Filling Station (Style)

Style

Free Verse

Because it has no consistent, formal pattern of rhyme or meter, Bishop’s “Filling Station” is technically free verse. But even a quick glance at the page reveals that free verse is not free of form; it is not shapeless or undisciplined. As the poet Denise Levertov would say, free verse that is truly poetry is never “spineless”; it is not simply prose with line breaks. Bishop wrote both free verse and in traditional forms, such as the poem she called simply “Sestina,” whose formal repetition of lines and images — grandmother, stove, tears, almanac — reveals its ultimate theme, the profound mysteries and losses of Bishop’s childhood. Her free verse style is known for its disciplined accuracy of word choice, restrained emotion, and lucid description.

The shapeliness of this free verse poem emerges in part from its well-proportioned six stanzas. Each stanza is composed of six to eight lines, and each of its relatively short lines contains an average of six to seven syllables. This design creates a certain rhythmic and visual tidiness that is in tension with the dirty foreground of the filling station and the bursts of service to those “high-strung automobiles.” Yet, “somebody” has clearly arranged the stanzas and lines, and therefore the poem’s form supports its humorous assertion of mystery in the last stanza: that “Somebody / arranges the rows of cans” to chant “ESSO — SO — SO — SO.”

The poem’s cohesiveness also arises from the repetition of certain words and images. The general idea of “dirtiness” is announced at the beginning, and specified by variations on the reality of “oil”: “oil-soaked,” “oil-permeated,” “black translucency,” “greasy,” “grease-impregnated.” There is also a verbal pun on “doily,” a bit of domestic finery that rhymes with “oily.” The questions of stanzas three and five also structure the experience of perception, paradoxically opening out into something much larger than the little cosmos of the station. And finally, the repetition of “Somebody” in the last stanza points to mystery. It is some body, but the reader does not know whom, who waters and arranges and loves, and at the same time, it is somebody, not merely some one, a presence grounded in the realities of monkey-suits and hot engines.