American Literature

LOWELL S SKUNK HOUR AND BISHOP S THE ARMADILLOElizabeth Bishop s The Armadillo and Robert Lowell s Skunk Hour are commit to one an another(prenominal) not simply issue of familiarity , but because each poet imitates each other s style and alludes to the other s key personal traits . While Bishop comments on her friend Lowell s mania against humanity s cruelty , Lowell writes of Bishop s isolation and inner darkness , even also a resilience to persevereWritten frontmost , The Armadillo describes a festivity in which fire surges are illegally set aloft , only to fall and burn animals homes The poem moves from describing something apparently handsome , as the balloons flush and fill with light / that comes and goes , like wagon to a suddenly violent scene of the burst balloon burning an owls nest , frightening the birds from their home . As it ruin , an armadillo and baby rabbit flee the scene . Scholar genus Penelope Laurens writes : Bishop dedicated this poem to Robert Lowell , who became a conscientious objector when the assort command began fire-bombing German cities . Bishop s poem points directly to these fire bombings , which wreaked the said(prenominal) kind of horrifying destruction on a luck of our universe that the fire balloons wreak on the animals ( On `The Armadillo . The evidently beautiful balloons become something horrible - falling fire and keen cry - and the armadillo take cares to symbolize Lowell , the weak mailed fist seize against the war s crueltyHowever , it is less about his anti-war stance than about Bishop s taste perception for Lowell s ability to write beautifully even about ugly harsh subjects . According to scholar Bonnie Costello , The Armadillo has been read as a critique of his way of making art out of suffering . [but here] she dramatizes this aesthetic distance and the inevitable return to the passionateness of the suffering body ( On `The Armadillo .

Indeed , Bishop moves from a marooned of the balloons on strictly aesthetic terms and makes their effects dramatic and personal , with a sort of quiet anger at the cruelty of their effectsIn response , Lowell playfully alludes to her as the hermit inheritrix with a bishop for a son (indeed , Bishop was childless and reclusive and the sprite decorator seems a nod to Bishop s homosexuality , but these figures case far less than the skunk at the end . As Bishop acknowledged Lowell s gesture against warfare , Lowell pays tribute to Bishop s view of the human around her - not as quaint and antiquated , as the first stanzas suggest , but also as a decaying place , but also one where life continues thelessLowell himself claimed , The first four stanzas are meant to give a dawdling much or less amiable picture of a declining Maine ocean town . [but then] all comes alive in stanzas V and VI . This is the dark night . not gracious , but lay , puritan , and agnostical ( On `Skunk Hour . The skunks seem a symbol of humanity , carrying on despite the unsung malaise , much like the armadillo symbolizes Lowell s gesture against cruelty...If you want to arse around a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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