Search results
The waiting room was bright and too hot. It was sliding beneath a big black wave, another, and another. Then I was back in it. The War was on. Outside, in Worcester, Massachusetts, were night and slush and cold, and it was still the fifth of February, 1918.
- Summary of in The Waiting Room
- Structure of in The Waiting Room
- Poetic Techniques in in The Waiting Room
- Analysis of in The Waiting Room
The poem takes the reader through a narrative series of events that describe a child, likely the poet herself. From her perspective, the child explains how she accompanied her aunt to the dentist’s office. While there, she found herself bored by the wait time and the waiting room. She looked around, took note of the adults in the room, picked up a ...
‘In the Waiting Room’ by Elizabeth Bishop is a ninety-nine line poem that’s written in free verse. This means that Bishop did not give the poem a specific rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. The poem is decided into five uneven stanzas. The first contains thirty-five lines, the second: eighteen, the third: thirty-six, the fourth: four, and the fifth:...
Bishop makes use of several poetic techniques in this piece. These include alliteration, enjambment, and simile. The latter, simile, is a comparison between two unlike things that uses the words “like” or “as”. A poet uses this kind of figurative language to say that one thing is similar to another, not like metaphor, that it “is” another. For inst...
Stanza Two
The child, who had never seen images like those in the magazine before, reacts poorly. She thinks she hears the sound of her aunt’s voicefrom inside the office. She made a noise of pain, one that was “not very loud or long”. The speaker revealed in the next lines that it was her that made that noise, not her aunt, but at the same time, it was her aunt as well. She was so surprised by her own reaction that she was unable to interpret her own actions correctly at first. The use of consonance in...
Stanza Four
The fourth stanza is surprisingly only four lines long. In its brevity, the girl’s emotions start to impact the way she physically feels. The room was at once “bright / and too hot” and she was sliding beneath black waves of understanding and fear. When confronted with the adult world, she realized she wasn’t ready for it, but that she was going to have to eventually become a part of it.
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
Analysis (ai): This poem explores a young girl's experience waiting in a dentist's office. The National Geographic's images of distant cultures and the sound of her aunt's pain trigger a profound revelation about her own individuality and place within society.
‘In the Waiting Room’ is one of the best-known poems by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79). Written in 1971 and published in the collection Geography III in 1976, the poem describes a visit to the dentist which the young Bishop made as a six-year-old girl.
In the Waiting Room Lyrics. In Worcester, Massachusetts, I went with Aunt Consuelo. to keep her dentist's appointment. and sat and waited for her. in the dentist's waiting room. It was...
Nov 6, 2023 · 'In the Waiting Room' is a long, 99-line, five-stanza poem that focuses on the reaction of a young girl who, whilst waiting for her Aunt Consuelo in the dentist's waiting room, picks up a National Geographic magazine and looks at the pictures.
People also ask
What is in the waiting room by Elizabeth Bishop about?
How many stanzas are in the waiting room by Elizabeth Bishop?
Who wrote in the waiting room?
What is in the waiting room about?
Dive deep into Elizabeth Bishop's In the Waiting Room with extended analysis, commentary, and discussion
