Example research essay topic: Comparing Poetry Of Elizabeth Bishop And Robert Lowell - 1,087 words

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Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, both modern poets, have many similarities, not only in their writing, but emotionally as well. Bishop dedicates her poem, The Armadillo, to Lowell. Remarkably, Lowells poem, Skunk Hour, is dedicated to Bishop in the same manner. That is not the only similarity. Both Bishop and Lowell use symbols to convey the relationships between humans and nature. Personification is a most useful method to describe the animals as the animals in their poems are said to represent Bishop and Lowell.

They admire each others writing and writing techniques, and that makes them unique in the literary world. Poems are very delicate and personal works of literature. All poets go to great lengths to achieve the results they desire when writing a poem. A majority of poems are works of literature that are dedicated to someone or something in some way or another. Some might not physically express that a poem is dedicated to someone, but the characters or the plot in the poem could symbolize a person that only the receiver of the dedication would realize. Both Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell dedicated poems to each other.

Both poems use animals to represent symbols, or could possibly represent each other; however, no one knows the answer for sure except the poets themselves: Bishop and Lowell. From the meanings and symbols found in their poems, one could find the missing link to understanding how the poems are very much similar. Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell go together like hand and foot, or clown and circus. As the best of friends, Bishop and Lowells attractions to each others works does not rest there, but their attractions to each other play a major roll in their writing. Aside from their attractions to each other, Bishop and Lowell shared one common personality trait: Loneliness (Bowers). Both had been hurt when they were children in a traumatic manner, but they were able to put those feelings of despair aside and concentrate on their works.

Bishops attractiveness to Lowell rests in the fact that he was the leading poet of the day, someone to measure her own work against, even if she openly resisted confessional poetry (Bowers). As for Lowell, Bishop was a woman whose poetry was different enough from his own that he felt himself instructed by it (Bowers). Both Elizabeth Bishop and Lowell shared a feeling of internal loneliness throughout most of their lives. Bishop had been wounded deeply when she was young, and this traumatic event in her life manifested itself in the form of loneliness for years to come. The roots of her loneliness began when she was orphaned at age five. Her father died when she was eight months old, and her mother went mad from grief and [was] then institutionalized for the rest of her life (Bowers).

Lowell, too, spent much of his life suffering from loneliness. Bowers describes Lowells past with explicit detail and states that he moored in the bay of his illustrious family, at once embraced and effaced of his heritage, and rowed into the swells and deepest sounds of his oceanic ego. Bishop and Lowell identified with each other much like tourists in foreign countries. They were all alone except for the isolate company of the other (Bowers). Commonplace objects and occurrences had unusual symbolic meanings for Bishop, and many of her poems take the form of meditations on external objects and events.

Her precision on focusing on the external world gives her poetry strong emotions. Travel is a major theme throughout many of her poems, and her ability to create a sense of strangeness to everyday events puts her into a category of her own. Much of Lowells poetry is centered on the events of the time. His first volume of poems reflected the disturbing effects of World War II. In the 1950 s, his new poetry concerning personal problems and beliefs established him as a leader in the birth of confessional poetry. Later in the 1960 s, his poetry took a turn for the more political image of society.

Throughout his poetic life, Lowell had a passion to express in his poetry both objective and subjective views of the turmoil of the contemporary world (Encarta). Bishops poem, The Armadillo, is one of her most well known poems. What makes this poem so well known are the troubling disturbances that take place throughout the poem. During this time of celebration, the people view frail, illegal fire balloons (3) rising up into the night sky. These are possibly fireworks, but there is not a definite answer. The demonstration displayed is even considered an aspiration to godliness (The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop), and can be viewed as that in lines nine through ten: Once up against the sky its hard/ to tell them from the stars.

These images seem to create an awe-inspiring presentation to the locals. Although the humans are enjoying this sight, the animal kingdom becomes very much frightened. As the wind shifts, the ball of fire descends back to the earth and forces a family of owls resting in their nests to retreat and take to the air until they shrieked up out of sight (28). The owls are not the only fearful animals attempting to escape the raining fire. An armadillo, probably the most well-armored of all the animals in the forest, becomes frightened and decides to leave the scene/ rose-flecked, head down, tail down (31 - 32). The imagery Bishop creates allows the reader not to see a fireworks display, but rather the fireworks becoming bombs of war (The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop).

In Lowells Skunk Hour, animals are also used throughout the plot of his poem. After completing this poem, Lowell began to believe that real poetry does not come from inner feelings of happiness or despair, but rather insignificant images. In Skunk Hour, the first four stanzas are a description of a declining Maine sea town (Lowell 210). Throughout the poem, Lowell tries to give a tone of tolerance, humor, and randomness to the sand prospect (Lowell 210), and these tones can be seen in the line reading, weve lost our summer millionaire (14).

Lowell included a homosexual interior decorator to add more humor to his poem. The first twenty-four lines are very important not only in the text, but also reflect reality as Lowell gives us a masterful survey of what is wrong with society (Dickey 258). Lowells skillfulness leaves the reader with a mystery to figure out: Who is the some...

Research essay sample on Comparing Poetry Of Elizabeth Bishop And Robert Lowell