A Cold Spring

by Elizabeth Bishop

Como decía Elizabeth Bishop, su suave o armado hermetismo no extirpa la discurisivdad confesional, la voz órfica no excluye a la voz lógica, ni viceversa. Parafraseando a Octavio Paz, diríamos que leerla es un placer -verbal y mental- tanto como una experiencia espiritual...

Genres: Poetry, The United States Of America, American, 20th Century, Queer

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and writer from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956. and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century.

Reviews

[Will McGrath · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know enough about reading poetry to weigh in with an educated opinion. I can say that I found a number of the pieces in this collection captivating, and others less so. I'll be interested to see how "North & South" (her debut collection, from 1946) compares with her final collection, "Geography III", which won the 1977 National Book Critics Circle Award (and which I plan to read in a few weeks).

I did find reading Bishop before sitting down to my own projects to be a useful practice. Forces the brain to sloooow down and return to the word-by-word level. Her style - very deliberately non-confessional, unlike that of her friend and celebrated contemporary, Robert Lowell - works from a position of measured, observational remove. Very few humans make their way into the pages of this collection. Bishop is content to simply watch, and occasionally touch, the physical and natural world. Only then will she tilt her subject into an unexpected and illuminating new perspective.

[Chris - Quarter Press Editor · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a reason Bishop is a modern classic. Her writing is so obscure and precise and full of wonderful images that resonate and linger. To me, this is what I want from poetry.

Granted, yes, some of her rhyme schemes feel a bit dated--if not outright forced--so those can make for some awkward reads. Overall, though, I love Bishop's language and will most definitely be reading more of her work down the road.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second of Bishop’s four published collections, this mostly dwells on contrasts between city (e.g. “View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress,” “Varick Street” and “Letter to N.Y.”) and coastal locations (e.g. “The Bight,” “At the Fishhouses” and “Cape Breton”). The three most memorable poems for me were the title one, which opens the book; “The Prodigal,” a retelling of the Prodigal Son parable; and “Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore” (“From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning, please come flying,” with those last three words recurring at the end of each successive stanza; also note the sandpipers – one of her most famous poems was “Sandpiper,” from 1965’s Questions of Travel). I find that I love particular lines or images from Bishop’s poetry but not her overall style.

Favorite lines:

A cold spring:
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited
(from “A Cold Spring”)

We were wakened in the dark by
the somnambulist brook
nearing the sea,
still dreaming audibly.
(from “A Summer’s Dream”)

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lullaby.
Adult and child
sink to their rest.
At sea the big ship sinks and dies,
lead in its breast.

Lullaby.
Let nations rage,
let nations fall.
The shadow of the crib makes an enormous cage
upon the wall.

Lullaby.
Sleep on and on,
war’s over soon.
Drop the silly, harmless toy,
pick up the moon.

Lullaby.
If they should say
you have no sense,
don’t you mind them; it won’t make
much difference.

Lullaby.
Adult and child
sink to their rest.
At sea the big ship sinks and dies,
lead in its breast.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection wasn't my favorite, but I'm looking forward to others by this author.

[Yasemin]

Bishop’ı ve şiirlerini ilk defa 2016 senesinde Yasemin Çongar’ın K24’teki bir yazısında öğrendim.
Şiirini kendisini merak etmemin yanı sıra hatta daha çok Robert Lowell’la arasında yıllarca süren mektuplaşmalarla çoğaltıp tuttukları dostlukları ve biricik hikayeleri ilgimi çekmişti. Yazı da bu dostluğu ikiliyi karşılaştırarak ikisinin yaşamlarına değinerek merkezine koymuştu.

