I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody;
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
Elizabeth Bishop.
I chose this poem because I thought it was really funny that right after I read a "Sestina" poem, I found a "Sonnet" poem. I almost wonder if Bishop feels that she needs to point the poem form out to us. Or maybe she is suggesting that her Sonnet is the Sonnet.
I think the speaker of this poem means it as a tribute to music. The speaker says that music calms her fretful finger-tips and her trembling lips. It also heals people, and rests the tired dead. In this poem music puts all tired and strained things to rest and at ease. The sleep that the speaker mentions in the last line seems too rested, calm, and eternal to be regular sleep though... But if death is emphasized in this poem, I don't yet know what the speaker means to express about it.
Literary Terms
-Sonnet: This poem is in the form of a sonnet.
-Alliteration in this poem creates a soothing, calming, feel, like music, and exhibits the very quality of music that the speaker is talking about. Examples: "fretful, feeling finger-tips... bitter-tainted, trembling lips," "some song sung," "quiet breath, and cool," "subaqueous stillness of the sea," "floats forever"
-Heroic Line: Every line in this sonnet is a heroic line.
-Cheville: "Oh," in line 5 may be a Cheville.
-Inversion: In my opinion "Over" (2), "Over" (3), "Heart, that" (11), "sinks through" (11), "fading" (11), "colors" are all inversions.
-Trochee: "Over" (2), "Over" (3)
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Sestina
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Elizabeth Bishop.
I chose this poem because I had just read the Sestina, "A Miracle for Breakfast," and was intrigued by this poem because it was named, "Sestina," the poem form that I had just discovered. The title also interested me because in music, works are often named by their forms: Sonata, Concerto, Quartet, Symphony, Minuet, etc etc. When I read it, the title became of more interest to me because the poem is not titled Sestina only because it is written in the form of a Sestina, but also because this form implies something about one of the characters (see below). I wonder why the grandmother is sad though, and why the child draws houses.
-Personification: Bishop does almost a double personification with the condensation on the teakettle. She calls the water droplets tears of the teakettle, personifying the teakettle by giving it tears, and then these tears are further personified because they dance. The rain is also said to dance. The stove and the almanac also both speak.
-Repetition: Although it is one of the ending words, "tears" felt very repeated to me. Maybe this was because the other repeating words were "grandmother," and "child" which were both characters in the poem, and then "almanac," "house," and "stove" which all were characters in the poem in their own way. Maybe it stood out to me because tears were the only word that seemed to affect the tone/mood so much.
-Characterization through form: The grandmother seems to restrain herself from showing her true emotions, paralleling the restrictive form of the Sestina.
-Tone: The poem has a rather sad and melancholy tone. The action/plot that occurs is minimal, but rain is introduced to the poem in the very first line, setting us up in the tone that remains throughout the entire poem. Tears was also an obvious indicator of the poem's tone, but other more subtle words set up the tone as well such as "falls," "failing light," "beats,""shivers," "chilly," "secretly," "hard," and "dark."
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Elizabeth Bishop.
I chose this poem because I had just read the Sestina, "A Miracle for Breakfast," and was intrigued by this poem because it was named, "Sestina," the poem form that I had just discovered. The title also interested me because in music, works are often named by their forms: Sonata, Concerto, Quartet, Symphony, Minuet, etc etc. When I read it, the title became of more interest to me because the poem is not titled Sestina only because it is written in the form of a Sestina, but also because this form implies something about one of the characters (see below). I wonder why the grandmother is sad though, and why the child draws houses.
-Personification: Bishop does almost a double personification with the condensation on the teakettle. She calls the water droplets tears of the teakettle, personifying the teakettle by giving it tears, and then these tears are further personified because they dance. The rain is also said to dance. The stove and the almanac also both speak.
-Repetition: Although it is one of the ending words, "tears" felt very repeated to me. Maybe this was because the other repeating words were "grandmother," and "child" which were both characters in the poem, and then "almanac," "house," and "stove" which all were characters in the poem in their own way. Maybe it stood out to me because tears were the only word that seemed to affect the tone/mood so much.
-Characterization through form: The grandmother seems to restrain herself from showing her true emotions, paralleling the restrictive form of the Sestina.
