ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Bishop is constantly aware of turning her back on political or propagandist gestures, not just in her correspondence with friends but also in her published poems and stories. Of course travel is not just an experience Bishop writes about; it is also a motto for how she thought poetry should be written. For her, there were really only 'two kinds of poetry, that at rest, and that which is in action, within itself'. A close reading of the surrealist poem, 'Cirque d'Hiver', shows the extent to which the dialectic between feeling and thought is always in place, however abstract the material. Bishop frequently begins poems as the sun is rising. In 'Love Lies Sleeping', one recalls her urging the dawn to clear away what presses on the brain: put out the neon shapes that float and swell and glare down the gray avenue between the eyes in pinks and yellows, letters and twitching signs.
