ABSTRACT
Drafts of 'The Moose' appear in the script of nearly all Bishop's various typewriters, suggesting that she worked on it from time to time for most of the 1950s and 60s. In December 1956, for instance, she wrote hopefully to her Aunt Grace, the eventual dedicatee of the poem, assuring her that she was about to finish a long poem about Nova Scotia. Bishop took so long to complete 'The Moose' because she could not work out its form. She knew how it would begin and end but she did not have the stanzas in the middle or perhaps more crucially, the metre and rhyme to keep everything in motion. Another distinctive feature of the poem is the time Bishop takes to board the bus. She seems to linger over the details of the Bay of Fundy, listing each building, house and tree, before she can say goodbye.
