Filling Station Poem Analysis

Contrary to what some may think, love can be found in one hundred and seventy five words. I hold such a love deep in my heart for Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “Filling Station”, because it assisted me in discovering the writer within me and encouraged me to expand my academic skills, even outside of school. It takes me back to the second week of senior year. I recall the smile on my overly-fervent AP Literature teacher’s face as she played a recording of Bishop reading her poem. She said the poet read her piece aloud at a university somewhere, and the second after she had finished reading, she dropped the poem and ran out the door without a final word to be had. I had to love Bishop because she understood the romanticism of all, the mystical agony of not knowing something about a person when you want to know it so badly. I’d never heard a poem read the way Bishop read hers, and I doubt I ever will again. Every time she said the word “oil”, she drew out the word in a long and suffocating sound

The poem’s speaker elaborates on the grime of the place, which is run by a father and his “greasy sons”. The person observing cannot understand why they would spend their lives in such a place, suffocating under a layer of grease. However, the second half of the poem reveals the “color” of the setting. Inside there is a table upon which is placed a stack of comic books, carefully embroidered doily, and a furry begonia plant. It is clear that the family makes the filling station their home, and are trying to make something worthwhile of it. This is their American Dream, and no one else’s. Another the point of the poem is to show that beauty is subjective. Why would the family adorn the station with a flower and doily if they did think they could make the place beautiful? After all, any beautiful thing that ever existed in the world didn’t have beauty until someone decided it