Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the
Poet Laureate of the United StatesThe Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the nation's official poet. During his or her term, the Poet Laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of...
from 1949 to 1950, a
Pulitzer Prize winnerThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
in 1956 and a
National Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
Winner for Poetry in 1970.
Elizabeth Bishop HouseThe Elizabeth Bishop House, also known as the Bulmer House, is an historic single-family house that today is used as an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia. The house is associated with Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Bishop who in her youth lived in the house each summer with...
is an artists' retreat in
Great Village, Nova ScotiaGreat Village is a community of approximately 500 people located along Trunk 2 and the north shore of Cobequid Bay in Colchester County Nova Scotia...
dedicated to her memory. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century.
Early years
Elizabeth Bishop, an only child, was born in
Worcester, MassachusettsWorcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....
. After her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight months old, Bishop’s mother became mentally ill and was institutionalized in 1916.
["Elizabeth Bishop, The Art of Poetry No. 27" Interview in Paris Review Summer 1981 No. 80] (Bishop wrote about the time of her mother's struggles in her short story "In The Village.") Effectively orphaned during her very early childhood, she lived with her grandparents on a farm in
Great Village, Nova ScotiaGreat Village is a community of approximately 500 people located along Trunk 2 and the north shore of Cobequid Bay in Colchester County Nova Scotia...
, a period she also referenced in her writing. This was also where she developed into a first-class fisherwoman. Bishop's mother remained in an asylum until her death in 1934, and the two were never reunited. Later in childhood, Bishop's paternal family gained custody, and she was removed from the care of her grandparents and moved in with her father's wealthier family in Worcester, Massachusetts. However, Bishop was unhappy in Worcester, and her separation from her grandparents made her lonely. While she was living in Worcester, she developed chronic asthma, from which she suffered for the rest of her life.
Her time in Worcester is briefly chronicled in her poem "In The Waiting Room."
Bishop boarded at the
Walnut Hill SchoolWalnut Hill School for the Arts is a private boarding school for the arts located in Natick, Massachusetts.-Boarding School:Walnut Hill was founded in 1893 as a college preparatory school for women and a feeder school to Wellesley College. It became coeducational and arts-focused in the late 1970s...
in
Natick, MassachusettsNatick is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Natick is located near the center of the MetroWest region of Massachusetts, with a population of 33,006 at the 2010 census. Only west from Boston, Natick is considered part of the Greater Boston area...
, where she studied music.
At the school her first poems were published by her friend Frani Blough in a student magazine. Then she entered
Vassar CollegeVassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
in the fall of 1929, shortly before the
stock market crashThe Wall Street Crash of 1929 , also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout...
, planning to be a composer. She gave up music because of a terror of performance and switched to English where she took courses including 16th and 17th century literature and the novel.
Bishop published her work in her senior year in
The Magazine (based in California)
and 1933, she co-founded
Con Spirito, a rebel
literary magazineA literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
at Vassar, with writer
Mary McCarthyMary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
(one year her senior), Margaret Miller, and the sisters Eunice and
Eleanor ClarkEleanor Clark was an American writer. Clark was born in Los Angeles. She attended Vassar College in the 1930s and was involved with the literary magazine Con Spirito there, along with Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, and her sister Eunice Clark...
. Bishop graduated in 1934.
Influences
Bishop was greatly influenced by the poet
Marianne MooreMarianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
to whom she was introduced by a librarian at Vassar in 1934. Moore took a keen interest in Bishop’s work, and at one point Moore dissuaded Bishop from attending Cornell Medical School, in which the poet had briefly enrolled herself after moving to
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
following her Vassar graduation. It was four years before Bishop addressed "Dear Miss Moore" as "Dear Marianne," and only then at the elder poet’s invitation. The friendship between the two women, memorialized by an extensive correspondence (see
One Art), endured until Moore's death in 1972. Bishop's "At the Fishhouses" (1955) contains allusions on several levels to Moore's 1924 poem "A Grave."
She was introduced to
Robert LowellRobert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
by
Randall JarrellRandall Jarrell was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role which now holds the title of US Poet Laureate.-Life:Jarrell was a native of Nashville, Tennessee...
in 1947 and they became great friends, mostly through their written correspondence, until Lowell's death in 1977. After his death, she wrote, "our friendship, [which was] often kept alive through years of separation only by letters, remained constant and affectionate, and I shall always be deeply grateful for it". They also both influenced each other's poetry. Lowell cited Bishop's influence on his poem "Skunk Hour" which he said, "[was] modeled on Miss Bishop's 'The Armadillo.'" Also, his poem "The Scream" is "derived from...Bishop's story
In the Village." "North Haven," one of the last poems she published during her lifetime, was written in memory of Lowell in 1978.
Travel and success
Bishop had an independent income in early adulthood as a result of an inheritance from her deceased father that did not run out until the end of her life.
