Exchanging Hats

Published in 1956, the narrative poem “Exchanging Hats“ is one of the few poems where 20th century American writer and translator Elizabeth Bishop explicitly discusses gender.

“Exchanging Hats” appeared mid-way through Bishop's career in the then male-dominated field of poetry. Bishop was one of the only major and critically acclaimed women, much less lesbian, poets working during this time. Male critics and peers often gave her condescending praise, directly referencing her gender.

Bishop challenges the belief that men and women are different in “Exchanging Hats.” She proposes that men and women have a natural inclination toward crossing gender roles. Despite society's conditioning and regulations, some experiences—such as death and dreaming—transcend gender.

Poet Biography

American poet Elizabeth Bishop's highly visual and observational poetry earned her a place as one of the most beloved and lasting 20th century American poets. Critics during her lifetime condescendingly referred to Bishop's work as the most remarkable poetry written by a woman in the 20th century. However, her reputation and legacy overshadowed and outlasted many of her male peers. Her poetry dynamically and emotionally explored memory, loneliness, differing forces, and location without revealing too much about her private life. Bishop famously called poetry “thinking with one's feelings” (Becker, Deborah. “The Life and Poetic Legacy of Elizabeth Bishop.” Edited by Caitlin O'Keefe, Radio Boston, WBUR, 20 Feb. 2017). Scholars trace many of the feelings found in Bishop's work to a childhood moving from place to place. 

Born in Massachusetts in 1911, Bishop never remembered her father, William Thomas Bishop. He died when she was eight months old. Her mother, Gertrude Bulmer Bishop, struggled with her mental health throughout Bishop's childhood. Eventually, she voluntarily checked into the Nova Scotia Hospital in 1916 until she died in 1934. Five-year-old Bishop became the ward of her maternal grandparents and aunt, Maud Shepherdson. She spent her childhood in the Great Village, Nova Scotia, and Boston, Massachusetts. While Bishop never saw her mother again, she recalled having a close bond with her aunt. They “loved each other and told each other everything” (“Elizabeth Bishop '1934.” Vassar College Encyclopedia, Vassar College, 2015). 

Bishop developed a fierce sense of privacy and revulsion toward the spotlight. She originally planned to major in musical composition at Vassar College. However, the required monthly public performances began to terrify and sicken her. She switched to English, having already published poems in her high school magazine. 

Her college years also illuminated Bishop's highly opinionated nature, sharp editorial eye, and later literary style. Bishop and five friends, including future author Mary McCarthy, founded the Con Spirito literary magazine in 1933. During this time she interviewed famed modernist poet T. S. Eliot, and she formed a life-long friendship with American literary luminary Marianne Moore. 

Bishop's mentorship with Moore helped convince the younger woman to pursue poetry as a career after graduating college in 1934 and throughout her travels from 1935 through 1938. The English journal Life and Letters To-Day helped put Bishop on the map when it published her famous poem “The Man-Moth” in 1936. 

After years of encouragement from Moore about publishing a poetry collection, Bishop released North and South in 1946. The book won the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Prize for Poetry. Bishop's literary star rose quickly. 

The Library of Congress also appointed her as its Consultant in Poetry, now known as the Poet Laurate, in 1949. Bishop, a lesbian, found her tenure stressful due to the federal government's hunt and persecution of communists and LGBTQ+ people. She also struggled with health issues like asthma, alcoholism, eczema, and the flu. Her tenure ended in 1950. 

Bishop found happiness in Brazil. She initially only traveled there to visit friends, but an allergic reaction prolonged her trip. After recovering, Bishop decided to live there. She began a romantic relationship with Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares and lived with her for 17 years. Bishop more deeply explored dichotomies and parallels by comparing her cold New England roots with the more tropical climate of Brazil and Florida. Bishop drew upon memory and its construction, famously stating that she re-created her Nova Scotia childhood in Brazil. During this time, Bishop published three books. She expanded and re-released North & South in 1955. The new edition gained a Pulitzer Prize. Questions of Travel followed in 1965. Sadly, Bishop's Brazilian years came to an end after she lost Lota to suicide in 1967 during a stay in New York City. 

