In the Waiting Room
by Elizabeth Bishop
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist’s appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist’s waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
—“Long Pig,” the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
—Aunt Consuelo’s voice—
not very loud or long.
I wasn’t at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn’t. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I—we—were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you’ll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
—I couldn’t look any higher—
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities—
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts—
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How—I didn’t know any
word for it—how “unlikely”...
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn’t?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
|
Discussion Questions
- At the most literal level of the poem, a young girl sits in the waiting room of a dentist’s office. But as a metaphor, she is waiting for other things. What might those things be, and how does Bishop bring them together in her poem?
- Bishop contrasts the cold Worcester winter with tropical images from pages of a National Geographic magazine. If you knew that she spent much of her adult life in Brazil, does knowing this either help you to understand the poem better or change your view of it?
- “I said to myself: three days / and you’ll be seven years old.” These two lines seem important to the speaker of the poem. Why do you think that is?
- The last two stanzas suggest a return movement from the imaginings of the tropics back to Worcester in February. What changes seem to have occurred in the mind of the speaker from the opening lines to these last two stanzas? How do these stanzas reflect such changes?
About Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979) is considered one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. A former Poet Laureate of the United States (1949 – 50), her numerous awards include a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Born in Worcester, Bishop's relationship with Massachusetts was simultaneously deep-rooted and far-flung. Tragedy marked Bishop's early life; her father's early death forced her and her mother to relocate to Nova Scotia, where Bishop’s mother was later committed. Elizabeth Bishop was then five years old. Despite this, she reported being happy in Nova Scotia. However, Bishop was not long thereafter called to live with her paternal grandparents in Worcester. Dreadfully unhappy, she suffered both physical and mental ailments. Bishop then moved to the Boston area to live with her mother's sister Maud Shepherdson where she began to regain her health and develop her poetry.
Years later she met poets Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, who both encouraged her in her craft. Bishop lived in Key West, New York City, and Mexico; she also spent years living in Brazil with her partner, Lota de Macedo Soares. The pair returned to the U.S., where Soares later took her own life. Despite her grief, Bishop returned to Massachusetts to teach at Harvard University, where she worked until shortly before her death. "In The Waiting Room" appears in her final collection of poetry, Geography III. Throughout her work, one can observe themes of geography, family, nature, intimacy, loneliness, and loss—all conveyed with precise wit, insightful surprise, and accessible humor. Elizabeth Bishop died in 1979 at Lewis Wharf, Boston. She's buried at Worcester's Hope Cemetery.
Further information:
|