A Bridge Over the Volta River

"Sonnet" by Elizabeth Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. 

Elizabeth Bishop here writes a fairly straightforward rendition of the Petrarchan sonnet, only making a significant change to alter the rhyme scheme in the second half of the first stanza. "ABBAABBA" becomes "ABBAACCA." Otherwise, the structure of the Petrarchan sonnet (line count, rhyme scheme, placement of the volta) remain intact.

Certainly Bishop's subject in this poem lends itself well to this kind of formalism. She treats the subject of music with abstract, ageless concepts. The octave sets up the subject as it relates to the speaker - she is in need of healing, quite possibly of some sort of emotional trauma or anxiety. Bishop implicitly compares herself to "the tired dead," perhaps indicating that she is ready to die, or perhaps indicating a connection to the past.

Bishop then extends an image from the octave - "a song to fall like water on my head" - as a sort of bridge to cross the volta. After the volta, Bishop shifts to speaking of the magic inherent to music, which she compares to a trip underwater to the depths of the sea. One is impressed by the way the connection to the image in the octave - water falling onto one's head - compares with the direction of the imagery in the second stanza, which either continues to move downwards, or reverses origin in that it is now subterranean rather than coming apparently from above. The sestet concludes with a return to abstracts, "held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep," tying us back to the subject of the poem and the theme of exhaustion brought up in the first stanza. The sestet and octave are thus simultaneously separated in notable ways - a dramatic change in subject over the volta and a shift towards more naturalistic imagery - and at the same time clearly occupy the same thematic world.

Part of why I picked this poem was that I wanted to use a work by a poet I was already familiar with, to enhance my understanding both of the poem and its' writer. Bishop's sonnet stood out to me because of the emotional connection I frequently have with music, much as she does in the first stanza and as many of my peers do. In particular, the desire to be relaxed and released by music, to be put to sleep with the tiring dead, is familiar to me from instances where I have used music to cope with extreme stress & trauma.