The Shampoo

Bishop published “The Shampoo” in 1955 when Postmodernism was emerging. Postmodern poets tended to emphasize fragmentation and playfulness. Fragmentation appears in the poem through the rocks, lichens, and stars. The speaker breaks up their dear friend’s hair into separate elements. Fragmentation also develops due to the emphasis on the friend’s hair; it’s as if the speaker severs their friend’s hair from the rest of their body. The fragmentation links to playfulness because the speaker plays with the idea that washing a close friend’s hair can be a heavenly activity or natural phenomenon that involves “the rings around the moon” (Line 5) and “shooting stars” (Line 13).

The vivid description of the rocks and lichens in Stanza 1 indicates the influence of Imagism—an early 20th-century literary movement that stressed images. Imagists—Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and William Carlos Williams, among them—believed a strong poem provided the reader with a precise picture. The “spreading” lichens, with their “gray, concentric shocks” (Line 3), qualify as a meticulous image.

Another literary context is confessional poetry—a personal, intimate type of poetry practiced by one of Bishop’s best friends Robert Lowell. Lowell wrote poems about his life and his struggles with mental health and marriage, and Bishop admired his poetry but not the confessional movement he inspired.