“Bishop, gündelik hayatını, Lota’yla ilişkisini, maceralarını, okuduklarını, yazmak istediklerini menderesli mektuplarda uzun uzun anlatmaktan bıkmıyor; Lowell’ın manik dönemlerine, depresif hâllerine satırlarıyla eşlik ediyor, onu mektuplarıyla sağaltmaya çalışıyor, kendi saklı yaralarını da onun mektuplarıyla iyileştirmeyi deniyor. Ama iş mısralara gelince öyle kontrollü ki, yılda bir iki şiir yayımlamakla yetiniyor sadece: “Yazmayarak daha çok şiir yazdığımı hissediyorum ben.” Lowell’ın bunu anlaması kolay değil. Şehvetle, iştahla yazıyor o. Birbirlerinin ilk okuru olmayı seviyorlar; “Yalnız senin için yazmam gerektiğini düşünüyorum” diyor Lowell ve Lowell’ın şiirlerini okuduğunda kendi ritmine, kendi veznine geri dönebilmesinin uzun zaman aldığını itiraf ediyor Bishop


“Yaprağa tırmanırken gördün mü bir tırtılı,
en kenara tutunuşunu, havada dönüşünü,
etrafı yoklamasını bir şeye erişmek için? Hâlâ
havaya asıyor musun kelimelerini, on yıldır
bitirilmemiş, panona yapıştırılmış hâlde, eksikleri
veya hayâli imkânsız o cümlecik için bırakılmış boşluklarıyla –
Sen hiç şaşmayan esin perisi, rastgeleyi mükemmel kılan sen?”
Robert Lowell, Bishop için yazmış bu şiirini. Onun yazmasını yüreklendirmek için.

Bishop da dostuna şiirle veda etmiş:
...
“Doğmaya henüz hazır olmadığına inandığı nice şiiri içinde bekleten Bishop, 1978’de ‘’North Haven’’ adlı şiiriyle veda ediyor arkadaşına.

… Ve şimdi – temelli
gittin. Artık bozup yeniden yazamazsın
şiirlerini. (Oysa Serçeler şarkılarını değiştirebilirler.)
Kelimeler değişmez artık. Mahzun dostum, sen değişemezsin. “


Soğuk Bahar’da da tekrar eden sorusu (neden hayallerimizi gerçekleştirmek zorunda hissettiğimiz, hayal gücümüzdeki bir eksiklik mi bizi evimizden çıkartıyor ) Bishop’a belki de yazmayarak daha çok şiir yazdığını hissettiren? Evinde, kendi imgeleriyle baş başa kalmak sanki daha doyumluymuş Bishop için. Şaşırmak ne çok tekrar ediyor sanki şaşkınlığı azalmış da onun peşine düşmüş gibi.


“Öğrenilmesi güç bir şey değildir kaybetme sanatı;
Görünürde o kadar çok şey niyetlidir ki kaybedilmeye
hiç de felaket sayılmaz onların kaybolmaları.
Her gün bir şey kaybedin. Kabul edin anahtarları
Kaybetmenib telaşını, boşuna harcanan saati.
Öğrenilmesi güç bir şey değildir kaybetme sanatı
....
İki şehir kaybettim iki güzel şehir. Topraklarım vardı uçsuz bucaksız iki nehrim varlığım koca bir kıtaydı
Arıyorum hepsini. Ama bir felaket sayılmaz kaybolmaları
Seni bile(o şakacı sesini sevdiğim bir davranışını)
Yadsıyacak değilim. İşte apaçık ortada,
Öğrenilmesi çok güç bir şey değilmiş kaybetme sanatı
her ne kadar(Yaz işte!) bir felaketi andırsa da yaşanması.”

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much liked the poem entitled "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance."
Bishop open with:
"Thus should have been our travels,
serious, engravable,
The Seven Wonders of the World are tired
and a touch familiar..."
She continues with various places she has visited and not visited, and towards the end of the poem comes her conclusion: we can't see and do everything in this world. Her suggestion?
"Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges
of the pages and pollinates the fingertips"
The rest of the poems in this book are good, but the aforementioned rises above them all.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Precise observations. Concrete settings (eg. chilly northern coasts, tropical southern mangroves). Top tips: Paris, Fish.