-Tone: The poem has a rather sad and melancholy tone. The action/plot that occurs is minimal, but rain is introduced to the poem in the very first line, setting us up in the tone that remains throughout the entire poem. Tears was also an obvious indicator of the poem's tone, but other more subtle words set up the tone as well such as "falls," "failing light," "beats,""shivers," "chilly," "secretly," "hard," and "dark."
A Miracle for Breakfast
At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.
The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.
He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun.
Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.
I can tell you what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
--I saw it with one eye close to the crumb--
and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
and mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and I drink gallons of coffee.
We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.
Elizabeth Bishop.
I was drawn to this poem again by the title of the poem. Light seems to radiate from the image that just the title conjures.
The naturalness and fluidity of this poem amazes me considering that Bishop had to adhere to a strict poetic form. I didn't even notice the intricate repetition until I had read the poem at least a couple of times because she so skillfully wove it into her writing and seemed completely unhindered by the restraint/requirement.
I did not understand this poem much until I learned an essential piece of information: Bishop wrote this poem during the Great Depression when she witnessed the masses lining up for coffee and crumbs (both one of the five repeated words). It seems that the balcony and the people on the balcony represent the government and how they live their lives. In "A Miracle for Breakfast," it seems that the people on the balcony are the ones getting all the coffee and crumbs--maybe Bishop wrote this poem in order to point this out and to express her disapproval of such a system. I think the sun may represent something that is supposed to always be helpful or should show sympathy for the people waiting in the line but receiving nothing, but moves on. Or, it could, probably more possibly, simply show the passage of time, the passage of the morning.
Literary Devices
-Allusion: The miracle that the victims of the Great Depression hope for, alludes to the biblical story in which Jesus fed 5,000 people (some sources say 5,000 men and then in addition their wives and children) with only five loaves (some sources say seven loaves) of bread and two fish.
-Sestina: The style of this poem is a Sestina, which follows the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, and ending with a three-line envoi.
The rhyme pattern is:
ABCDEF
FAEBDC
CFDABE
ECBFAD
DEACFB
BDFECA
(envoi) ECA or ACE (Bishop does AEC... this must be another version)
-Extended Metaphor: Literally, the poem is about people at a river lining up and waiting to receive coffee and crumbs of bread, waiting for a miracle in which they can receive more than enough food and drink gallons of coffee, but the speaker's true focus are the people lined up for food during the Great Depression.
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.
The first ferry of the day had just crossed the river.
It was so cold we hoped that the coffee
would be very hot, seeing that the sun
was not going to warm us; and that the crumb
would be a loaf each, buttered, by a miracle.
At seven a man stepped out on the balcony.
He stood for a minute alone on the balcony
looking over our heads toward the river.
A servant handed him the makings of a miracle,
consisting of one lone cup of coffee
and one roll, which he proceeded to crumb,
his head, so to speak, in the clouds--along with the sun.
Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!
Each man received one rather hard crumb
which some flicked scornfully into the river,
and, in a cup, one drop of the coffee.
Some of us stood around, waiting for the miracle.
I can tell you what I saw next; it was not a miracle.
A beautiful villa stood in the sun
and from its doors came the smell of hot coffee.
In front, a baroque white plaster balcony
added by birds, who nest along the river,
--I saw it with one eye close to the crumb--
and galleries and marble chambers. My crumb
and mansion, made for me by a miracle,
through ages, by insects, birds, and the river
working the stone. Every day, in the sun,
at breakfast time I sit on my balcony
with my feet up, and I drink gallons of coffee.
We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.
Elizabeth Bishop.
I was drawn to this poem again by the title of the poem. Light seems to radiate from the image that just the title conjures.
The naturalness and fluidity of this poem amazes me considering that Bishop had to adhere to a strict poetic form. I didn't even notice the intricate repetition until I had read the poem at least a couple of times because she so skillfully wove it into her writing and seemed completely unhindered by the restraint/requirement.
I did not understand this poem much until I learned an essential piece of information: Bishop wrote this poem during the Great Depression when she witnessed the masses lining up for coffee and crumbs (both one of the five repeated words). It seems that the balcony and the people on the balcony represent the government and how they live their lives. In "A Miracle for Breakfast," it seems that the people on the balcony are the ones getting all the coffee and crumbs--maybe Bishop wrote this poem in order to point this out and to express her disapproval of such a system. I think the sun may represent something that is supposed to always be helpful or should show sympathy for the people waiting in the line but receiving nothing, but moves on. Or, it could, probably more possibly, simply show the passage of time, the passage of the morning.
