Wednesday, November 02, 2022

"Like what we imagine knowledge to be": My understanding of knowledge and Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses"

I wonder about my agreement with the concluding turn to knowledge and history in Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses": "It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: / dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, / drawn from the cold hard mouth / of the world, derived from the rocky breasts / forever, flowing and drawn, and since / our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown." Perhaps I have a confirmation bias here because I like the understanding of "cold hard" knowledge in this poem I first read at 19. But in fact, these ideas fit mine because mine actually come from thinking about this poem for almost forty years now. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 2 November 2022)


No comments: