Travel

I'm a really big fan of "Questions of Travel." This poem asks questions about modernity veiled in the regretful musings of someone whose vacation has lasted a little too long. I like the question "Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?" (14). Modernist authors tend to be preoccupied with the idea of migration as a means to find inspiration. Bishop seems to struggle with that idea in this poem, and wonders if the road to inspiration is necessary to traverse. Bishop revels in the beauty around her though, even if there are "too many waterfalls," (1) and realizes that "Surely it would have been a pity / not to have seen the trees along this road, / really exaggerated in their beauty, / not to have seen them gesturing / like noble pantomimists, robed in pink" (30-34). But, Bishop still finds herself thinking of home, and, just like a modernist, she migrates to find her muse but ends up writing about home anyway.