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 4 out of 5]

1976 Neustadt International Literature Prize
Two bundles of poetry in one volume, written about ten years apart. I had never heard about this author, but believe she deserves to be known to a broader audience.
North & South was her first published poetry, with a clear naturalistic eye for detail. It sometimes seems a travelogue , because traveling is what Elizabeth Bishop did most of her life. There is a bit too strong tendency to stay within the expected patterns of poetry and make things rhyme here.
A Cold Spring is much more mature, with deeper meaning and better poems. As a standalone bundle it would easily get five stars from me.

[Clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

a number of misses in this collection for me (it's her first, they can't all be winners) but wow. the good ones are just so so good.

favorites:
the man-moth
love lies sleeping
roosters
seascape
the fish

[Stephanie M. Wytovich]

Poems I especially loved: "The Colder the Air," "The Man-Moth," "A Miracle for Breakfast," "The Weed," "Sleeping on the Ceiling," "A Cold Spring," "Insomnia," "The Shampoo" and "The Mountain."

[Bjørg]

I especially liked:
- The Weed
- The Gentleman of Shalott
- The Fish

[Paul Schmitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Map," "The Imaginary Iceberg," "Large Bad Picture," "From the Country to the City," "The Man-Moth," "The Weed," "The Monument," "The Fish"

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice set of poems. A number of them deal with geographic features: maps, weeds, an iceberg, a seascape. Some discuss places such as Paris and Florida. I do not have a wide knowledge of poetry, but while Ginsberg is often in-your-face with graphic sex, and Merrill goes deep into, for example, emotional pain, Elizabeth Bishop (in this collection) feels simply light and rather pleasant. This is comfort poetry for bedtime reading. I liked this collection, hence my three star rating, and will read more of this author's poetry.

[Anet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Personal favorites: The Weed, Sleeping on the Ceiling ("we must go under the wallpaper / to meet the insect-gladiator"), Roosters ("the many wives / who lead hens' lives / of being courted and despised"), Little Exercise (storm as "badly lit battle-scenes") The Fish (all of it).

[Gazi Tuğrul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oldukça canlı insanın gözünün önüne gelen imgeler kullanmış Elizabeth Bishop. Çeviriden mi kaynaklandığını bilmiyorum ancak dili hakkında aynı canlılık ve akıcılık beklentisi içindeydim. bulamadım ya ya da yakalayamadım.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite poem in this collection is "The Man-Moth," which combines Bishop's characteristic exactness of perception with a floridly imaginative surrealism that is rather unusual for her.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love her work. I love form and well-done rhyme. She's insightful, playful and witty. Wordsmith - page and ink as metal and fire.

[actuallymynamesssantiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bellísimo. Pero Bishop es belleza estética. Me cansé de ponerle corazoncitos.
Es, de los libros que leí en toda mi vida —I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited— la anglosajona más difícil de traducir que conozco. Es tan estética que directamente es intraducible. Cuando la leí por primera vez me pareció súper X, como que hablaba de la calle y el muelle y observaciones muy random, y eso que ella es súper fría, pero la leés jugar con el sonido de dos palabras en inglés y te da un orgasmo. Se mata trabajando. Tiene un valor por la palabra híper encantador y contagioso. Para tenerla muy muy cerca. "The Man-Moth" es uno de mis poemas favoritos ever, de toda la vida, es demasiado largo para pegarlo, pero dejo estas líneas:
'But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt'.
"The Weed" y "The Fish" también me encantan, pero también son muy largos.

"Chemin de fer"

Alone on the railroad track
I walked with pounding heart.
The ties were too close together
or maybe too far apart.

The scenery was impoverished:
scrub-pine and oak;
beyond its mingled gray-green foliage
I saw the little pond

where the dirty hermit lives,
lie like an old tear
holding onto its injuries
lucidly year after year.

