Elizabeth Bishop Flashcards
‘The Fish’
personifying the fish
‘I caught a tremendous fish and held him’
‘The Fish’
simile about medals
‘like medals with their ribbons’
‘The Fish’
metaphor about victory
‘victory filled up’
‘The Fish’
triple describing fish
‘grim, wet and weapon-like’
‘The Fish’
simile+repetition about fish
‘like ancient wallpaper […] was like wallpaper’
‘The Prodigal’
ashamed+fearing consequences
‘(he hid the pints behind a two-by-four)’
‘The Prodigal’
personification of odor
‘The brown enormous odor he lived by’
‘The Prodigal’
paradox about dung
‘glass-smooth dung’
‘The Prodigal’
metaphor about stopping his addiction
‘But it took him a long time finally to make his mind up to go home’
‘Filling Station’
tone from start
‘Oh, but it is dirty’
‘Filling Station’
sibilance that shows this is a family filling station
‘several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him’
‘Filling Station’
tone changes, contrast, appearance v.s reality, dirty yet comfy
‘a dirty dog, quite comfy’
‘Filling Station’
oil emphasized + anaphora
‘oil-soaked, oil-permeated, to a disturbing, over-all black translucency’
‘In the Waiting Room’
simile linking unfamiliar thing to something familiar, comparing the necks of the women to light bulbs
‘like the necks of light bulbs’
‘In the Waiting Room’
alliteration+metaphor about being overwhelmed
‘It was sliding beneath a big, black wave, another, and another.’
‘In the Waiting Room’
childish language
‘the waiting room was full of grown-up people’
‘In the Waiting Room’
moment of epiphany
‘What took me by surprise was that it was me’
‘The Bight’
conflict, pelicans crashing into gas
‘pelicans crash into this particular gas unnecessarily hard’
‘The Bight’
simile, describing pelicans
‘like pickaxes, rarely coming up with anything to show for it’
‘The Bight’
conflict, sharks being killed for restaurants
‘the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry’
