302
PARTISAN REVIEW
which is averse to overwhelming phenomena by the exercise of sub–
jectivity, content to remain an assisting presence rather than an
overbearing pressure. So it is no wonder that the title of Bishop's last
book was that of an old school textbook,
Geography III.
It is as if she
were insisting on an affinity between her poetry and textbook prose,
which establishes reliable, unassertive relations with the world by
steady attention to detail, by equable classification and level-toned
enumeration. The epigraph of the book suggests that the poet wishes
to identify with these well-tried, primary methods of connecting
words and things:
What
is
geography?
A description of the earth's surface.
What is the earth?
The planet or body on which we live.
What is the shape of the earth?
Round , like a ball.
Of what is the earth's surface composed?
Land and water.
A poetry faithful to such catechetical procedures would indeed
seem to deny itself access to vision or epiphany; and "At the
Fishhouses" does begin with fastidious notations which log the prog–
ress of the physical world, qegree by degree, into the world of the
poet's own lucid but unemphatic awareness:
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown ,
and his shuttle worn and polished .
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on .
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