The hermit shot off his shot-gun
and the tree by his cabin shook.
Over the pond went a ripple.
The pet hen went chook-chook.

'Love should be put into action!'
screamed the old hermit.
Across the pond an echo
tried and tried to confirm it.

Dios, me agarró alta migraña

quemarás la ruda prepararás la poción
y en noche de luna repetirás la oración:
linda luna que ahí con tu luz iluminas
el brebaje a ti te invoco
ayúdame a conseguir lo que he pedido

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

(This is a reread. And I read the edition that is included in the Library of America complete Bishop)

It's a bit embarrassing that it has taken me a lifetime to come to appreciate early Bishop (I loved "Geography III" from the get-go). Early in my reading life, I found her method -- the effort to build up a poem through intense description -- too tedious, too dependent on too many adjectives, finally, just too slow. And I was actually distracted by her formal accomplishments; spent time trying to figure out how she made that sestina or that double sonnet, or, yes, THAT villanelle. It means I didn't really appreciate the poems.

Now when I come back to the poems, I am able to read them with the slowness and attentiveness that they demand. They grow on me with each rereading. And now I can realize how extremely weird she often is. Perhaps I've read "The Man-moth" for the last 50 years as some kind of witty exercise in how far a poet can take a newspaper misprint. Now the poem gets spooky, feels almost cinematic. I mean, look at this:

But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. H emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

Spooky! And then there is "The Monument," "The Fish," the four poems about Paris -- all seem wonderfully strange to me now, not at all the forced metaphors they felt like 50 years ago. The language, although certainly heavier than that in most poems I love, is not off-putting, seems absolutely right for what she is trying.

[Salomeja Sandroschvili]

The eye drops, weighted, through the lines the burin made, the lines that move apart like ripples above sand, dispersing storms, God’s spreading fingerprint, and painfully, finally, that ignite in watery prismatic white-and-blue.


I saw what frightened me most of all: A holy grave, not looking particularly holy,

each riser distinguished from the next by an irregular nervous saw-tooth edge, alike, but certain as a stereoscopic view.

The thin mist follows the white mutations of its dream; an ancient chill is rippling the dark brooks.

into that world inverted where left is always night, where the shadows are really the body, where we stay awake all night, where the heavens are shallow as the sea is now deep, and you love me.

Her sinister kind face presents a cruel black
coincident conundrum.
Oh, is it
freedom at last, a lifelong dream of time and silence, dream of protection and rest? Or is it the very worst, the unimaginable nightmare that never before dared last
more than a second?

On certain floors certain wonders. Pale dirty light, some captured iceberg being prevented from melting. See the mechanical moons, sick, being made to wax and wane at somebody’s instigation. And I shall sell you sell you sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

please come flying.

The shooting stars in your black hair in bright formation are flocking where, so straight, so soon? — Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin, battered and shiny like the moon.

გენიალურია… ბიშოპის ეს ყველაფრისადმი ცხოვრებისეული განცდა ფსიქიკური გაუცხოების მდგომარეობაცაა ყველაფრისგან- ყველა ნივთისგან, ყველა მატერიალური ობიექტისგან და ისე გულახდილი, ცივი-თბილი დაკვირვებით ამხელს ამ სიცარიელეს (ამ გულახდილობის მიღმა დესპოტური კალკულაციაა) ძალიან სუფთა და არასასაცილოა, დარწმუნებული პოეტებისგან განსხვავებით.

[Maddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Favourites: casabianca, chemin de fer, large bad picture, the weed, the unbeliever, sleeping standing up, songs for a colored singer

Idk I guess I just didn’t really get this :( I really liked some of the more whimsical poems where Bishop managed to conjure up some very vivid images of flight and endless imagination, but the rest bored me to tears to be honest. Many were just bricks of text which didn’t strike me as any more poetic than a good novel. This collection is about the contrast between the city and the natural life and I found myself getting quite bored particularly during the mundane city poems. I just couldn’t bear to read about any more unremarkable small talk in Paris or three pages about a monument which looked like wooden boxes, it really sucked the soul out of me. Which was the point I suppose, but I think the same point could’ve been made much more succinctly without impacting the reading experience so much. By the time I got to “Seascape” I was so tired of the paragraphs which didn’t feel like poems that I just started skimming. Interestingly there’s a poem near the end about a girl named cootchie which was entertaining to find.

