I am compiling maps and images for an upcoming Teaching With Primary Sources workshop titled, "Mapping Elizabeth Bishop." Among my recent finds was this evocative photograph, "A Cape Ann fisherman mending his nets" (Detroit Publishing Co., Copyright Claimant, and Publisher Detroit Publishing Co. A Cape Ann fisherman mending his nets. [Between 1900 and 1906] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress,
Bishop's poem "At the Fishhouses" is set in Nova Scotia, and part of the workshop will be devoted to her maritime poems. This image from Gloucester, MA, offers the kind of rich detail that is a signature of Bishop's poetry. We might begin with the image--participants being invited to say what they notice with the simple protocol, "Look at the _____." After we collect a large list of "noticings," we'll examine the provenance of the image, so that we're sure to attend to the difference in time and place between it and the poem to which we'll turn next. In one of our passes through the poem, participants could choose lines that could serve as a caption for the image. They might also add to the poem's implied dialogue between Bishop and a fisherman by imagining what this Cape Ann fisherman might say to her (or, for that matter, to the seal who shows up later in her poem).