SOURCE: Edelman, Lee. “The Geography of Gender: Elizabeth Bishop's ‘In the Waiting Room.’” Contemporary Literature 26, no. 2 (summer 1985): 179-96.

In the following essay, Edelman discusses the possibility of presenting a literal reading of “In the Waiting Room.”

I always tell the truth in my poems. With “The Fish,” that's exactly how it happened. It was in Key West, and I did catch it just as the poem says. That was in 1938. Oh, but I did change one thing. …

—Elizabeth Bishop¹

Time and again in discussing her poetry Elizabeth Bishop insists on its fidelity to literal reality. “It was all true,” she affirms of “The Moose,” “it was all exactly the way I described it except that I say ‘seven relatives.’ Well, they weren't really relatives, they were various stepsons and so on, but that's the only thing that isn't quite true.”² In her attempts to “place” her poetry by...