Literary Devices
-Allusion: The miracle that the victims of the Great Depression hope for, alludes to the biblical story in which Jesus fed 5,000 people (some sources say 5,000 men and then in addition their wives and children) with only five loaves (some sources say seven loaves) of bread and two fish.
-Sestina: The style of this poem is a Sestina, which follows the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, and ending with a three-line envoi.
The rhyme pattern is:
ABCDEF
FAEBDC
CFDABE
ECBFAD
DEACFB
BDFECA
(envoi) ECA or ACE (Bishop does AEC... this must be another version)
-Extended Metaphor: Literally, the poem is about people at a river lining up and waiting to receive coffee and crumbs of bread, waiting for a miracle in which they can receive more than enough food and drink gallons of coffee, but the speaker's true focus are the people lined up for food during the Great Depression.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
To Be Written on the Mirror in Whitewash
I live only here, between your eyes and you,
But I live in your world. What do I do?
--Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;
Above all I am not that staring man.
Elizabeth Bishop.
Possibly helpful information:
1. whitewash: a solution of lime and water or of whiting, size, and water, used for painting walls white.
2. whitewashing: a deliberate concealment of someone's mistakes or faults in order to clear their name.
I was immediately drawn to this poem when browsing the poem titles by Ms. Bishop. What is to be written on the mirror in whitewash? Why would you ever write something on a mirror with whitewash? Almost seems counterintuitive because that would seem like declaring something when the verb to whitewash has a very different meaning.
Poetic Devices
-Rhyme: lines 1-4; AABB
-Assonance: "But I live in your world." (2), "Collect no interest" (3), "otherwise what I can", "I am that staring man" (4)
-Anaphora: "I live only here, between your eyes and you, / But I live in your world. What do I do?" (1-2)
But I live in your world. What do I do?
--Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;
Above all I am not that staring man.
Elizabeth Bishop.
Possibly helpful information:
1. whitewash: a solution of lime and water or of whiting, size, and water, used for painting walls white.
2. whitewashing: a deliberate concealment of someone's mistakes or faults in order to clear their name.
I was immediately drawn to this poem when browsing the poem titles by Ms. Bishop. What is to be written on the mirror in whitewash? Why would you ever write something on a mirror with whitewash? Almost seems counterintuitive because that would seem like declaring something when the verb to whitewash has a very different meaning.
I think this poem has something to do with the speaker’s true identity versus his facade and/or the identity that “your world” (2) forces him to hold. It seems that the speaker of the poem is the man’s ‘true’ identity, observing the man from the mirror. I don’t really understand, “What do I do? / --Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;” (2-3) Maybe it means that the man has deviated from his true self so much that his true self no longer has control over his physical body? The last line indicated to me the chasm that has developed between the man and the figure in the mirror.
Poetic Devices
-Rhyme: lines 1-4; AABB
-Assonance: "But I live in your world." (2), "Collect no interest" (3), "otherwise what I can", "I am that staring man" (4)
-Anaphora: "I live only here, between your eyes and you, / But I live in your world. What do I do?" (1-2)
Thursday, January 12, 2012
In the Waiting Room
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
(5) in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
(10) lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(15) (I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs;
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
(20) in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
"Long Pig," the caption said.
(25) Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
(30) Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
(35) Suddenly, from inside,
cane an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
(40) even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
(45) was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling
(50) our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
(55) I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
Into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
(60) you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
(65) I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
(70) lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
(75) or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
(80) and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn't know any
word for it how "unlikely"...
(85) How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
(90) and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
(95) in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
Elizabeth Bishop.
Observations
"In the Waiting Room," starts simply with a child speaker, but ultimately questions what it means to be a woman. Visually, the poem is very simple. Though stanzas vary in length, they stay fairly constant in terms of width. It uses uncomplicated, declarative language, such as "The waiting room was bright / and too hot," (89-90) indicating the age of the girl and emphasizing the child perspective the speaker will use to address her own interpretation of gender.
