Filling Station (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Elizabeth Bishop
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
The Poem
Elizabeth Bishop’s “Filling Station” leads the reader in six exacting stanzas through a series of observable details to a revelation that is simultaneously gratifying and enigmatic: “Somebody loves us all.” Set in the small world of an ESSO gas station, now Exxon, the poem poses the largest of theological questions, here recontextualized in the domestic terms of home and family, a preoccupation in much of Bishop’s work. The speaker’s initial exclamation “Oh, but it is dirty!” accurately describes the station as the details, particularly in stanzas one...
[The entire page is 1633 words long]
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