17 pages • 34 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopInsomnia
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Moon
The moon, a celestial object traditionally ascribed feminine qualities in myth or literature, acts as the object of desire for the speaker. The speaker admires the moon’s light, which through reflection creates an entirely new world. This moon is also the ultimate insomniac. “She” is thus an inspiration for the speaker’s own insomnia, which the speaker seems to embrace as a sort of portal to a new world instead of fighting as an illness.
The speaker also ascribes human features to the moon, showing it as independent and strong. The moon does what the speaker cannot: She fights through adversity and adapts to loss. The moon can move past her losses, as she takes loss and care and throws them away without a second thought.
The speaker presents an almost erotic description of the moon. She sees “her” voyeuristically through a reflection in a mirror; the moon passes over the night sky naked and illuminated. The moon also creates new worlds through the strength of her own image, leading insomniacs who look up at her longingly to think about their deepest desires. Bishop intentionally makes the moon feminine early in the poem, using the pronoun “herself” (Line 3). Considering Bishop’s lesbian identity, the eroticism here makes sense.
Water
Water appears in three ways throughout the poem. In the first instance, Bishop writes, “she’d find a body of water / […] on which to dwell” (Lines 9-10). Here, the water acts as something for the moon to cast its light on—and to be reflected by. Considering the moon’s various roles in this poem, this image is potentially erotic as the water acts as another body with which the moon can achieve a cosmic, erotic unity through reflection on the water’s mirroring surface. This body of water is thus another lover the moon may have in her infinite power and beauty.
The second use of water comes later in the second stanza when the speaker says, “So wrap up care in a cobweb / and drop it down a well” (Lines 11-12) Here, the water is implied and unseen. The bottom of a well usually contains water, and in this image, Bishop is actually using the well water to signify the origin of a new world that the moon creates. Again, this is a feminine image, as it connotes primordial waters found in many myths about the origin of the world (the “created matter” usually being ascribed a feminine cosmic role). In this image, the primordial waters at the bottom of the well merge with the moon’s cares to create a new fantasy world of inversion.
The final use of water comes in the last stanza when the speaker says, “where the heavens are shallow as the sea / is now deep” (Lines 17-18). Here, Bishop inverts celestial waters and earthly waters, showing the power of this inverted world. In many flood myths, the celestial waters come down to Earth to cleanse it and rebirth it. This idea is echoed here as this paradoxical image precedes the final line of the poem where Bishop’s real preoccupation (her unrequited love) comes to light; in other words, after all of the cleansing of the normal world, there is a rebirth where the poet’s greatest desire comes true.
Mirrors
Bishop scatters mirrors throughout the poem. In a sense, the entire poem can be viewed through a mirror, as everything in the poem is flipped. While there are a number of ways a reader could interpret the mirrors, this symbol does seem to relate to Bishop’s sexual orientation, as the mirrors reflect her inner consciousness—her true self. She cannot express her true self outwardly in a world that rejects her sexuality, so the mirrors allow for a parallel world where she can be herself. In this sense, the mirrors present a fake world (almost a dream world) that is actually more real than the real world.
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By Elizabeth Bishop