The first and longest stanza establishes setting and brings out small bits of seemingly harmless observations and information; then we reach the speaker's epiphany at the end of the stanza where she pulls all of these observations together with purpose. When Aunt Consuelo cries out, her voice was "not very long or loud" (38), and the speaker notes that "even then I knew she was / a foolish, timid woman" (40) for just like many other cries of women, it "could have / got loud and worse but hadn't" (87-88). She "might have been embarrassed, / but wasn't" (41-42). At first I did not understand this, but Bishop is suggesting that it is embarrassing to only give a short, shy, polite cry of pain if something is hurting you.
The second and third stanzas are similar in length. The second stanza makes her epiphany more concrete and we (or this is when I did) finally understand what she is getting at--by "them" (61) she means women, and by "it" (64) she is referring to the idea of gender. This is when you realize the connection between all the pieces that she had been dispensing. In the third stanza, the girl realizes that she has already become a woman in soem aspects and is on her way to becoming one.
Poetic Devices
-Enjambment exists throughout the poem, almost in every line.
-Flashback: I interpreted this entire poem as a flashback, with the speaker looking back at her experience in the waiting room when she was a six-year-old girl.
-Metonymy: "shadowy gray knees / trousers and skirts and boots" (67-68) refers to women.
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
(5) in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
(10) lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(15) (I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs;
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
(20) in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
"Long Pig," the caption said.
(25) Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
(30) Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
(35) Suddenly, from inside,
cane an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
(40) even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
(45) was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling
(50) our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
(55) I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
Into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
(60) you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
(65) I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
(70) lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
(75) or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
(80) and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn't know any
word for it how "unlikely"...
(85) How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
(90) and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
(95) in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
Elizabeth Bishop.
Observations
"In the Waiting Room," starts simply with a child speaker, but ultimately questions what it means to be a woman. Visually, the poem is very simple. Though stanzas vary in length, they stay fairly constant in terms of width. It uses uncomplicated, declarative language, such as "The waiting room was bright / and too hot," (89-90) indicating the age of the girl and emphasizing the child perspective the speaker will use to address her own interpretation of gender.
The first and longest stanza establishes setting and brings out small bits of seemingly harmless observations and information; then we reach the speaker's epiphany at the end of the stanza where she pulls all of these observations together with purpose. When Aunt Consuelo cries out, her voice was "not very long or loud" (38), and the speaker notes that "even then I knew she was / a foolish, timid woman" (40) for just like many other cries of women, it "could have / got loud and worse but hadn't" (87-88). She "might have been embarrassed, / but wasn't" (41-42). At first I did not understand this, but Bishop is suggesting that it is embarrassing to only give a short, shy, polite cry of pain if something is hurting you.
The second and third stanzas are similar in length. The second stanza makes her epiphany more concrete and we (or this is when I did) finally understand what she is getting at--by "them" (61) she means women, and by "it" (64) she is referring to the idea of gender. This is when you realize the connection between all the pieces that she had been dispensing. In the third stanza, the girl realizes that she has already become a woman in soem aspects and is on her way to becoming one.
Poetic Devices
-Enjambment exists throughout the poem, almost in every line.
-Flashback: I interpreted this entire poem as a flashback, with the speaker looking back at her experience in the waiting room when she was a six-year-old girl.
-Metonymy: "shadowy gray knees / trousers and skirts and boots" (67-68) refers to women.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Elizabeth Bishop: Background and Biography
Life, Education, & Career
Elizabeth Bishop was born as an only child born in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 8, 1911. Since her father died when she was only eight months old, she was orphaned in 1916 when her mother became mentally ill and was institutionalized. Her mother remained in the asylum until her death in 1934; she and Ms. Bishop never reunited. At this point she moved to Great Village, Nova Scotia, Canada, where she lived with her maternal grandparents on a farm and developed into a first-class fisherwoman. When she was six or seven years old, her paternal family gained custody. She was removed from the care of her grandparents in Nova Scotia and lived with her father's wealthier family in Worcester, Massachusetts, who worried about the limited financial and educational resources available in Nova Scotia. Ms. Bishop was unhappy in Worcester, however, and separation from her maternal grandparents made her lonely. She also developed chronic asthma when living in Worcester, which she suffered with for the rest of her life.
