Oh, but it is dirty! --this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match!
This stanza is boxed in by exclamation points, and a prissy, superior voice is being established for the speaker. (More on this use of sentences as exclamatory/declarative/interrogative forms will follow later).
"Be careful with that match" doesn't mean necessarily "don't strike it." The imagination of the speaker (and hopefully of the reader) is going to flare. There's also a match between the surface "black translucency," and what lies beneath is volatile in the best sense--the art. (Remember scratchboards, where underneath the black crayon cover, a wild rainbow of hues waits to be exposed?)
The use of oil, oil over-all makes a triangle in repetition/slant rhyme. Moreover (sorry), over-all is a pun on the monkey suit that's going to follow in the next stanza; the phrase over-all is going to relate also to the panoramic, cursory down-the-aristocratic nose glimpse of the overall scene that the speaker begins to describe imaginatively.
Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it's a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty.
(Again we have another bookended stanza. There's another pun, as well:
and several quick and saucy/and greasy sons assist him
Details: Note the wordplay between saucy and greasy; sauce and grease as cooking/domestic terms as well as inferences about cleansiness the speaker draws that seem to her pejorative. At least she is looking more closely and imagining something!)
Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy.
The imagination, once piqued, begins to question, to qualify, to look more closely, and to spark: Aha! Here's a locale perhaps not dissimilar to the speaker's own veranda--and the details are perhaps similar: wickerwork, wicker sofa, man's best friend.
Some comic books provide the only note of color-- of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia.
Wonderful wordplay--note how doily contains oily! The comic books are more than just the only note...of certain color. They're coffee table books--another link between the dirty and the aesthete, as this speaker's parlor may have magazines fanned out on her coffee table. They are also part of the set--not just the set of wicker furniture but also on the stage, the arranged backdrop on which Bishop begins to advance aesthetic claims as her speaker begins to look and look more closely. (I'd kill just once to write something as brilliant as big dim doily, big hirsute begonia--making the doily a moon, the begonia a boy).
Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.)
In an interrogative cataract, the speaker's questions begin to flow, and she is looking, looking, looking (as does Bishop's sandpiper in the poem of that same name). Like the comic books, which are more than artifice, the poem becomes more artifice-full. Look at the playfulness and sophistication of the music Bishop achieves in these lines: Not only the oily/doily but also the embroidered oi sound. Look at the brilliant eye rhymes--taboret looks as though it should rhyme with crochet, but it really doesn’t; although gray and crochet are not at all eye-alikes, they form an exact, paired rhyme (and also provide more monochrome). THe parenthetical adds definition to the scene; Bishop, as she is wont to do, is qualifying, qualifying, qualifying.
Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: ESSO--SO--SO--SO
"Somebody" embroiders, waters (or oils), somebody arranges--isn't this the job of the poet, who's also a visual artist? The Esso-so-so-so sound's mimicking the hydraulic lift but also using consonance to achieve a softer sound than the O that opens the poem....(also a brilliant pun with embroidered and sew/so). The stanza’s completed the poem’s the full circle from exclamatory to interrogative to declarative.
to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.
This end is so beautiful, and so earned: Somebody loves us all. The tone is still ironic, yet also totally sincere at the same time. It's an US now, not the person perhaps in the fine car looking down at the filling station crew.
In this poem Bishop has also created a very ekphrastic work, one that details various schools or movements in 20th-century America art. The poem starts with all this emphasis on oil (as in oil paintings). It moves through the grease-grime/Ashcan school of realism that's a very important trend in 20th-century American painting, addresses briefly the still-life movement popular in painters such as Wyeth as the porch scene is described, and then culminates in the pop culture movements of art detailed in comic-book artists (Lichtenstein) and finally in advertising images expressed not only by Lichtenstein, but also by Andy Warhol. One of the manifestos of Warhol's aesthetics is that lined-up repeated images of everyday objects constitute art. Those ESSO cans are pop culture in one of its highest arrangements--and we are also back to oil. In the inclusive world of Pop Art, oil paint and oil cans make art, and the poem reflects this by setting it in perhaps the last gallery we expect to see it, but it’s clearly there.
