Poem: Night City by Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop's "Night City" from Geography III literally and figuratively illustrates her uncanny ability to animate objects in but a few well chosen words. Her use of details, colors, and personification work together simultaneously to bring a profound experience to the reader. "Night City" focuses on the urban horizon viewed by the poet from an airplane, presumably flying overhead. Not only do we see the city through the airplane window, we see them colored through the eyes of a passionate observer.Well known as a constant traveller, Bishop identifies herself as the writer of the verse. She views the city as a kind of furnace, all that residing in it burning or melting. The images in stanza one of broken glass burning appear to be a double threat to anyone who would walk there. The diverse racial elements, or blood of the city in stanza two equated to acid, symbolizing the racial or cultural tensions that too much closeness results in.
The most powerful images to be found in the poem are the physiological metaphors for the city. These metaphors make the city come alive, as if a single flaming body that is breaking down and building up naturally. The "tears" of stanza three are crowded into a "gathered lake," like the overpacked people in slums, the "aquamarine," the color of the sea and representative of freedom, "begins to smoke," or darken with hopelessness. "The city burns guilt," thus rejecting morality which causes guilt - the "central heat" must dispose of cares to support the abandoning of morals. The burst of color and texture in stanza five flows, "molten," into stanza six, into the rivers of industry, which are fresh, "green and luminous." The city has become an organic thing, increasing itself with indifference to its smaller parts. The poem carries on in a manner parallel to its content, all that is required of the reader is due attention.
Bishop keeps her line lengths fairly even throughout the poem, with an average of five beats per line. Alliteration and assonance are present in nearly every stanza, with assonance being favored. The many "o" and "a" sounds emphasize a dreariness that pervades throughout the poem, and stanzas four and six contain alliterative "s" sounds, reflecting the sizzling of the city and the liquid flow of "silicate rivers." Bishop places herself away from what she is observing, but the subtle patterns within her verses along with intriguing descriptive detail pull her, along with the reader, down towards the city to feel its heat.