The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: "Questions of Travel." Questions of Travel (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1965).

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

"Questions of Travel," a poem by Elizabeth Bishop originally published in her 1965 collection of the same name, is composed of five stanzas of varying lengths. This was Bishop's first collection after receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. Bishop spent a great deal of time polishing her poems, leading to her only publishing 101 poems throughout her career.

In the poem, the speaker considers whether traveling is worth the expenses, discomforts, and inconveniences. She asks what leads people to desire to travel in the first place, as well as the political implications involved in travel. The collection as a whole deals with human responsibility in the context of travel.