19 pages • 38 minutes read
Elizabeth BishopA Miracle for Breakfast
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
The sestina form puts “A Miracle for Breakfast” into a historical literary context that dates back to the late 1500s when Sir Philip Sidney published his double sestina "Ye Goatherd Gods" (1577-80). With “A Miracle for Breakfast,” Bishop brings the traditional form into her present—the 1930s.
In the 1930s, Surrealism, which took off after World War I, remained relevant; Bishop demonstrates her connection to the movement with the uncanny image of the man on the balcony and the string of associations that conjure the vision of the “beautiful villa” (Line 26). Surrealists stressed the strangeness of a person’s thoughts and modern everyday life. They believed a person’s perceptions could unlock unusual sights, like the uncommon breakfast the speaker experiences in Bishop’s poem.
In the first part of the 1900s, the literary movements Imagism and Modernism also developed. Practiced by American poets like Ezra Pound, H. D., and Amy Lowell, Imagists believed the best poems conveyed a practice image, which is what Bishop does throughout “A Miracle for Breakfast” since she carefully describes the man on the balcony and the vision of the speaker’s luxurious “mansion” (Line 32). Meanwhile, Modernists like T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein focused on the fragmentation and isolation of contemporary life. In “A Miracle for Breakfast,” the man is isolated from the speaker and the people. The group of people and the speaker are isolated since they don’t communicate with one another. Additionally, the speaker fragments their reality when they briefly lose themselves in the grand villa with its “smell of hot coffee” (Line 27).
Historical and Authorial Context
The historical context ties into the authorial context, and together, they help explain some of the mystifying aspects of “A Miracle For Breakfast.” Bishop wrote the poem during the 1930s, so the Great Depression continued to impact Americans and people around the globe. The collapse of the stock market in October 1929 led to years of massive unemployment and poverty. In big cities like New York, people lined up for bread. Thus, the image of the speaker and a group of people “waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb” (Line 2) links to the ongoing consequences of the financial calamity. It summons scenes that Bishop witnessed in New York. The less impoverished sights, like the “beautiful villa” (Line 26), link to sights experienced since she still had the resources to travel due in part to her family’s wealth.
The poem also connects to the history of Wonder Bread. During the 1930s, the popular brand started marketing sliced bread. One morning in Greenwich Village, Bishop woke up and realized she didn’t have bread for breakfast. As she resigned herself to a lackluster breakfast of coffee and orange juice, the doorbell rang. A woman working for Wonder Bread presented Bishop with three slices of bread and a miniature loaf. In Marshall’s biography, A Miracle for Breakfast, and Anne Stevenson’s scholarly study Five Looks at Elizabeth Bishop (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), this fortuitous incident informs the miracle in “A Miracle for Breakfast.” Although, unlike the people in the poem, Bishop received more than “one rather hard crumb” (Line 21) from the Wonder Bread representative.
Related Titles
By Elizabeth Bishop
