Transcript Vault – Transcribing Verse into Narrative

Related Poem:

Title: Leda & The Duck

Authorized Excerpts:

Sentence 1: “Daisy across the stern..”

Sentence 2: “the sailors don’t know how to row.”

The excerpts are reproduced with permission of the estate. Copyright remains with the author and publisher.

The excerpts displayed here are drawn from my personal transcription of an unpublished manuscript by Elizabeth Bishop. This project originated from my work with the manuscript and is intended to provide insight into the poem’s themes and significance. My interest in the text began while studying abroad in Ireland, where a professor introduced me to the manuscript. As a resident of Dutchess County, I was particularly drawn to Bishop’s work because she spent part of her youth in the region. I was also intrigued by the poem’s relationship to W. B. Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,” which I was studying at the time. Transcribing the manuscript allowed me to engage closely with its language while gaining a deeper appreciation for the process of textual preservation. Through this project, I aim to highlight the importance of archival work in preserving and expanding access to literary history. The broadside and accompanying short story that follow were created as original responses to Bishop’s manuscript. Together, they demonstrate how archival discoveries can inspire new creative works and illustrate the ongoing dialogue between historical texts and contemporary interpretation.

Broadside:

Language Across Generations:

Photo Copy Of Original (student-created literary work)

The people in this town have a habit of pretending the streets never change. But when I look closely, I see the houses leaning slightly towards each other along the crowded streets, as if they are sharing quiet secrets from centuries ago. In the mornings, the air still carries a fog that never seems to lift. It hangs low over the sidewalks and curls around the old brick buildings like a memory that refuses to leave.

Even in winter, when humid air yields to pure falling snow, the fog lingers for a while longer, softening the hard edges of everything. Footsteps crunch against salt scattered across the sidewalks, and the smell of coffee drifts out from the small cafes in the Italian district that are opening their doors for the day. Most people walk past without looking up, but if you pause long enough, the town begins to feel less like a place and more like a story waiting to be heard.

Lately, I find myself stopping, visiting that lonely, forgotten street, and trying to name all the wonderful things I see. But even as I try, the cherry red of the beautiful brick cannot mask how the unfamiliar words feel too clean, as though they do not belong. These words feel out of place, just like the newcomers who flood the streets surrounding the main building of a campus dear to my heart. Even the name of this building feels too pristine for the rough change it endured back in the winter of 1918. Long before I was born, when the town was quieter and the streets were lit by softer light, the structure that once stood here faced a winter that nearly erased it. I have heard stories about those days, and how the cold pressed against the burning brick walls, and how the people who gathered there carried both fear and determination. Though I was not born to see the original structure, there is something that only someone willing to listen will hear when walking its halls. I listen for all the generations that came before me, and especially my ancestors who walked these same streets. The buildings may not speak in sentences, but they echo with the uneven footsteps that have touched every inch of the rough brick ground.

The Empire building from my childhood has witnessed so many things from my first breaths to my first heartbreak. It stood quietly in the back, looming over an ever-changing town, yet no one ever had enough time to stop and listen. Did you ever listen? I like to believe you did, because if you hadn’t, I don’t think I would be standing here right now beneath the little red tree on a property I once called home, and where the grass always grew a little unevenly. That is where my little white dog liked to sleep in the afternoon sun, curling into a quiet patch of shade, and where I first met raw language. I would sit nearby with a notebook or scraps of paper, trying to understand how words and stories worked in the world. Then, I remember saying goodbye to the same brick house in my early twenties, constantly wondering if the stories I left behind would linger, or if new words would endure. Although I can now understand how the unfamiliar words are being reimagined alongside the old and are never truly forgotten. I imagine a little girl looking up at the wall mural in the back room, listening to all the stories it wants to share, just as I am doing now for others. By listening first, I have learned how language is shaped.

For a long time, I thought my frustration came from watching the town change too quickly. New names appear on storefronts, and buildings that once held familiar voices are replaced with polished signs and brighter paint. Sometimes the streets feel like they are learning a different language altogether. I used to think this meant something important was being lost. But the longer I sit with that feeling, the more I realize change does not erase the past; it just simply layers something new on top of it. With that said, I like to think you listened, because as I sit here wondering why I am so angry at the people who have created the latest words for this town, I realize that these novel words are not acts of forgetting, but of human nature. It is human to mask what’s imperfect in life, to put on a front, but I do not want this town to be perfect. Just like the language and words spoken here, I am imperfect and always changing. New life will one day form in this town, and the words along with its people will adapt. I just hope the stories and memories these buildings have seen will still linger. What this town has taught me is that language is not owned, but inherited, and I am now a part of the next generation in shaping our ever-growing language and stories.