Benton 49. “A comb is a harp strummed by the glance / of a little girl / born dumb.” – “Objects and Apparitions.” Bishop’s translation of Octavio Paz’s homage to Joseph Cornell, “Objetos y Apariciones” appeared in The New Yorker on June 24, 1974, and was one of the last poems to be included in Geography III. Like Paz, Bishop was a great admirer of Joseph Cornell, whose name is now virtually synonymous with this art form. “Cornell is superb. I first saw the Medici Slot Machine when I was in college. Oh, I loved it. To think one could have bought some of those things then. . . . When I looked at his show in New York two years ago I nearly fainted, because one of my favorite books is a book he liked and used. It’s a little book by an English scientist who wrote for children about soap bubbles [Soap Bubbles; their colours and the forces which mould them, by Sir C. V. Boys, 1889].” – Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop. Edited by George Monteiro. (Jackson, MS.: University of Mississippi Press, 1996), pp. 120-121.