An Uncollected Poem from Elizabeth Bishop: "House Guest"

Elizabeth Bishop in 1954

House Guest

The sad seamstress
who stays with us this month
is small and thin and bitter.
No one can cheer her up.
Give her a dress, a drink,
roast chicken, or fried fish-
it's all the same to her.

She sits and watches TV.
No, she watches zigzags.
"Can you adjust the TV?"
"No," she says. No hope.
She watches on and on,
without hope, without air.

Her own clothes give us pause,
but she's not a poor orphan.
She has a father, a mother,
and all that, and she's earning
quite well, and we're stuffing
her with fattening foods.

We invite her to use the binoculars.
We say, "Come see the jets!"
We say, "Come see the baby!"
Or the knife grinder who cleverly
plays the National Anthem
on his wheel so shrilly.
Nothing helps.

She speaks; "I need a little
money to buy buttons."
She seems to think it's useless
to ask. Heavens, buy buttons,
if they"ll do any good,

the biggest in the world-
by the dozen, by the gross!
Buy yourself an ice cream,
a comic book, a car!

Her face is closed as a nut,
closed as a careful snail
or a thousand-year-old seed.
Does she dream of marriage?
Of getting rich? Her sewing
is decidedly mediocre.

Please! Take our money! Smile!
What on earth have we done?
What has everyone done
and when did it all begin?
Then one day she confides
that she wanted to be a nun
and her family opposed her.

Perhaps we should let her go,
or deliver her straight off
to the nearest convent-and wasn't
her month up last week, anyway?

Can it be that we nourish
one of the Fates in our bosoms?
Clotho, sewing our lives
with a bony little foot
on a borrowed sewing machine,
and our fates will be like hers,
and our hems crooked forever?

Elizabeth Bishop's "House Guest" is a brilliant poem summarizing how exhausting life can be if we allow others to predict our fate. In the fifth line of the eighth stanza, the speaker is finally allowed the opportunity to have some sort of understanding of why the seamstress/house guest is so depressed. The speaker states "Then one day she confides/that she wanted to be a nun/and her family opposed her." Relationships are very important in this poem. Why did the seamstress/house guest's family oppose her decision to become a nun? How old is this house guest? How old is the speaker? How did the seamstress arrive as a house guest of the speaker and his/her family? If I had to guess, I would speculate that the speaker is speaking from remembrance, and that the house guest's despair was such a huge part of her personality, that it taught the speaker a life lesson.  Anyhow, age is of small relevance when dealing with missed, life opportunities at the fault of someone else. In the last stanza, the speaker asks "Can it be that we nourish/one of the Fates in our bosoms?" This is a very important question for all readers, because it asks us to analyze our own situations and make sure we aren't being held back because we are allowing what others have predicted in our fate to stop us from living happy and meaningful lives.

In reference to the form and style of the poem, Bishop does a great job of being descriptive in setting up the scene for her readers. Punctuation is precise in this poem as well. One of the most outstanding things Bishop does in this poem is tie in Classical Mythology. In the last stanza the speaker has a revelation: "Clotho, sewing our lives/with a bony little foot/on a borrowed sewing machine/and our fates will be like her/and our hems crooked forever?" This last stanza dealing with Clotho, or the fate who spins the thread of life, is the big what if. What if we are all like the seamstress in some way? If so, she is a perfect example of why we shouldn't allow ourselves to be that way.