Happy 2026 to all my fellow dVerse poets! Well, another turn of the calendar year, and it’s a fresh start, a blank page, and another venture into the unknown with our unique soundings into the universe, our own poetic voices, incandescent, particular.

Lately, I’ve been drawn to read some of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems and their poetics struck me as something familiar and odd at the same time. One recognizes shades of Wordsworth’s “emotions recollected in tranquility” and Robert Lowell’s “confessional nonsense” (Bishop’s words) and Marianne Moore’s “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”

That became more explicable when I read her thoughts on what a poem should contain. She wrote,

The three qualities I admire in the poetry I like best are: Accuracy, Spontaneity, Mystery” (in “Writing Poetry is an Unnatural Act”).

While we’re speaking in threes, three of her most well-known poems, “The Moose,” “The Filling Station,” and “In the Waiting Room,” all avidly marinate in these traits. The latter poem describes an awakening. “The Filling Station” reminded me of William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” unsurprisingly since for Williams, like Bishop, the “mystery” is in the ordinary details. Bishop’s “The Moose” is an encounter with an otherworldly sweetness. These poems dwell on the minutiae only for them to give way to the larger sense of things, painting the canvas with the fine brush of verisimilitude to reveal the unexpected or incongruous.

The Filling Station
by Elizabeth Bishop,The Complete Poems 1927-1979 (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1983)

Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
esso—so—so—so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

For your first poetics challenge of the year, I’d like you to dip your word-brush into Bishop’s poetic inkpot, as it were, consciously incorporating accuracy (detail), spontaneity (immediacy), and mystery (revelation) to write your own original poem. Use the three poems by Bishop mentioned above as your examples. Colored by your own poetic voice, take us there, to that place, that person, that occasion; peel back a layer or two of experience, and show us what you found.

New to dVerse? Here’s how to join in:
* Write a poem in response to the challenge.
* Post your poem on your blog and link back to this post.
* Enter your name and the link to your post by clicking Mr. Linky below (remember to check the little box to accept the use/privacy policy).
* Read, enjoy, and comment on your fellow poets’ work –- there’s so much to derive from reading each other’s writing: new inspiration, new ideas, new friends.
* Mr. Linky will remain open until 3pm EST on Thursday, January 8th. Miss the cutoff? No worries. Save your poem up for Open Link Night next Thursday.