Hi Jake,
Those seem like good and pertinent reflections. I guess my overall impression is that Bishop has marshaled her language and brought it to bear on us. There is a tone of command in great poetry that I find Bishop has effectively captured here, a compulsion of our allegiance. It takes us past the weirdnesses you rightly underline, making them inevitable, expanding our definition of what the mind sees - the rings around the moon, for instance.
You also make good points about S 2. But I do like pragmatical, instead of pragmatic, for its whiff of archaism, its faint mothballed odor. That leads us neatly into the rhyme on amenable, and gives the rhyme word weight it might otherwise lack. Bishop has the OED in hand, and mimics something of its tonal variety.
Thanks for the read.
Cheers,
John
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