“Insomnia” (1955) is a symbolic love poem by American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979). The poem is written in free verse, but it is rhythmic and contains some perfect end rhymes while also using enjambment to build the poem’s melodic feeling. While Bishop worked during the rise of several poetic movements in the mid-20th century, this poem, like many of her poems, does not fit a specific movement, though it does borrow some aspects of Modernism and Confessionalism. While the poem’s theme is abstract and difficult to pin down, Bishop utilizes insomnia as a vehicle to express various feelings of love, which could include empowerment, anger, loneliness, jealousy, celebration, and loss, depending on the way the reader takes the poem. Most critics agree, however, that poem is a veiled expression of lesbian love, which was a theme in much of Bishop’s poetry, though never something explicitly expressed. The poem is one of Bishop’s more popular poems.

Poet Biography

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Bishop’s father died when she was a baby, and her mother was committed to a psychiatric hospital when she was a toddler. After losing her parents, Bishop’s wealthy grandparents took her in, providing her an elite education and a stable home life.

Bishop attended Vassar College, and there she met some important literary influences, including the poet Marianne Moore, who would become one of her most important literary friends. At Vassar, Bishop involved herself more with the college’s literary community as she began writing more.

After college and for most of her adult life, Bishop traveled extensively around the world, aided by a trust that allowed her freedom from the restraint of a steady job. Bishop spent time in Europe, Africa, and most notably, she spent 14 years in Brazil starting in 1944.

Bishop eventually took a teaching position at Harvard in 1970, and she continued to publish and travel late into her life.

Bishop’s personal life played a crucial role in her poetry, though her poems hide many details about her experiences. She expressed many of her themes and preoccupations metaphorically, and many critics see this as a reflection of her times. Bishop was a lesbian, but living during the mid-20th century, she was not very public about her sexuality. Bishop’s travel also informed her poetry, and foreign locations set the scene for many of her poems.

While Bishop is firmly established in the literary canon, she did not write many poems throughout her life, only publishing just over 100 poems before her death. Her 1955 Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring won her critical acclaim, earning her the Pulitzer Prize, and her Geography III (1976) received substantial praise just before her death in 1979.

Poem Text

Bishop, Elizabeth. “Insomnia.” 1955. Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955.

Summary

The poem opens with the image of the moon seen through a bureau mirror. The speaker personifies the moon, saying “she” looks out into the distance beyond space and sleep. The speaker wonders if the moon is prideful and if she sleeps during the day, and the speaker notes that the moon never smiles.

In the second stanza, the speaker gives the moon a fiery personality, saying that in the face of the universe, the moon could easily “tell it to go to hell” (Line 8). The moon could easily find water or another mirror to live on if she wished to spurn the universe. The speaker punctuates this defiant spirit with the last two lines: “So wrap up care in a cobweb / and drop it down the well” (Lines 11-12). Here, the speaker says the moon lives without care or regret, having thrown away any concern for the universe down the proverbial drain.

The third stanza continues the image from the previous stanza with an enjambed line. Not only has the moon thrown care down the well, but she’s thrown care down the well that leads to an inverted world where things operate opposite the way they do in normal life. In this inverted world, left is right, the shadow is now the body, and people sleep during the day instead of at night. And in this reality, heaven is no longer the expansive cosmos; it’s “shallow as the sea” (Line 17). The poem ends with a sudden shift as the speaker declares that an unnamed “you” loves her. This last line has no context or explanation.