“Sandpiper” by Elizabeth Bishop was published in The New Yorker in 1962 and included in her 1965 poetry collection titled Questions of Travel. Questions of Travel was published after her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of poems, Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring, one of many high points in her illustrious career.

“Sandpiper” is a free verse poem containing 20 lines with a consistent rhyme scheme and flexible meter (lines that have rhythm, but the rhythm fluctuates). “Sandpiper” is inspired by the British Romantic poet William Blake and the naturalist philosophy of the Romantics. Bishop, writing at the end of the Modernist period, agrees with but also furthers the ideas of Blake and other Romantic poets. She explores finding meaning in the mundane, the sublime power of nature, and the spaces between things.

Poet Biography

In 1911, Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Before her first birthday, her father passed away, and her mother was committed to a psychiatric facility when Elizabeth was only five years old. She was raised by her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia, her paternal grandparents in Worcester, and her aunt in South Boston.

In 1934, Bishop graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Vassar College. There, she met her lifelong friend Marianne Moore and cofounded a literary journal, Con Spirito. In the years following her graduation, she traveled around North Africa, Spain, Italy, Ireland, and France. She settled in Key West, Florida in 1938 and lived there for a few years. In 1944, Bishop moved to Brazil with her lover, Lota de Macedo Soares.

After Soares died by suicide in 1967, Bishop spent time in San Francisco and New York. She began teaching at Harvard University in 1970. At Harvard, Bishop fell in love with Alice Methfessel, who was her partner for the rest of her life. In addition to writing poetry, Bishop translated Brazilian poetry and painted. Bishop had six poetry books published in her lifetime. The Complete Poems, originally published in 1969, won a National Book Award. She also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1956, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. Elizabeth Bishop died in 1979 while writing a new collection of poetry with the working title “Grandmother’s Glass Eye.”

Poem Text

Bishop, Elizabeth. “Sandpiper.” 1962. Allpoetry.com.

Summary

“Sandpiper” is a free verse poem with 20 lines broken into five stanzas. Each stanza has four lines and a consistent rhyme scheme. The poem focuses on describing the titular bird, which is referred to using the pronoun "he."

In the first stanza, the third-person speaker describes the sandpiper’s sensory experiences of the ocean. He is accustomed to the sounds and physical sensations of the waves crashing on the beach. Part of his experience of the surf is awkwardly running on the sand. The speaker compares his actions to a state described by the poet William Blake.

In the second stanza, the speaker develops the interaction between the sandpiper and the ocean. The sound of the beach is included, and the ocean is to the left of him. A wave covers his feet, which he looks at in the water.

In the third stanza, the speaker corrects the previous statement. Instead of looking at his toes, the sandpiper looks at the sand between them. The speaker identifies the ocean as the Atlantic. When the wave retreats, the sandpiper watches the movement of the sand while he runs along the beach.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker describes the bird’s surroundings. The speaker looks at how the world changes as the tide comes in and out. It is misty, then it is clear. However, the sandpiper is oblivious to these changes in his environment because he is staring and pointing his beak towards the ground.

In the fifth stanza, the speaker continues the image of the bird looking at the sand. He appears to be obsessively searching for something. In the final two lines, the speaker focuses on the sand: It has several neutral-colored grains and contains some quartz grains that are rose and purple.