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"Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival!": The Body in Elizabeth Bishop's "Pink Dog"
- Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature
- Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
- Volume 56, Number 1, 2002
- pp. 73-83
- 10.1353/rmr.2002.a460581
- Article
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While the body seems absent from much of Elizabeth Bishop's work, her poetry in fact yields many poetic bodies. Specifically, "Pink Dog" points to a desire for the body, a dread of the body, and an awareness of the cultural significance of the body. This poem, long recognized as a commentary on social inequity, delineates a body that simultaneously conforms to and rejects restraints placed upon it by society. While seeming to occupy the celebratory site of the grotesque, ultimately the body in "Pink Dog" emerges as the abjected female body. This recognition opens up a space in which to situate Bishop's poetics in relation to sexuality, gender, and the body as this poem points out the nonexistence of both the unmediated body and a coherent gender identity.