Two Arts – EBSNS Virtual Exhibit 2020 – Part 8

“The Moose”

[FRAMED PRINT SOLD]
[ALL UNFRAMED PRINTS SOLD]

One of Bishop’s masterpieces, “The Moose,” took over two decades to complete. It began in 1946 on a bus ride back to Boston from Nova Scotia and was finished for and read at a commencement ceremony at Harvard University in the spring of 1972. This poem is an essential nexus between the ideas of “home” and “travel,” revealing how Bishop could say to Alexandra Johnson in the 1970s that a poet carries home inside. It spans vast space-time with a profound intimacy, a deep sense of history and community, a mature and expansive aesthetic – and the “sweet sensation of joy” of an encounter with an ineffable creature.