Now, in the Time of Salpiglossis: A Study of Sound and Image in the Poetry of Stevens, Moore, and Bishop

In my thesis, I analyze the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop by emphasizing the gap between referential and sonic elements of language. While Stevens, Moore, and Bishop strive to attain precise meaning in their poetry, they also interrogate this possibility. Stevens believes that language has a metaphorical basis, so any attempt to articulate the literal essence of a thing is problematic. In “The Man on the Dump,” the speaker tries to pare down language to its essence but can only do so through metaphors. Moore presents a static scene in “The Steeple-Jack,” but, as she incorporates simultaneously differing perspectives and subjectivities, she obscures the scene’s fixity and shows the dynamism of language. Bishop ostensibly presents real childhood memories in “Manners” and “First Death in Nova Scotia,” but, as she does so, she figures her own life as literary. Each of these poets infuse their individuality into their poetry, but also sink into the generality of the lyric “I,” which must be both individually specific and communally general. Because of these contradictory elements of language, Stevens, Moore, and Bishop show how fixed, precise meaning is hardly possible