“The Shampoo” by Elizabeth Bishop
While attending the University of North Carolina Greensboro, I took Advanced Poetry and one of the things I has to do was annotate some poetry. Here is one of those poems. Enjoy.
The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you’ve been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
—Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
At first glance this seems to be a standard poem with no eye catching or special forms to it. There are three stanzas, each with six lines and a rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is that the first and third lines rhyme, then the second and fifth, followed by the fourth and sixth. It is unclear whether or not this is a form of poetry Bishop is practicing or this is something she came up with on her own but it is clear this rhyme scheme is not on accident.
What this rhyme scheme does for the poem is somewhat create two mini stanzas within one. Basically it is tying two supporting details together into one stanza so that they do not awkwardly stand alone in separate stanzas. This also helps the poem not to have too much rhyme scheme happening. If each of the mini stanzas were to stand alone, every stanza would read with the first and third lines all rhyming. Not with every other stanza but there would be so much, the reader may lose interest and find it all sing-songy because every other line rhymes.
For the most part, there doesn’t seem to be any set meter in the lines. However, the first line in each stanza has the same number of syllables and almost every other line within each stanza. This creates consistency in each stanza and thus makes the reading for each one the same, thus keeping the same flow throughout the poem.
