Insomnia

The poem’s main thematic concern is inversion. Almost everything in the poem is inverted from its normal self, either explicitly or through suggestion. Even the title introduces the concept, as insomnia is, by definition, at least partially an inversion of a normal sleep schedule. When a person has insomnia, they cannot sleep at night; they either have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. If the disorder is significant enough, the sleep cycle inversion can become a full inversion where the person eventually stays awake through the night and sleeps during the day. There are biological consequences to this, but the social consequences might be more apropos to this poem. Insomnia can lead to social isolation, as insomniacs might find it difficult to socialize when most everybody is asleep while the insomniac is awake (this was even more true in Bishop’s time, as there was no Internet to connect people across the world at all hours of the day).

The poem then opens with another inversion as the speaker is looking not at the moon itself but “[t]he moon in the bureau mirror” (Line 1). So the speaker is speaking about an object seen through a mirror—and

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