It was under the care of her paternal grandparents however that she boarded the elite Walnut Hill School for Girls (now the Walnut Hill School for the arts) in Natick, Massachusetts. Here, her friend Frani Blough published her first poems in a student magazine. In the fall of 1929, she entered Vassar College, intending to study composition. She quit music after her first year however due to fear of performing in public (she played piano) and changed her focus to English. In this concentration her studies included sixteenth and seventeenth century literature as well as the novel. In her senior year she published her work in The Magazine and in 1933 she co-founded Con Spirito, a Vassar rebel literary magazine, with Mary McCarthy, Margaret Miller, Eunice Clark, and Eleanor Clark. Ms. Bishop graduated Vassaar College in 1934.
After college, Ms. Bishop traveled extensively throughout Spain, Italy, Ireland, France, and North Africa. Much of her poetry is filled with descriptions of her experiences in these countries. In 1938, she stopped travelling and settled in Key West, where she wrote many of the poems which would be collected in her Pulitzer Prize-winning North and South. In 1944, she left Key West and lived in Brazil for fourteen years with her lover, the architect Lota de Macedo Soares. The two became a curiosity in the town of Pétropolis. After Soares took her own life in 1967, Bishop spent more time in Massachusetts, New York, and San Francisco, and took a teaching position at Harvard in 1970. Also in 1970, Ms. Bishop received a National Book Award in Poetry for her The Complete Poems. Her reputation increased exponentially in the years before her death, especially after the publication of Geography III in 1976 and her winning of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Ms. Bishop worked not only as a poet but as a painter, and her poetry is known for its ability to capture scenes. Though independently wealthy and thus able to experience a fairly privileged life, she fills her poetry with images of working-class settings (perhaps inspired by her significant time in Nova Scotia) such as farms, fishing villages, and busy factories.
Ms. Bishop died on October 6, 1979. A new edition of her The Complete Poems (1927-1979) was published in early 1983, and The Collected Prose was published in 1984.
Poetry Collections by Elizabeth Bishop
Ms. Bishop worked not only as a poet but as a painter, and her poetry is known for its ability to capture scenes. Though independently wealthy and thus able to experience a fairly privileged life, she fills her poetry with images of working-class settings (perhaps inspired by her significant time in Nova Scotia) such as farms, fishing villages, and busy factories.
Ms. Bishop died on October 6, 1979. A new edition of her The Complete Poems (1927-1979) was published in early 1983, and The Collected Prose was published in 1984.
Poetry Collections by Elizabeth Bishop
- North & South (1946)
- Poems: North & South / A Cold Spring (1955)
- A Cold Spring (1956)
- Questions of Travel (1965)
- The Complete Poems (1969)
- Geography III (1976)
- The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 (1983)
- Edgar Allen Poe and The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (2006)
Other Works by or about Elizabeth Bishop
- The Diary of Helena Morley, by Alice Brant, translation & introduction by Elizabeth Bishop (1972)
- The Ballad of the Burglar of Babylon (1968)
- An Anthology of Twentieth Century Brazilian Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil (1972)
- The Collected Prose (1984)
- One Art: Letters selected and edited by Robert Giroux (1994)
- Exchanging Hats: Elizabeth Bishop Paintings, edited and with an introduction by William Benton (1996)
- Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop, edited by George Monteiro (1996)
- Poems, Prose and Letters, edited by Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz (2008)
- Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowel, edited by Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton (2008)
Awards and Honors
- 1945: Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship
- 1947: Guggenheim Fellowship
- 1949: Appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress
- 1950: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award
- 1951: Lucy Martin Donelly Fellowship (awarded by Bryn Mawr College)
- 1953: Shelley Memorial Award
- 1954: Elected to lifetime membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters
- 1956: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- 1960: Chapelbrook Foundation Award
- 1964: Academy of American Poets Fellowship
- 1968: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1968: Ingram-Merrill Foundation Grant
- 1969: National Book Award
- 1969: The Order of the Rio Branco (awarded by the Brazilian government)
- 1974: Harriet Monroe Poetry Award
- 1976: Books Abroad/Neustadt International Prize
- 1976: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 1977: National Book Critics Circle Award
- 1978: Guggenheim Fellowship
Helpful Links (and where I obtained the above information)
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