Nick Ripatrazone explores seasonal lines by poets Elizabeth Bishop, WB Yeats, James Merrill and Denise Levertov.
In one of her most famous poems, “At the Fishhouses”(1947), Elizabeth Bishop wrote: “Bluish, associating with their shadows, / a million Christmas trees stand / waiting for Christmas.” The lines begin with a melancholy, almost mysterious image, followed by Bishop’s curious repetition – almost a syntactic recognition that in order for the tree to serve its seasonal purpose, it must die. The lines arise from a contemplative poem, whose narrator concludes that “knowledge” is “dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, / drawn from the cold hard mouth / of the world”.