Bishop began the next stage of her life with her win of a National Book Award in 1970 and her start as a creative writing instructor at Harvard University in 1970. While starting as a substitute for Robert Lowell while he was abroad, Bishop taught at Harvard until 1977. Bishop also began an on-and-off-again relationship with Alice Methfessel, which lasted until Bishop's death. 

Her most famous collection, Geography III, hit bookstores in 1976. The collection features some of her most famous poems: “The Moose,” “In the Waiting Room,” “One Loss,“ and “Crusoe in England.“ It was also her last original poetry collection released during her lifetime. Her last book was An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry in 1972. A dedicated perfectionist, Bishop sometimes took years to revise her poems. She admitted to beginning many projects but never completing them. Some of her work wouldn't reach the public until 2006 when former New Yorker poetry editor Alice Quinn compiled them into Edgar Allen Poe & the Juke-Box. 

Despite a sporadic publishing schedule, Bishop remained a vital force in American and international poetry until her death. She made history as the first woman to win the Books Abroad-Neustadt Prize for Literature in 1976. 1977 proved a busy year as he was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters and won the Nation Book Critics Circle Award. 

Bishop died in 1979 from a cerebral aneurysm at age 68. Methfessel acted as the executor of her literary estate. 

Following her death, many of Bishop's uncollected or unpublished works made it to print. The most notable include The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 (1983), The Collected Prose (1984), a co-translation of Octavio Paz (1985), and a collection of Bishop's paintings Exchanging Hats (1996).

Poem Text

Bishop, Elizabeth. “Exchanging Hats.” 1956. The Writer’s Almanac.

Summary

The poem begins with the speaker recalling a common joke among “unfunny uncles” (Line 1). The uncles try on ladies' hats, hoping for a laugh. Instead, their young relatives find it embarrassing rather than funny. However, the speaker admits they and their peers share their uncles' desire to cross-dress. 

The speaker explains that they and others want to experiment with drag because clothing signifies and embodies complex customs and gender roles. 

The speaker then thinks about hyper-feminine aunts on a seaside vacation. While eating, the aunts try on the masculine “yachtsmen's caps” (Line 11). The women laugh at how ill-fitting the hats are on them. 

While these fashions may fall out of style, people will continue to experiment jokingly with headgear. The speaker pulls the reader into the poem, stating, “you who don the paper plate” (Line 17). The speaker shows how frequently subtle moments of crossdressing come up. The speaker also expands crossdressing from gender into racial and political identities, referencing an “Indian's feather bonnet,” a crown, and a bishop's miter (Lines 19, 23, and 24). 

Experimenting with hats does inspire the speaker to think about society at large. If other codified, high-brow ideals go away [“if the opera hats collapse / and crowns grow draughty”], then what other ideals and norms will be challenged (Lines 22-23)?

The speaker ends the poem thinking about their deceased uncle. The speaker does not state the uncle's death directly. However, they insinuate it by discussing the uncle's dressing preferences in the past tense. Bishop implies the uncle, who loved dressing wackily, wore on in his casket. The speaker asks the uncle what he sees under his hat now that he is dead. The speaker is asking if the uncle has experienced anything after death. 

In the last stanza, the speaker does not distinguish if the aunt is dead or only grieving. However, Bishop also frames the aunt in death. She describes the aunts' eyes as “avernal” (Line 30). The term originates from Lake Averno in Italy, which ancient Romans saw as an entrance to the underworld.

The aunt's eyes similarly function as portals to the afterlife. The speaker and her companions think about the differences between life and death that the aunt must now understand. However, the specificity of those insights remains blocked by her hat's “turned-down brim” (Line 32).