Elizabeth Bishop Voices and Visions Essay Example

This was such an intimate and important experience in the writers life, and her decision to share that and write about it in such a personal and honest way is something that makes her poetry even more extraordinary.

I can relate to this experience. In my own childhood, I remember being particularly excited about a Discovery Channel program about life in Africa that I had seen commercials for. I eagerly awaited its arrival, and when it began, I was shocked and frightened by the nudity, something that made me shy away from it and also changed how I thought about the world. Travel was an important part of Elizabethan life. I would believe that the same shock and awe she felt as a girl viewing the images in a National Geographic magazine contributed to her love and interest in traveling and living abroad.

Elizabeth traveled to Brazil, and ended up staying for quite a few years, living in affluent homes in ROI De Jeanine. She spent much time traveling the Amazon, and other undeveloped parts of the Brazilian jungle. She wrote about her experiences traveling, and what was unique about her travel writing was that she not only described the scenery, but she talked about many other parts of the travel experience that a reader would not expect to hear in a poem about travel.

She wrote about her perceptions of other people who were traveling alongside her, how she believed their own fife and experiences influenced how they felt and saw Brazil and the Amazon. Her insights are unique, sensitive and intuitive.

She also wrote about the poor in Brazil; beggars, tribes living in

dilapidated homes on the Amazon, and those of the lowest economic status. Those who knew her felt that she identified with the poor, and was sensitive and hurt by the brutality in which the poor are treated. She often wrote about home, and felt that without a sense of home, there is no travel.

This was an important dynamic of both her writing and her liking of travel. Elizabeth Bishop's friends described her as having the mind of an artist.

Would definitely agree, and feel that when reading her work, feel a profound sense of her creativity, individuality and her extreme sensitivity that is one of the aspects of her writing that makes it remarkable to me. The art movements of the sass's significantly impacted her feelings and her writing especially Surrealism. Can feel the impact of surrealism in her poems, the sort of hallucinatory visions and fantastic creative visions that invigorates her writing.

This is especially evident in her poem, The Man-Moth, written early in her life, just after graduating college, when Surrealism was in its heyday. This odd, eccentric poem is about a "man-moth" who flies about in an expansive city.

The idea for the subject, the "man-moth", came to her after hearing the word "mammoth" spoken. She ran with this infinitesimal inspiration and created a memorable and successful poem. I found this to attest to her artistic mind, creating an entire painting of words from one trifle Of an idea. I really enjoyed the film about Elizabeth Bishop.