Crusoe in England by Elizabeth Bishop

Crusoe In England by Elizabeth Bishop:

Reading Reflection

Dear Friend,

        The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘perspective,’ as “senses relating to light, vision and visualization.” Perspective is an individual’s understanding of something. Therein exists a gap between the senses relating to light and one’s individual understanding of something. Yet, together the two suggest the eye is the lens through which individual understanding is learned and experienced.  

My friend, this poem bears infinite meaning, each possibility shaped by the individual reading, looking at its words through eyes. Of course what do we believe when the poem is read aloud to one who understands meaning through their ears – a sense not relating to light, vision and visualization? Regardless, before journeying into content, consider the poem’s shape: twelve stanzas, each of differing length resembling no pattern, one of which is a single line.

This poem is about time and one man’s reflection of a specific time in his life. Perhaps Bishop intended each stanza to represent one month of one year. As the narrative progresses, the speaker shifts from the present to the past, something reality disallows and something poetry allows. Bishop sets the tone of the poem’s alternating place in time in her first two lines: “A new volcano has erupted,” (seemingly the present) “the papers say…” (now speaking in the true present, about the past). The author establishes time is capable of manipulation through literature.

As a tale of adventure and solitude, Robinson Crusoe begs the reader to contemplate what he or she would do in the circumstances at hand. Similarly, Bishop’s text provokes the reader to contemplate their hypothetical reflection post-island-life. Milton’s Paradise Lost considers similar fates of man. Much like Crusoe, Adam faces many emotions as a man alone in a new world. And I struggle to place myself in either of those worlds. Bishop writes, “The sun set in the sea; the same odd sun rose from the sea, and there was one of it and one of me.” Crusoe’s bareness is so dry it grips the readers’ sense of isolation. Ultimately, our narrator’s and Adam’s loneliness is unimaginable.