2 comments:
Filling Station
Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
This stanza is boxed in by exclamation points, and a prissy, superior voice is being established for the speaker. (More on this use of sentences as exclamatory/declarative/interrogative forms will follow later).
"Be careful with that match" doesn't mean necessarily "don't strike it." The imagination of the speaker (and hopefully of the reader) is going to flare. There's also a match between the surface "black translucency," and what lies beneath is volatile in the best sense--the art. (Remember scratchboards, where underneath the black crayon cover, a wild rainbow of hues waits to be exposed?)
The use of oil, oil over-all makes a triangle in repetition/slant rhyme. Moreover (sorry), over-all is a pun on the monkey suit that's going to follow in the next stanza; the phrase over-all is going to relate also to the panoramic, cursory down-the-aristocratic nose glimpse of the overall scene that the speaker begins to describe imaginatively.
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.
(Again we have another bookended stanza. There's another pun, as well:
and several quick and saucy/and greasy sons assist him
Details: Note the wordplay between saucy and greasy; sauce and grease as cooking/domestic terms as well as inferences about cleansiness the speaker draws that seem to her pejorative. At least she is looking more closely and imagining something!)
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.
The imagination, once piqued, begins to question, to qualify, to look more closely, and to spark: Aha! Here's a locale perhaps not dissimilar to the speaker's own veranda--and the details are perhaps similar: wickerwork, wicker sofa, man's best friend.
Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Wonderful wordplay--note how doily contains oily! The comic books are more than just the only note...of certain color. They're coffee table books--another link between the dirty and the aesthete, as this speaker's parlor may have magazines fanned out on her coffee table. They are also part of the set--not just the set of wicker furniture but also on the stage, the arranged backdrop on which Bishop begins to advance aesthetic claims as her speaker begins to look and look more closely. (I'd kill just once to write something as brilliant as big dim doily, big hirsute begonia--making the doily a moon, the begonia a boy).
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)
In an interrogative cataract, the speaker's questions begin to flow, and she is looking, looking, looking (as does Bishop's sandpiper in the poem of that same name). Like the comic books, which are more than artifice, the poem becomes more artifice-full. Look at the playfulness and sophistication of the music Bishop achieves in these lines: Not only the oily/doily but also the embroidered oi sound. Look at the brilliant eye rhymes--taboret looks as though it should rhyme with crochet, but it really doesn’t; although gray and crochet are not at all eye-alikes, they form an exact, paired rhyme (and also provide more monochrome). THe parenthetical adds definition to the scene; Bishop, as she is wont to do, is qualifying, qualifying, qualifying.
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO
"Somebody" embroiders, waters (or oils), somebody arranges--isn't this the job of the poet, who's also a visual artist? The Esso-so-so-so sound's mimicking the hydraulic lift but also using consonance to achieve a softer sound than the O that opens the poem....(also a brilliant pun with embroidered and sew/so). The stanza’s completed the poem’s the full circle from exclamatory to interrogative to declarative.
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.
This end is so beautiful, and so earned: Somebody loves us all. The tone is still ironic, yet also totally sincere at the same time. It's an US now, not the person perhaps in the fine car looking down at the filling station crew.
In this poem Bishop has also created a very ekphrastic work, one that details various schools or movements in 20th-century America art. The poem starts with all this emphasis on oil (as in oil paintings). It moves through the grease-grime/Ashcan school of realism that's a very important trend in 20th-century American painting, addresses briefly the still-life movement popular in painters such as Wyeth as the porch scene is described, and then culminates in the pop culture movements of art detailed in comic-book artists (Lichtenstein) and finally in advertising images expressed not only by Lichtenstein, but also by Andy Warhol. One of the manifestos of Warhol's aesthetics is that lined-up repeated images of everyday objects constitute art. Those ESSO cans are pop culture in one of its highest arrangements--and we are also back to oil. In the inclusive world of Pop Art, oil paint and oil cans make art, and the poem reflects this by setting it in perhaps the last gallery we expect to see it, but it’s clearly there.
Thanks so much for this!
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