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view altogether. Having such a distaste, or perhaps inability, for touting her ideas as being the truth, it seems almost necessary for Bishop to turn her aesthetic critique on its head by presenting Mr. Swan's view of the wasp's nest, functioning seemingly as the end punctuation of the poem. She must present a view contrary to hers, lest her ideas be ingenuine and pretentious.

Bishop presents us with two aesthetic opinions about the wasp's nest in order to assert subtly that everyone's view of beauty is different. This relativistic view is characteristic of the majority of postmodern thought. Anthropologist Ernest Gellner stated, when speaking of relativism in postmodernity, that "viewing man as part of nature requires us to see cognitive and evaluative activities as part of nature too, and hence varying from organism to organism and context to context" (Weis). This means that if man is a natural entity, we must consider his thoughts and values as natural as well, and therefore as valid as any other person's. More simply put, one must consider a person's context when considering another's point of view. Bishop makes a point to give reason why Mr. Swan's view is as viable as her own. Her method of doing this is to simply humanize Mr. Swan. She does so by describing him as a "fellow-passenger," giving us several details about his life, such as his nationality, past career, and reason for being on the ship, and even giving a favorable evaluation of him, citing him as being "really a very nice old man." By humanizing Mr. Swan, Bishop is suggesting that his view of the wasp's nest should be taken as seriously as her own because, as Gellner would assert, Mr. Swan and his aesthetic ideas are equally valid, due to the human nature of both Bishop and Mr. Swan. This is not to say that Bishop is completely objective and has no preferred view of beauty. Obviously, she feels strongly about her assertion that the wasp's nest is beautiful, and her detailed description of the town suggests that it is, in her eyes, beautiful enough to dwell on. Regardless of her preference for her own sense of beauty, she recognizes that her aesthetic perception is not definitive, that everyone else feels the same way about their own definition of beauty. Bishop's implied attempt to validate Mr. Swan's view reveals not cold aesthetic objectivity, but rather a desire, or perhaps even a need, to respect differences in ideas of beauty. In her relativistic postmodern mindset, the only way to

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