“Lamentable but Irremediable”: Elizabeth Bishop and Boredom

Abstract This article examines how boredom infiltrates Bishop’s writing in aesthetic ways. Although the thematization of boredom in her work has rarely been discussed, recent scholarship that situates her work in relation to adjacent concepts—such as “the everyday” and “the prosaic”—provides a basis for such an investigation. A close reading of Bishop’s prose and poetry through the lens of boredom reveals her sensitivity to its creative possibilities. Bishop’s interest in the productive potential of boredom is most clearly manifested in her short story “In Prison” (1938) and her unfinished early poem “In a Room” (1936), both of which were written in the late 1930s while she was traveling around Europe and probably exposed to stimuli that she had never experienced before. Through a reading of these two early works and a concluding exploration of her dialogue with Blaise Pascal in “Questions of Travel” (1956), this article ultimately proposes that Bishop’s lifelong preoccupation with “home” and alternative shelters (such as a hotel room and prison cell) can be understood as a continual negotiation for a place where one can be bored, counterbalancing the constant sensory stimulations that her poetic subjects perpetually undergo in an increasingly technologized and globalized world.