24 pages • 48 minutes read
Exchanging Hats
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Literary Devices
Meter: Iambic Tetrameter
Elizabeth Bishop structured “Exchanging Hats” in iambic tetrameter. Iambic refers to an iamb, a common metrical unit in English-language poetry. The iamb consists of two syllables, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. A stressed syllable is where the word gets emphasized in speech. An iambic tetrameter has four iambs in a single line. For example, the first three lines go:
Unfun|ny un|cles who | insist
in try|ing on | a la|dy’s hat,
—oh, ev|en if | the joke | falls flat (Lines 1-3),
Bishop amplifies the strong beat of the iambic tetrameter by using an enclosed rhyme scheme (ABBA) for each stanza. As seen in the excerpt below, each stanza possesses a unique enclosed rhyme scheme:
in spite of our embarrassment. [A]
Costume and custom are complex. [B]
The headgear of the other sex [B]
inspires us to experiment. [A]
Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach [C]
with paper plates upon your laps, [D]
keep putting on the yachtsmen's caps [D]
with exhibitionistic screech [C] (Lines 5-12).
Scholar Rachel Trousdale said rhymed iambic tetrameters are frequently used in light and humorous verse (Trousdale, Rachel. “'I Take off My Hat': Elizabeth Bishop's Comedy of Self-Revelation.” Reading Elizabeth Bishop, edited by Jonathan Ellis, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2019. Edinburgh Scholarship Online). Bishop adds layers to “Exchanging Hats” by using a metrical structure associated with humor to discuss serious topics. The rhymed iambic tetrameter mirrors the speaker's focus on play and jokes. The poem's two most important scenes are the uncles' lady's hat gag and the aunts trying on the caps while at the beach. Bishop also juxtaposes the philosophical content with the light-hearted iambic tetrameters. Like the binary between male and female, the lines between drama and comedy are exposed as arbitrary and possible to transcend.
Form: Quatrains
Bishop breaks “Exchanging Hats” into quatrains, which are stanzas of four lines. Poets create stanzas by separating groups of lines with extra space. The quatrain style allows sentences, scenes, and thoughts to flow across the gaps without stopping. Poets call lines that continue into the following line or stanza without end-stop punctuation enjambment.
Bishop's combined use of quatrains and enjambment makes the speaker seem to draw on different memories from different points in their life. These separate memories cross into each other because they all involve crossdressing, family, and gender.
Alternatively, Bishop's refusal not to have thoughts contained to one stanza or have the poem be only one stanza fits with the poem's distrust of simple answers and categories.
Alliteration, Assonance, and Consonance
Bishop makes heavy use of sound devices in “Exchanging Hats.” Though a common technique for the poet, in this case the alliteration, assonance, and consonance highlight the playfulness and comedic aspects of the poem.
Alliteration is the repetition of the first sound in words found close together. The poem starts off with the clear alliteration of the U sound in “Unfunny uncles” (Line 1). This continues in the first stanza with “falls flat” (Line 3) and “transvestite twist” (Line 4). The second stanza has repeated Cs in Line 6 with “Costume,” “custom,” and “complex.” Almost every stanza holds at least one incidence of alliteration.
Assonance is repeated vowel sounds, not necessarily only at the beginning of the words. In some cases, the assonance is paired with the alliteration, such as in “falls flat” (Line 3) with the repeated A sounds following the alliterated F or the repeated O and U sounds in “Costume and custom are complex” in Line 6 with the alliterated C. In other places the assonance stands on its own, as in the A sounds in “may aggravate” (Line 20) or “natural madness of the hatter” (Line 21).
Consonance is a repeated consonant sound. Bishop does not use this technique as heavily as the alliteration or assonance, but it can still be seen sprinkled throughout the poem, such as in the Ts in “putting” and “yachtsman” in Line 11 or the Ps in “grapes upon” in Line 18. Like the cases of assonance, the consonance also often accompanies the alliteration, such as in the middle Ts of “miter matter” (Line 24) and the Ls in “falls flat” (Line 3).
All three techniques both punctuate the words Bishop uses to paint the scenes in the poem and obscure the seriousness of the topic with the playfulness of the sounds they create. In this way, Bishop illustrates how superficial things like clothing and hats are when it comes to gender roles and identity. To find the real message—and likewise the real person—one must look past the decorative and consider what lies underneath.
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