When a poet tackles the prose poem, there are often a few directions you could try. Often one opts for a style that subverts the expectations of typical prose, leaning into the strangeness permitted by poetry, either by engaging the intellectual realm, by employing surreal, abstract narratives, or by creating very tangential links between sentences, as with the so called ‘Language Poets’ of the 70s.

In ‘The Hanging of the Mouse’, from Rainy Season; Sub-Tropics, Elizabeth Bishop goes the opposite direction. In fact, at first, it seems hard to argue that this is a poem at all. What drew my attention initially was the fascinating premise as well as the cast of characters; my experience was almost identical to reading a short story or the start of a novel. Even at this stage, however, I could subconsciously sense a precise care being given to language across the whole narrative. On my second and third read, this precision sparkled subtly, and later was impossible to ignore. Rather than analysing this text as strictly a poem or strictly a piece of prose, I will analyse it as what it is: a piece of text which uses elements from both to convey its meaning.

1. A Question of Authority

One way Bishop employs poetic techniques is through her diction. Throughout this narrative, Bishop repeats the word “traditional” five times, to describe various aspects of the mouse’s assailants:

The characters that receive this description are all crucial players in the mouse’s demise: the soldiers that bring him to his death, the executioner, and the messenger that officially pronounces his sentence, respectively. They are each portrayed in varying negative ways, and as a result cast tradition itself into that same unflattering light.

One way this shows up is through the cold, precise descriptions of the beetle’s movements. Their “traditional long antennae” emphasise the exactness of their movements; every aspect of the beetles is tuned to perfection, to tradition. Yet this traditional exactness does not stop the mouse from moving erratically; it merely causes unnecessary distress and discomfort for him.

In a similar way, the traditional mask of the raccoon does little to remove their culpability. The only distance the father raccoon is able to create is by making his son into his mask: by having his son do each and every action, including the final act that sends the mouse to his death, the father comes close to erasing his guilt.

Finally, this pattern occurs through clever undermining of the bullfrog’s symbols of position:

He was a very large, overweight bullfrog, also dressed in the traditional costume, carrying the traditional long scroll that dragged for several feet on the ground and had the real speech, on a little slip of paper, pasted inside it. The scroll and the white plume on his hat made him look comically like something in a nursery tale…

This picture turns a formidable creature into a bit of a joke, and the frog’s image is only salvaged by the “deep bass” of his voice, something inherent in his body, not formed through his society.

2. The Cowardice of the Mantis

The Mantis is an interesting character in this poem. His actions ultimately support the oppressive forces of all the other animals, yet he seems unable to fully bring his mind into complete alignment with their will, leading to him vicariously sharing the mouse’s pain. The most powerful example of this is through the clever link to the beetle’s march:

He glided to the left a few steps, to the right a few steps […] but could not seem to begin [his ceremony]…

Compared to the beetles’ precise changes of direction, the mantis is completely clueless. He cannot do what he must, and yet can only “like” to be somewhere else.

Finally, like the bullfrog and the beetles, the mantis’ size is emphasized, showing how the mouse is completely at the mercy of all the animals. Thus, regardless of their intentions, good or bad, his captors cannot help but to torture him.

3. Messy Communication

In four crucial moments during the final half of the narrative, characters are grossly misinterpreted.

The first instance of this occurs when the mantis tries to do his job. His attempt to comfort the mouse falls on its head as he speaks in a “high, incomprehensible voice” and leads the mouse to cry “harder than ever.” The mouse’s cries are mentioned explicitly throughout the poem, like when his crying messes with the beetle’s tradition and order. Thus, this antagonistic tension between the suffering of the people and the tradition of the rulers of society is strained in the mantis’ speech. The mantis suffers, and the mouse suffers, because the mantis is both an enforcer of tradition, and a member of the society.

Next, the bullfrog announces the mouse’s sentence, and no one understands him, creating a sense of injustice: no one understands why the mouse is to be punished like this—he just is, and the crowd has to listen politely as though they do understand. Unlike the mantis, who tried to be helpful but could not be understood, the bullfrog spews nonsense loudly and impressively.

Next, the mouse wipes his nose, and the crowd, in interpreting it as a “farewell wave” insert into his action a meaning which he never intended. Here, the members of this society express accidentally, a longing to reach out to the mouse and connect to him. They assume the mouse was thinking of them in his final moment (when in fact he was attending to his own discomfort), because they were thinking of him.

Finally, the mother cat feels sympathy for the mouse and the mantis, and begins to cry. She assumes the origin of her child’s discomfort is the same as the origin of her own discomfort, and doesn’t realise that she herself could be the reason that the kitten “began to squirm and shriek” (note the rhyme between ‘shriek’ and ‘squee-eek,’ strengthening the connection between the two animals’ experiences).

Thus we have:

1. A questionable character misunderstood by the “light”, innocent victim
2. An oppressor unconcerned with being understood.
3. The innocent victim misunderstood by morally higher (yet only slightly better advantaged) crowd members
4. A child crowd member misunderstood by his parent.

The result of this complex web of miscommunications is that the kitten, his mother, and the mantis, all share in the mouse’s sufferings, and not the beetle or the bullfrog, or the raccoon and his son.