SEAMUS HEANEY
suffer, and this is what heroes do spontaneously, artists do con–
sciously, and
all
men do in their degree.
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Every poet does indeed proceed upon some such conviction,
even those who are most scrupulous in their avoidance of the grand
manner, who respect the democracy of language and display by the
pitch of their voice or the commonness of their subjects a readiness to
put themselves on the side of those who are skeptical of poetry's right
to any special status. The fact is that poetry is its own reality and no
matter how much a poet may concede to the corrective pressures of
social, moral, political and historical reality, the ultimate fidelity
must be to the demands and promise of the artistic event.
It is for this readon that I want to discuss "At the Fishhouses" by
Elizabeth Bishop. Here we see this most reticent and mannerly of
poets being compelled by the undeniable impetus of her art to break
with her usual inclination to conciliate the social audience. This con–
ciliatory impulse was not based on subservience but on a respect for
other people's shyness in the face of too much personal intensity: she
usually limited herself to a note that would not have disturbed the
discreet undersong of conversation between strangers breakfasting
at a seaside hotel. Without addressing a question as immense and
unavoidable as whether silence rather than poetry is not the proper
response in a world after Auschwitz, she implicitly condones the
doubts about art's prerogatives which such a question raises.
Elizabeth Bishop, in other words, was temperamentally in–
clined to believe in the government of the tongue - in the self–
denying sense. She was personally reticent, opposed to and in–
capable of self-aggrandizement, the very embodiment of good
manners. Manners, of course, imply obligations to others and
obligations on the part of others to ourselves. They insist on propri–
ety, in the good large original sense of the word, meaning that which
is intrinsic and characteristic and belongs naturally to the person or
the thing. They also imply a certain strictness and allow the verbs
"ought" and "should" to come into play. In short, as an attribute of
the poetic enterprise, manners place limits on the whole scope and
pitch of the enterprise itself. They would govern the tongue.
But Elizabeth Bishop not only practiced good manners in her
poetry. She also submitted herself to the discipline of observation.
Observation was her habit, as much in the monastic, Hopkinsian
sense as in its commoner meaning of a customarily repeated action.
Indeed , observation is itself a manifestation of obedience, an activity
