April 7, 2020
In the world around us, connection, serendipity, heroic journeys and poetry exist. Through collective unconsciousness, everything interconnects. We are all on journeys of self-discovery.
I like that life and events intertwine and interconnect. For instance, I used to pull out a poem called “The Filling Station” by Elizabeth Bishop and teach it while we were in the The Grapes of Wrath chapter at the filling station with the one-eyed man. Since it’s National Poetry Month, I’ll include the two Bishop poems I’m mentioning here.
Filling Station Elizabeth Bishop – 1911-1979
Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.
Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO—SO—SO—SO
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.
Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. “Filling Station” from The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel.
In The Grapes of Wrath nobody loves the one-eyed man. The two writers probably didn’t know each other or discuss literature, poetry or themes. But they intertwine and connect.
Amazingly, Bishop also wrote a poem called “The Fish” that matched yet contrasted nicely with the fish in The Old Man and the Sea.
The Fish Elizabeth Bishop – 1911-1979
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
Copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Bishop. Reprinted from Poems with the permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
In The Old Man and the Sea, the old man does not let the fish go, though “it is more noble and more able.” Again, by the great plan in the universe, these two pieces intertwine and connect.
I digress. Sort of. Not really.
Back to my point.
Tom and I are watching the Starz series Outlander. First, we binged through it to catch up with the Sunday evening, Season 5 schedule. Now, we’re watching Season 5 and we’ve gone back to watch it over again from the beginning. I’m simultaneously reading the first Outlander book.
I was looking on Amazon for a book of poetry when I spotted a book titled The Symbolism and Sources of Outlander by Valerie Estelle Frankel. Loving the hero journey (and teaching it with everything I taught) from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, I thought, I must buy this Frankel book. (It’s probably a literature teacher thing.) After all, everything is connected.
It also intrigues me that the main character, Claire Fraser, is an intelligent, educated woman of medicine on a journey of self-discovery that she neither asked for nor desired. She is pulled back in time 200 years, where, as circumstance would have it, she is forced to marry a Scottish highlander named Jamie. He is strong willed and wants his wife to obey him. Yet, he loves her and encourages her to do her work as a healer. He is her protector, even though she says, “I am not the meek and obedient type.” So often, the genre of historical romance has women who are more buxom than brainy. Not so with Claire Fraser. She is a strong woman, with no apologies. I love that. She reminds me of heroines in other novels that I’ve taught.
All of this is SO fascinating! If nothing else, it makes me appreciate the writing (and research) skills of the Outlander series author, Diana Gabaldon. Frankel basically enlightens her reader with every symbolic detail in the Outlander books and their connection to myth, history, lore and magic, which Gabaldon had to research, write and get right. If you go to Gabaldon’s web site www.dianagabaldon.com you will see that she is an educated, well-traveled woman herself. She has three degrees: Marine Biology, Zoology, and a PhD in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology. She has many gifts.
I have enough here to keep me busy until I die! (Presuming that’s not soon). My, I’ve rattled on. I can picture my former students shaking their heads and saying, “I hated it when she did that.” Or, “yup, she was crazy.” So be it. I wear that scarlet letter proudly.
You may recognize a young Colin Ferrel!
