ABSTRACT
The moth can serve as an allusion to, and perhaps be an unconscious symbol of, the mother. The moth's easy destructibility can invoke a sadistic response and there can be identification with the moth as destroyer. There are hints in Bishop's story that the mad and vulnerable mother might well have evoked connections with moths and butterflies by way of her clothing in the child Elizabeth Bishop. Several friends comment on Elizabeth's interest in clothes as an adult; for example: "She loved beautifully made things. Elizabeth had the sense of draftsmanship in clothes that she did in wanting her books to be beautiful". Bishop's last poem was Sonnet, published by The New Yorker a few weeks after her death in 1979, although the magazine had kept it for more than a year before that, perhaps because it was felt to be too confessional. Sonnet seems to have been the apogee of Bishop's public acknowledgment of being, sexually, "a creature divided".
