The Sandpiper by Elizabeth Bishop is about a student of William Blake that is trying to find himself. He is looking for something
Sandpiper
The Sandpiper by Elizabeth Bishop is about a student of William Blake that is trying to find himself. He is looking for something, not sure of what it is, possibly a new world of his own in which he belongs. It is as if the sandpiper is surrounded by these boundaries that are stopping him from reaching what he is looking for. The theme of the poem could also be Blake’s famous quote that, “It is possible to see a world in a grain of sand”. The sandpiper is looking for that world in the millions of grains of sand.
“The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.”
In the first line of the poem the bird is unaware to his surroundings; the roaring of the ocean "he takes for granted." If we look at the ocean's roaring in a different point of view, maybe the sandpiper has come to accept this fact of modern life, "that every so often the world is bound to shake." In the final two lines of the first stanza, the poet mixes the humorous and the serious. The humorous being the juxtaposition, “controlled panic” and the serious being the reference to the romantic poet William Blake. The sandpiper responds to the roaring by running, southward. The fact that "runs" is repeated here and in other parts of the poem is significant. It is precisely this that the poet wants us to be attracted to. This forms the central mystery of the poem: hidden in the running image of the sandpiper is the unanswered question, why he does not fly? It is a mystery. He neither flies nor stands his ground, but rather: "He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, in a state of confused panic, a student of Blake." The sandpiper responds in a state of "controlled panic." This is funny and charming, but Bishop then throws in the figure of the Blake student and then suddenly, without warning, the poem tone moves from comic to serious. The bird is a student of Blake’s and because of this we have an understanding that the bird is searching for something else.
