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Elizabeth BishopArrival at Santos
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
Bishop wrote at a time of change in American poetry, yet she is known for her individuality and her independence from the literary movements of her day. A lesbian who lived openly with several lovers and a woman who traveled broadly on her own, Bishop defined herself as a feminist, yet she explicitly requested not to have her poetry included in feminist or women-only publications. She wanted her work to be judged on its own merit, not as feminist literature. Nor did she write openly about her sexuality in poetry, setting her apart from other confessional poets, male and female.
The phrase “confessional poetry” was coined in 1959, by literary critic M.L. Rosenthal in his review of Robert Lowell’s book Life Studies (1959). Lowell, along with other contemporaries of Elizabeth Bishop, including Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton adopted and pioneered this style of writing, which allowed poets to write about personal experiences that might be considered taboo. Their work told stories of sexual abuse, drug use, extra-marital affairs, and dissatisfaction with burdensome expectations of society.
Bishop maintained a long, well-documented friendship with Lowell, exchanging letters about poetry with him for thirty years. Raised as a “proper lady”, Bishop wrote to him that she did not like confessional poetry because it allowed people to write too explicitly about these topics. However, she admitted this movement may be “necessary” to allow people to talk about things that they had previously felt pressured to conceal.
Bishop’s work is defined by speakers who are emotionally taciturn, describing external scenes rather than revealing personal autobiographical information. Some of Bishop’s well-known poems make use of poetic forms, such as her poem “Sestina” (1956) and the villanelle “One Art” (1979). Though she is not strictly a “formalist” poet, sometimes employing free-verse, her poems make use of many formal conventions, sound-devices, internal rhyme, and detailed imagery. “Arrival at Santos” is a prime example of her style. The speaker focuses on the scene before them, told through practical and objective details and facts.
However, Bishop shows her personal feelings through the poem's details and her attitude towards them. She addresses herself as “tourist” (Line 7) and asks if this is the way she will greet her new country. She is self-critical to the point of self-mockery in how she records her experience going through customs. She had expectations that were “immodest” (Line 9) and implies she is already disenchanted with the experience, though she has barely begun her visit. Some may read this poem as less than perfectly autobiographical, considering how critical and self-mocking it is. In the later lines, the speaker generalizes about how “ports are necessities” (Line 32). These reflections seem to comment on the experience of travel in general and less on her own personal experience or psychology. The final line moves to a “we” when she writes “we are driving to the interior” (Line 40), suggesting collective experience, extending her own experience to travelers more broadly.
Recurring Themes in Bishop’s Poetry
Presumably “Arrival at Santos” is borne of Bishop’s literal experience arriving in Brazil. The poem is set in 1951, the year Bishop arrived in Santos, when she was intent on remaining a tourist. Later poems that Bishop wrote about Brazil take on greater intimacy with the country, yet the speakers always retain a distance, remaining a careful observer rather than an active participant.
“Arrival at Santos” opens Bishop’s book of poems Questions of Travel. The poem is emblematic of recurring themes in her work, which explore isolation, separation, and travel motifs. Bishop was a lifelong traveler, living in Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, Europe, Florida, and Brazil. She was content living with her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia early in life, but after being forcibly relocated to live with her paternal grandparents, Bishop claims she was treated no better than the family dog. Being a lesbian poet when lesbians could not legally marry may have contributed to Bishop’s sense of isolation. Though she rarely wrote autobiographically, these themes appear frequently in her poems.
Her poems “First Death in Nova Scotia” (1965) and “Sestina” give autobiographical context to Elizabeth Bishop’s isolation. They depict her early childhood experiences with her grandparents, who never allowed her to visit her mother in the sanatorium, and her first experience with death when her cousin passed.
Her poems that most directly make use of travel are “The Map” (1946) and “Questions of Travel” (1965) in which Bishop complains “there are too many waterfalls” (Line 1) in Brazil. Much like “Arrival at Santos”, the speaker implies they did not get the satisfaction they were seeking. Yet, Bishop also asks, essentially, “what else was I seeking?” Though Bishop does not overtly reveal autobiographical details, she exposes the feelings of her speaker as they subjectively respond to the objectivity of the world around them.
One of Bishop’s longest poems that directly addresses isolation is “Crusoe in England” (1980). Bishop wrote this poem in the persona of Robinson Crusoe, who was shipwrecked alone on an island, forced to create his own home and comfort from what the island gave. Crusoe only has one human companion, the native Friday who does not speak English. Crusoe treats Friday as a manservant who he must educate and convert to Christianity. In Bishop’s version, however, she notes that Crusoe and Friday were “friends” and that author Daniel Defoe got their relationship all wrong. Bishop’s version of Crusoe focuses on his experience deprived of human companionship. The following lines metaphorically express the depths of that overwhelming isolation.
Now I live here, another island,
that doesn’t seem like one, but who decides?
My blood was full of them; my brain
bred islands. But that archipelago
has petered out. I’m old.
I’m bored, too, drinking my real tea,
surrounded by uninteresting lumber (Lines 156 - 162).
Though Bishop writes in the persona of an imaginary literary character, it mirrors Bishop’s themes that seem more autobiographical. Like Crusoe, Bishop was an Anglophone, speaking and writing in English, who spent significant time in Brazil, a tropical environment where the population speaks Portuguese. Unlike Crusoe, Bishop was connected to a variety of important persons through the position of her lover, Lota. However, Bishop’s was an emotional isolation, rather than a literal one.
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By Elizabeth Bishop
