‘Vertical’ imagery throughout the poem

Bishop is really into this idea of creating dramatic motion in her poetry. A lot of the time her panic
striking direction of movement is vertical – things like upward surges and downward plunges,
sometimes a surge followed by a plunge. She tends to link these vertical images to the elements
of fire and water. This definitely comes across in this poem. We could say that Bishop creates a
motif with her use of vertical imagery throughout the poem. Firstly, a motif is something that the
author includes that repeats throughout a text. For something to become a motif it really needs to
repeat at least three times.

In ‘In the Waiting Room’ Bishop makes use of a lot of vertical images. What this means is that a lot
of her images can be grouped together by the way they have something to do with vertical
movement.

Let’s look at two examples:

1) “then it was spilling over

in rivulets of fire.”
Here we have Bishop creating an image of a volcano erupting. We can talk about this image in
relation to the idea of vertical movement because Bishop is giving us the image of an eruption,
which involves vertical movement – in this case a violent upward surge.

2) “It was sliding

beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.”
Again an image of vertical movement is created for us here. This time we get the image of waves
crashing down over and over again. This time the movement is downward; however, the
movement is still vertical and so the motif is further extended.

So, that is how we can identify some of the vertical imagery going on. We have to go beyond this
though and start thinking about what the purpose of this motif might be.

In ‘In the Waiting Room’, the use of vertical imagery is a really good way for the poet to express
the experience of going through an epiphany moment. What Bishop does really well is represent
both sides of the process. Through her eruption imagery we get a great representation of what it
feels like to have this sudden realisation – the mind itself seems to erupt and knowledge and
understanding seem to explode out. And then, there is this process of falling or plunging that
Bishop provides us with. This time it is this feeling of sinking or becoming overwhelmed
underneath the weight of the realisation, knowledge and understanding. We get this sense of
drowning or endlessly falling which helps us to feel and fully comprehend the power, confusion
and pain of that realisation.

Questions:
1) What is a motif?
2) What would you say the image of the erupting volcano represents?
3) What would you say the image of the crashing waves represents?
4) Find one more ‘vertical’ image in the poem and explain what you think it is representing and
why. You need to quote your example here and explain in detail what you think it means
and why you think it means that.
5) How successful is Bishop’s use of imagery? Do you think it achieves what she wants it to
achieve?