Fading in the Anthropocene Anonymous College

In their poems “At the Fishhouses” and “For the Union Dead”, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell respectively examine the landscapes of their childhoods as a means of determining what is lost in mankind’s strives towards modernity and what survives. Both poets utilize strong imagery to depict their worn locales and each narrator retains a childlike wonder despite, or perhaps due to, the crushing weight they bear as witnesses to a time gone by. But their perceptions of this loss create distinct representations of the same fate of fading in the Anthropocene: while Bishop’s little town will be lost just as Venice sinks into the sea, the downtown Lowell wanders will be lost in great strokes of tragedy as was done to Hiroshima. Those left behind in “At the Fishhouses” are witnesses, whereas those in “For the Union Dead” are survivors of history.

"At the Fishhouses" begins with a description of a scene that seems eternally suspended. The verbs in the opening stanzas are stative, "the five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs," "all is silver," "the big fish tubs are completely lined," and, "on the slope . . . is an ancient wooden capstan." Yet Bishop's descriptions insist that the scene she observes is the product of continual changes...