I've spent many satisfying moments gazing on the dust jacket of the recently published collection of Elizabeth Bishop's letters with its reproduction of one of her watercolors, wildflowers in a bucket arranged with artful artlessness. This grand book sits on my desk along with what I fondly call my Bishop things--mementos from a recent trip to Nova Scotia, and the books with their lovely covers reproducing other Bishop paintings. This scene reminds me of Bishop's poem "12 0'Clock News" in which she describes her desk and its accessories--typewriter, piles of manuscripts, inkwell, and ashtray--as if they were artifacts and people of a foreign landscape or country. Bishop brings the eye of an ethnographer even to her own desk-sized culture. Like her friend and mentor Marianne Moore, she often seems entranced by tangible things, endowing them which large expressive powers. While both poets are noted for their descriptive acuity and precision, and, both, interestingly, did drawing!

s as studies for poems, their delight in objects was much more than aesthetic relish; each also had an ethnographic impulse to examine objects as repositor

It is this ethnographic impulse in Bishop's work that I intend to explore, beginning with the poem "Questions of Travel" and using two objects that Bishop singles out for rumination: some wooden clogs and a finely-whittled birdcage. This poem begins somewhat disconsolately, with talk of a country which is for the non-native resident a "too muchness"--too many clouds, too many waterfalls. The speaker wonders briefly if she should go home, but then immediately becomes charmed by less daunting newnesses. What a pity, she thinks,

on what connection can exist for centuries

a grease-stained filling-station floor.

It is this contemplation of mundane objects and local color that helps the speaker not feel overwhelmed by the seeming extravagance of Brazilian nature. The speaker brings to these objects an ethnographer's interest. The bird cages, for instance, are more than pretty things; they are a faint text in which centuries of history can be studied. In fact, all of the mentioned objects interest the speaker for what they may reveal about the culture. Bishop senses that the objects are embricated each one in the other as well as in the scene. If they have a meaning, it could only arise in situ.

Other aspects of the description suggest an ethnography with hints of postmodernity. The speaker silently registers her awareness of the pastiche quality of colonial and post-colonial culture. A "bamboo church of Jesuit baroque" is certainly a weird and improbable hybrid of cultures. And the broken gasoline pump--what do we make of this? Is it a sign of imperial exploitation? Or is it an altar? With the native bird as preacher? The syntax seems to suggests that gasoline pumps (especially the broken ones?) are a now naturalized feature of the landscape. In postmodern spirit, the speaker seems absolutely unalarmed by all this cultural bricolage.

the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.

le ones--for what we haven't seen, what we don't know. There is no epistemic wholeness in any culture--this is, I think Bishop's atti

Some common words found in the essay are:
Questions Travel, Questions Mastery, Marianne Moore, Nova Scotia, Elizabeth Bishop's, Bonnie Costello, Ethnographer I've, pity , Logan Utah, fat brown bird, church jesuit baroque, church jesuit, questions travel, jesuit baroque, material culture, objects bishop, bamboo church jesuit, speaker poem, cultural meanings, ethnographic impulse, bird cages,
Approximate Word count = 1366
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)