The Elizabeth Bishop Blog

First Encounters

1.

Strange appearances,
full of serendipity
and charm. Newfoundland.

2.

Awful but cheerful,
looking for something something
something. Then: the House.

3.

Meetings, non-meetings
almost Akhmatovian
-- I mean my ego.

4.

Ten years I lived here --
nobody had mentioned her
to me. Intriguing.

5.

Newfoundland Journal.
Many generous people
invited us in.

6.

I stand here, iron.
What you ask moves tormented
through my mind. Then. Now.

7.

A green-covered book,
tiny, well-packed, straightforward,
unostentatious.

8.

-- Blueberry patches.
Like a child in Wonderland,
I came here to write. ---

9.

Once a failed poet,
now failed collector of them,
I love how words sound.

10.

As perfect a work
as any I have looked at,
a treasure within.

11.

Now forever gone,
it hung on a bedroom wall
in the Poet's House.

12.

As a choir member, --
"Song for a Rainy Season"
-- I could feel the damp.

13.

Chateau Frontenac,
an old and ornate hotel,
knows our language well.

14.

Completely gob-smacked
I have no recollection
no link letter left.

15.

Under the window
new and abiding desire,
age-old saudade.

17.

Less than meaningful
Dead White Protestant Males rule
and -- unknowing -- reign.

18.

Vanadous, uranic,
bluebell tunicates blossom,
vain, but not raucous.

19.

Where mint grows by brooks,
the Bay of Fundy's sheer tides
crumbling ribs of marl.

20.

On the syllabus --
"Post-Modern American
Poetry" -- her name.

21.

Who was this poet
becoming canonical
in America?

22.

Find her reticence
grounded in Nova Scotia:
in burnt hawkweed.

23.

I contributed
one poem to Canticle.
Being drawn closer.

24.

Bike rides, afternoon
naps, silence, asparagus --
like so many things.

25.

Printed distinctly
in black ink on the blank page --
the first one -- her name.

26.

In my final year,
and then the summer after,
the sound of her mind.

27.

Down shore is haunted.
"It's a racial memory --
something genetic."

28.

Fear or loneliness --
detached otherworldliness
-- this separate life.

29.

Enthusiastic,
spoiled, quick to judge, insecure,
I grew my hair out.

30.

Behind tall locked doors,.
wondering what it could mean,
The Manuscript Room.
.
31.

Sable Island trip.
Maud's painting of Great Village.
A challenge. A spark.

32.

Living the so-called
simple life, in an old home
amidst old patterns.

33.

On a dim column
the image of a cock carved:
porphyry and bronze.

34.

Lo que no sabe
una niña huérfana,
saben las olas.

35.

A delicious chat,
wafting around my psyche,
tossed on Fundy tides.

36.

Crossing hemispheres
as I have done to travel
perfectly at home.

37.

Something more subtle?
Lupins, say, -- all pencil-thin,
prophetic, silent.

38.

There's my confession,
but I've made up for it since:
wet red mud glazed blue.

39.

Reaching for the Moon.
Deceptive simplicity
drawing the drawing.

40.

Ask each sophomore
to memorize one poem.
The meadows unfold.

41.

Enter the unknown
fascinated by the doors'
handles and latches.

42.

"Reaching for the Moon"
(in German "Die Poetin") --
always out of place.

9 January 2018