Initially, Bishop considered the poems inside …show more content…
In fact, “Conversation” and “While Someone Telephones” are often brought up as afterthoughts; “Rain Towards Morning” is similarly exhibited, but does have more written on it (even if the quantity is far inferior to “O Breath”). Anderson reviews “Rain Towards Morning” rather than the other parts of the poem and compares it with Bishop’s tendency to use wires and electricity in poems especially in her sexual or love poems (Anderson, 108-109). Meg Schoerke in her essay in Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage brings up phrases in both “Rain Towards Morning” and “O Breath” which “suggest the tension between passion and reticence” that she then claims is only broken by Bishop’s poem “Sonnet” (Summers, 100). Lombardi offers the most in-depth analysis of “Four Poem,” yet still focuses mostly on “O Breath.” However, it is important to examine her discussion with the poem and its parts because of how thoroughly she delves into “O …show more content…
“Conversation” depicts a couple struggling to understand each other until they finally do “until a name and all tis connotation are the same” (PPL, 58). “Rain Towards Morning” is more about that freedom that love brings, both unexpected and welcomed. “While Someone Telephones” deals with someone who is either losing someone’s attention or has, at least, temporarily lost it and the pain that comes with that. Finally, “O Breath” is about that quite moment of night when someone watches their partner sleep and the love they feel for them. Bishop calls these poems fragments and they obviously are, but I believe that is what makes them work together. They are the snapshots of a relationship. They are the feeling one gets not by looking at a photograph, but by remembering their moments with a loved