As I grow into the person
I envision becoming,
I feel the tugging of multiple identities--
each a snapshot of loves, dreams, and concepts past.
Interestingly,
I find myself, nowadays,
wondering how my past has shaped me,
and more importantly,
how I cannot wait to shape my future.
Yet sometimes,
Do I see the past,
The future too?
One seems to speak the truth,
Does the other as well?
Could there be
Less conflict,
People less indifferent?
Analysis:
Bishop's "In the Waiting Room" participates in the confessionalist tradition, a style that places emphasis on introspection and self-consciousness. By doubting her own sense of identity, Bishop treats herself as strange and unfamiliar, and is able to analyze herself from a third-person perspective. She performs this analysis by infusing her poem with a feeling of vertigo and falling. These were the themes I wanted to make sure the content of my poem had.
Specifically, my inspiration came from the lines “Without thinking at all / I was my foolish aunt, / I—we—were falling, falling” (48-50). At this point, for the young Elizabeth, it was clear her sense of self was beginning to collapse. I wanted to show this collapse, this feeling of “falling,” partly in the content, but also in my poem’s form. In my poem, the collapse of the self occurs gradually, throughout the poem. In the first stanza, I used regular and ordinary prose. The form is relatively straightforward without any abstract or complicated forms. The second stanza is similar and uses relatively straightforward prose. I also begin to explore the fundamental question of which factors or things constitute and shape me. Is it my “past,” or is the decisions which I will make in the future? I wanted to represent the identity-conflict questions which Bishop had, but in my own way and as it pertains to my own inner conflicts: “Why should I be my aunt, / or me, or anyone? / What similarities / boots, hands, the family voice / I felt in my throat, or even / the National Geographic / and those awful hanging breasts / held us all together / or made us all just one?” (75-83).
In the third stanza, these questions—as well as the reality that I have to eventually confront these questions—become more apparent. This is indicated by the transition from indirect question (“I find myself, . . . / wondering”) to direct questions. This also serves to convey the extent of the inner conflict—something that I hadn’t thought about while only reading Bishop’s poem. To further convey the extent, and just how serious these questions are, I made two decisions: one that changes style, and another that changes form.
As for the style change, I began to move away from a relatively straightforward prose, and made my language more cryptic and ambiguous. The intentional ambiguity emphasizes the degree of confusion created by the inner turmoil. For instance, in “One seems to speak the truth, / Does the other as well?,” it is unclear whether “one” refers to the past or to the present. This was something I attempted to mimic in Bishop’s poem: for example, she writes “Suddenly, from inside, / came an oh! of pain” (36-37)—it is unclear whether “from inside” means from inside the doctor’s office where Aunt Consuelo is, or from inside Elizabeth herself. (We later find out that the voice emerges from inside Elizabeth, but in my poem, I choose not to make such a reveal, in order to maintain the state of confusion and ambiguity).
As for the other change, I started to change the form of the stanzas. The last four stanzas have a varied and erratic structure, some stanzas having just one short line, and others being composed of multiple longer lines (compare the third-to-last and second-to-last stanzas, for example).
I wanted this descent into disorderly, irregular, and ambiguous stanzas to reflect the sense of vertigo and “falling” that the young Elizabeth felt. To make this feeling of vertigo seem very direct and “right-in-your-face,” I didn’t want to use the zoom-in and zoom-out technique that characterizes Bishop’s poem: Bishop starts the poem broadly, starting from the outside world (“In Worcester, Massachusetts . . .,” then gradually focusing more and more on Elizabeth’s internal conflicts, and then moving back outwards into the outer world “Then I was back in it / The War was on. Outside” (94-95).
One new insight I gained into the poem and Elizabeth’s internal conflict was the seriousness of Elizabeth’s “internal conflict.” No matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite understand what it meant to “fall” or to have that sense of vertigo which Elizabeth felt. By attempting to put that feeling into words and into a poem, I understood just how easily one’s entire worldview can begin to crumble after experiencing an internal conflict like the one Elizabeth faced. And when that happens, it seems like there are no answers at all to your questions, just more and more questions—this unending state of confusion might have been the feeling that Elizabeth had, something I didn’t quite comprehend until I made this poem.
Since this poem was my attempt to place myself in Elizabeth’s shoes, one aspect about Elizabeth’s internal turmoil that was lost was the role played by the context and the setting. In 1918, the tension of the world war was likely a crucial factor in the sense of disillusionment and vertigo that Elizabeth felt. In my poem, context plays no role—from the reader’s perspective, the conflict emerges solely within myself and is not induced by any external events. However, this does raise the question of how much influence context and environment plays in one’s inner turmoil—and whether it is possible for one’s internal conflict to be separated from the external conflicts that one sees and hears about.