[Sanjuro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bishop's use of language is enticing enough to keep the interest. A few of the poems here are among her best known; for me, The Man-Moth is a favorite. I had an odd experience with this book, in that it was inaccessible and esoteric, and made use of so much imagery that I often felt cut off from the work. But, at the same time, I was engaged and intrigued enough that I couldn't give up on individual poems. Often, if poems are inaccessible, I abandon them, forget them, and turn the page. Here, I found myself bolting to critics and blogs looking for answers to help me make sense of the engaging language. Then, I felt validated in my pursuit. Well known poet Adrienne Rich, who was a friend of Bishop's, also admitted that she found this first collection often too out of reach for her, as though the language was repelling her. Bishop's later work is known to reach for greater clarity, so I'll move forward, anticipating what's ahead, while always appreciating the struggle provided for me by this book as an entry point to Bishop's work.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bishop is a poet who burrows into a place, an object, or a person, and describes her subject in detailed images so we see it and feel it as she does. She often employs an ironic humor and brings us to a moment of reckoning. I particularly liked "Monument," in which she investigates the reason for its existence on "an ancient promontory" with a reluctant companion or is it her own mind that asks, "A temple of crates in cramped and crated scenery, what can it prove?" She evokes its power as the scenery takes on the characteristics of the wood of the monument:"clouds...full of glistening splinters,"and a "queer sea [that] looks made of wood, / half shining like a driftwood sea." And I love "At the Fishhouses" in a more northerly locale that evokes the life of fishing on the "cold dark deep and absolutely clear" sea. It was the kind of environment that she first knew growing up, and this poem reflect her deep kinship with it.

[Michelle’s Vintage Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how absolutely anti-confessional Bishop was. While her contemporaries were spilling their soap-opera lives and emotions all over the page, she was determined to write about fish, and moose, and maps, and man-moths. That’s what I love about her.

Some find her rhyming immature. I find it delightful. She used form and detail expertly.

There’s also a whimsy to some of her writing that can make otherwise dreadfully serious subjects take on a quirky vibe.

And a lot of her poems have a “twist” at the end that I love.

Only fours stars because not every poem in the collection was great. There were many excellent ones though.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love Elizabeth bishop and I thought it'd be fun to read her collections at my own pace. I have the collected poems and I just finished reading and reviewing all of North and South, her first published volume. it's so excellent; I love her work. fuck yeah!

[Sinclair von Sinclair · Rating 1 out of 5]

This collection is shocking for its almost total lack of musicality. Every poem here seems to trample on itself. The quality of the later collections is astonishing in comparison. The plodding and obvious turns-of-phrase that Bishop was never truly able to shake off are in abundance here.

[Descending Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bishop's first poetry collection is a masterpiece, one of the reason's she's so highly thought of in 20th century literature. Highlights ~ "The Map" "The Colder the Air" "The Man Moth" "Love Lies Sleeping" "The Weed" "The Monument" "Florida" "The Fish" and "Songs for a Colored Singer".

[Duffy Pratt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great imagery and interesting poems. I especially liked The Fish and The Roosters. Bishop sometimes plays with form with varying success. Overall I liked these, but there's nothing here that will stick with me for that long, I don't think.

[j · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnificent. The succinct 'Casabianca' has totally captured me -- so that I keep returning to it over and over. 'Sleeping Standing Up' is remarkable. 'Roosters' is a real bravado "let me show you something" performance of a poem. I love the touching, vertical 'The Fish'.