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My grandfather said to me as we sat on the wagon seat,
"Be sure to remember to always speak to everyone you meet."
Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "Manners," begins with the first-person speaker recounting a piece of advice given by her grandfather as they passed through town behind their tired mare. It is a hard bit of advice for the bashful young speaker. Working against the child's natural reserve, the grandfather presses her: "Always offer everyone a ride; / don't forget that when you get older," as a boy with a pet crow climbs aboard (Poems 121). The crow answers his master's call, and the grandfather comments, "See, he answers nicely when he's spoken to. / Man or beast, that's good manners" (121). He has coached his young granddaughter to "answer nicely" before. The final lines of the poem, in which the grandfather makes everyone spare the tired mare and walk "as our good manners required," betray the speaker's feelings about this code of behavior (122). It is uncomfortable. Speaking in public is a worrisome duty. Perhaps more importantly, manners, as wielded by the grandfather, keep the child obedient and submissive: to him, to the boy, to the crow, to the old mare.
However, a peculiar tension exists between the young child's wish to remain silent, and the adult poet's authorial confidence. Through the child's perspective, Bishop imparts a palpable sense of discomfort with speaking in public and on command, and yet the poem's own articulation is skilled, poised, and entirely self-assured. And though the speaker and child are united through memory, the only voice in the poem is the grandfather's. The speaker recollects that " . . . I said it and bowed where I sat," but in a subtle bit of subversion, the child does not speak in the poem (121). The closest the child comes to speaking is the "we shouted" in which the grandfather's confidence out-shouts the child's voice (121). She is obedient, but there is intractability in her wish to keep silent. Throughout the poem, Bishop exerts adult authority by asserting the right to remain taciturn.
In many of her poetic autobiographies, Bishop strikes this curious balance between speaking out and resisting public utterance. Many scholars-David Kalstone, Kathleen Spivak, Luke Carson,...