The crucial point of the passage is at its thematic and structural junction, the ‘conflux’ of the great river. Bishop’s use of the word conflux, like the two rivers which join into one at the watery crossroads, is a portmanteau, of ‘con-‘ and the word ‘flux’. Conflux then represents the great river as both a thing in a state of permanent transience, or ‘flux’, and also one defined by antagonisms, summarily held within the prefix of ‘con-‘. The result then is an opposition, initially of two rivers, and then a compound opposition, of the two rivers meeting as elusive or at loggerheads.

Bishop’s famous eye for detail then witnesses this conceptual truth empirically. The rivers, flow ‘grandly, silently flowing, flowing east. / Suddenly…’ At the beginning of the line we are treated to what looks like a chiasmic construction – centred around the caesura between the repeated ‘flowing’, we expect another adverb to fall after ‘flowing east’, to balance the scales, as it were. We get it in the next line, with ‘Suddenly’. But not without a great shudder of deceleration. The strong punctuation of the full stop only gains a more terminal value for falling at the line break. ‘Suddenly’ come to act as an unwilling aid for either reading, and we might feel compelled to either wrench it away from the symmetry of the chiasmus, or skid torpidly to make the chiasmus, at the risk of losing the actually meaning of the word, and indeed, its power on the following line.

Bishop’s poetics are deliberately precocious here, as she forces the reader to move forward in the poem in an irresistible languor, swimming against the current of the poem. It pays off however, as the reader’s response falls in line with the experience of the traveller – the sights of the shore inevitably come into our sight, but at a speed not dictated by us. Supported by an enacting ‘skittering’ of sibilance and alliteration ‘river boats skittering back and forth’.

And that’s all I can do now because I’m tired and packing up for the day. But if you are interested in Bishop, I suggest reading Bonnie Costello's work, which is terrific, with really close, detailed, and most importantly, enjoyabel readings of her work, and very extensive consideration of how the role of Bishop's descriptive style works. Goes way past the rather useless fact that she likes to explain stuff, but it is the 'rhythm of vision - receding and yielding', which she writes about. Good stuff.

EDIT: (21:35) That's really not so hot is it. Serves me right for trying to plough on regardless. Might do another one though. Or perhaps post a previous one.