‘Vertical’ imagery throughout the poem

Bishop is really into this idea of creating dramatic motion in her poetry. A lot of the time her panic striking direction of movement is vertical – things like upward surges and downward plunges, sometimes a surge followed by a plunge. She tends to link these vertical images to the elements of fire and water. This definitely comes across in this poem. We could say that Bishop creates a motif with her use of vertical imagery throughout the poem. Firstly, a motif is something that the author includes that repeats throughout a text. For something to become a motif it really needs to repeat at least three times.

In ‘In the Waiting Room’ Bishop makes use of a lot of vertical images. What this means is that a lot of her images can be grouped together by the way they have something to do with vertical movement.

Let’s look at two examples:

1) “then it was spilling over in rivulets of fire.”Here we have Bishop creating an image of a volcano erupting. We can talk about this image in relation to the idea of vertical movement because Bishop is giving us the image of an eruption, which involves vertical movement – in this case a violent upward surge.

2) “It was sliding beneath a big black wave, another, and another.”Again an image of vertical movement is created for us here. This time we get the image of waves crashing down over and over again. This time the movement is downward; however, the movement is still vertical and so the motif is further extended.

So, that is how we can identify some of the vertical imagery going on. We have to go beyond this though and start thinking about what the purpose of this motif might be.

In ‘In the Waiting Room’, the use of vertical imagery is a really good way for the poet to express the experience of going through an epiphany moment. What Bishop does really well is represent both sides of the process. Through her eruption imagery we get a great representation of what it feels like to have this sudden realisation – the mind itself seems to erupt and knowledge and understanding seem to explode out. And then, there is this process of falling or plunging that Bishop provides us with. This time it is this feeling of sinking or becoming overwhelmed underneath the weight of the realisation, knowledge and understanding. We get this sense of drowning or endlessly falling which helps us to feel and fully comprehend the power, confusion and pain of that realisation.

Questions:1) What is a motif?2) What would you say the image of the erupting volcano represents?3) What would you say the image of the crashing waves represents?4) Find one more ‘vertical’ image in the poem and explain what you think it is representing and

why. You need to quote your example here and explain in detail what you think it means and why you think it means that.

5) How successful is Bishop’s use of imagery? Do you think it achieves what she wants it to achieve?