"I am 3/4ths Canadian, and one 4th New Englander - I had ancestors on both sides in the Revolutionary war." - Elizabeth Bishop
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Monday, October 7, 2019

From Pen to Hook: Part 17

This rather dramatic rug is a response to EB's poem "Trouvee" (apologies for no accent on the first e.). This odd little poem, dedicated to her friends Wheaton Galentine and Harold Leeds, is about a hen that was killed on West 4th Street in NYC. EB knew many hens during her childhood. Great Village would have been full of them. But the disjunct of seeing one killed on a busy city street clearly struck her. The poem is essentially a question about why things happen where and when they do, for which we often seldom have full or even partial answers. It is interesting to me that Lighthall has chosen not only the most famous or iconic poems to interpret, but also some of Bisbop's more obscure poems.


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