm with the tides. The speaker first sees the "land" "in water" and the "shadowed green," which is in fact the color of the "sea-weeded ledges" under the water. At the middle of this stanza, the speaker turns to the "land" again. The "land" is active, but not too possessive. The land is like a woman's finger "lift[ing]," "drawing," and "tugging" "from under." The motion of "lift[ing]" and "tugging" at the same time suggests the rhythm of tides, the up and down of the tides. The instability of the tides also echoes with the questions that the speaker asks softly. There is no certain answer (Bishop 3).

The first stanza is the speaker's observation of the motion of "land" and sea. In the second stanza, the speaker interprets further the images she observes. The "we" in the third line possibly suggest artists, including poets, "painter[s]," or even "topography," "map-makers." The speaker shows how natural views and artists' creativity interact with each other. The natural views, which are active in the first stanza, become passive and seem to be under the domination of the speaker's imagination. With imagination and creativity, artists "can stroke these lovely bays" (Bishop 3).

The land and the sea turn back to active again in the third stanza. They become the subjects of sentences again. Moreover, the speaker draws back to see the landscapes from the bird's eye view. Actively, the landscapes are "in agitation" and even possible "pick their colors." The last two sentences points out the differences between "historians" and "map-maker." "Map-maker" does not only record or name the landscapes like "historians." They add imagination and at the same time respect the nature. (Bishop 3).

3. The speaker seems to be doubt he/her interpretations of the landscapes. What she knows and interprets could not be what the world real is. The doubtful tone in the first and third stanza suggests that the speaker is not over-dominative. He/she notices the possible changes and the gulf between he/her knowledge and the nature. In Inscrutable House, Anne Colwell discusses this "problematic relationship between what we know or believe and what we sense, between maps and real geography, between what looks true and what it true; it is the problem that haunts human attempts at perception" (Colwell 33). The connection between the speaker's knowledge to the view in front of him/her is failed.

4. If the speaker is a "map-maker," he/ she is not satisfies with the map. From his/her doubtful tone, the possible disappointment is foreseen. Like her speaker, Bishop, like a "map-maker," has many experiences of mapping. She does mapping to find not only geographical locations, but also physical and mental positions. Bishop's attempts to find herself a fixed position are associated with her orphanhood and her later life in Brazil .

Lorrie Goldensohn, in his Elizabeth Bishop: The Biography of a Poetry, mentions the crucial status of "The Map" in Bishop's poetry career: "In this first book of poem ( North & South ) Bishop tests spatial metaphor as a means of recognizing both inner and outer dimensions, as through them she finds her way to both poetic and personal identity" (Goldenshon 101). In "The Map," Bishop shows her talent to observe nature and to describe what she sees with imagination. Moreover, the doubtful tone and changeful images in "The Map" suggests the sense of displacement, which is the specialty of Bishop's poetry.