The Imaginary Iceberg

Bishop is unique among her contemporaries for her tendency to hide herself in her poetry. “The Imaginary Iceberg,” however, is an interesting counterexample to this tendency. The poem’s themes surrounding travel, stillness, and the imagination, reflect many of the changes in Bishop’s life. Bishop’s turbulent childhood (See: Poet Biography) meant she often travelled between home and relatives. Her affection for Nova Scotia and the Atlantic Ocean, where icebergs are frequently spotted, began after she moved there to live with her maternal grandparents.

Many of the poems in North & South—in which “The Imaginary Iceberg” appeared in 1946—were first drafted between 1934 and 1937. “The Imaginary Iceberg” is one of the earliest poems Bishop wrote during this period. After graduating Vassar College in 1934, Bishop traveled across Europe and Northern Africa. Though she continued to travel for two years after writing “The Imaginary Iceberg,” the poem’s account of stillness suggests she longed for a stability that travel could not provide. As the speaker says in the poem’s first two lines, they would “rather have the iceberg than the ship, / although it meant the end of travel” (Lines 1-2).