Examining Themes in "Filling Station" by Elizabeth
Examining Themes in "Filling Station" by Elizabeth Bishop
Often in life one gravitates towards what one knows, has lived, and has experienced. This is what is comfortable to the general public and most do not try to venture away from the flock. This is the opposite in Elizabeth Bishop’s case. Growing up in a family filled with issues, twists, and turns her life was anything but normal. Bishop uses poetry to create order, beauty, and stability to an otherwise bland world; this can be seen by analyzing her poems. Sometimes it would take Bishop a few years to write a poem, because she would focus on the small things one might overlook and make an effort to bring out the natural beauty of an object. (www.etsu.edu)
This is amazing to me because Bishop did not have much to be happy about at an early age. Her Father died before her first birthday in 1911, and her mother was mentally ill. (www.etsu.edu)Later as she became a poet one might think her poems would be dark, and possibly full of hate and death. The opposite is true, and despite all she has been through she often finds beauty in everyday objects “Some comic books provide the only note of color-certain color” where another might fail to look. (21-23) Bishop’s poems touch some aspect of childhood, even though hers was unhappy, and full of pain. It is through her poems that Bishop creates order and a sense of belonging and splendor.
Bishops poem is characterizes her ability to describe and add attractiveness to things someone else might dismiss as daily script. A gas station such as the one described in the poem “oil-soaked, oil-permeated” is not really a place you would expect anyone to even attempt to find a glimmer of aesthetics. She not only finds examples of this “lie upon the doily embroidered in daisy stitch with maruerites”. (24-31) Her use of detail and precision analysis allows her reflect on the filling station’s pied luster. Bishops word choice even stirs up a bit of mysticism when she says “the oil-permeated to a disturbing over-all black translucency”. (3-5)
Bishop has a very distinct poetic voice, and seems to retell the world through a woman’s eyes. (www.english.uiuc.edu) “Father wears a dirty oil-soaked...