The Maritime Micro-Gestures in Elizabeth Bishop’s Brazil Poems and Translations

Authors

  • Magdalena Edwards

Abstract

The North American poet Elizabeth Bishop published poems about Brazil as well as translations of the work of some of her Brazilian contemporaries, including Clarice Lispector and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. This essay examines a selection of Bishop’s Brazil poems and translations that perform maritime micro-gestures—that is, subtle movements of the sea and connected bodies of water—in order to consider the insights and dangers contained therein. I discuss these gestures in the spirit of the new media theorist Vilém Flusser and argue that Bishop’s poems can teach us to better examine our own ways of looking at the world and ourselves and to recognize that things are often not quite what they seem.

Downloads

Published

2021-06-29

Issue

Section

Essays