With this inheritance, Bishop was able to travel widely without worrying about employment and lived in many cities and countries which are described in her poems. She lived in France for several years in the mid-1930s with a friend she knew at Vassar,
Louise CraneLouise Crane , a prominent American philanthropist. Crane was a friend to some of New York’s leading literary figures, including Tennessee Williams and Marianne Moore....
, who was a paper-manufacturing heiress. In 1938, Bishop purchased a house with Crane at 624 White Street in
Key West, Florida Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
. While living there Bishop made the acquaintance of Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, who had divorced
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
in 1940.
In 1949 to 1950, she was Consultant in Poetry for the
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, and lived at Bertha Looker's Boardinghouse, 1312 30th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C., in Georgetown.
In 1946, Marianne Moore suggested Bishop for the Houghton Mifflin Prize for poetry, which Bishop won. Her first book,
North & South, was published in 1,000 copies. The book prompted the literary critic
Randall JarrellRandall Jarrell was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a role which now holds the title of US Poet Laureate.-Life:Jarrell was a native of Nashville, Tennessee...
to write that “all her poems have written underneath, 'I have seen it,'" referring to Bishop's talent for vivid description.
Upon receiving a substantial $2,500 traveling fellowship from
Bryn Mawr CollegeBryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
in 1951, Bishop set off to circumnavigate South America by boat. Arriving in
Santos-Sister cities: Shimonoseki, Japan Nagasaki, Japan Funchal, Portugal Trieste, Italy Coimbra, Portugal Ansião, Portugal Arouca, Portugal Ushuaia, Argentina Havana, Cuba Taizhou. China Ningbo. China Constanţa, Romania Ulsan, South Korea Colón, Panama* Cadiz, Spain...
,
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in November of that year, Bishop expected to stay two weeks but stayed fifteen years. She lived in Pétropolis with architect
Lota de Macedo SoaresMaria Carlota Costallat de Macedo Soares was a Brazilian aesthete who conceived and constructed the Flamengo Park in Rio de Janeiro...
, descended from a prominent and notable political family. While living in Brazil, in 1956 Bishop received the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
for a collection of poetry,
Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring, which combined her first two books. Although Bishop was not forthcoming about details of her romance with Soares, much of their relationship was documented in Bishop's extensive correspondence with
Samuel Ashley BrownSamuel Ashley Brown was a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina who taught English and comparative literature...
. However, in its later years, the relationship deteriorated, becoming volatile and tempestuous, marked by bouts of depression, tantrums and alcoholism.
It was during her time in
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
that Elizabeth Bishop became increasingly interested in the languages and literatures of
Latin AmericaLatin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. She was influenced by South and Central American poets, including the
MexicanThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
poet,
Octavio PazOctavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
, as well as the
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian poets
João Cabral de Melo NetoJoão Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower"...
and
Carlos Drummond de AndradeCarlos Drummond de Andrade was perhaps the most influential Brazilian poet of the 20th century. He has become something of a national poet; his poem "Canção Amiga" was printed on the 50 cruzados note...
and translated their work into English. Regarding de Andrade, she said, "I didn't know him at all. He's supposed to be very shy. I'm supposed to be very shy. We've met once — on the sidewalk at night. We had just come out of the same restaurant, and he kissed my hand politely when we were introduced." After Soares took her own life in 1967 Bishop spent more time in the US.
Literary style and identity
Bishop did not see herself as a "lesbian poet" or as a "female poet." Although she still considered herself to be "a strong feminist," she only wanted to be judged based on the quality of her writing and not on her gender or sexual orientation.
Also, where some of her notable contemporaries like
Robert LowellRobert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
and
John BerrymanJohn Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...
made the intimate, often sordid details of their personal lives an important part of their poetry, Bishop avoided this practice altogether.
[Helen Vendler phone interview on Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop audio podcast from The New York Review of Books]The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
. Accessed 2010-09-11 For instance, like Berryman, Bishop struggled with alcoholism and depression throughout her adult life; but Bishop never wrote about this struggle (whereas Berryman made his alcoholism and depression a focal point in his
dream song poemsThe Dream Songs is a compilation of two books of poetry, 77 Dream Songs and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest by the American poet, John Berryman...
).
In contrast to this confessional style involving large amounts of self-exposure, Bishop's style of writing, though it sometimes involved sparse details from her personal life, was known for its highly detailed and objective, distant point of view and for its reticence on the sordid subject matter that obsessed her contemporaries. In contrast to a poet like Lowell, when Bishop wrote about details and people from her own life (as she did in her story about her childhood and her mentally unstable mother in "In the Village"), she always used discretion.
Although she was generally supportive of the "confessional" style of her friend, Robert Lowell, she drew the line at Lowell's highly controversial book
The Dolphin (1973), in which he used and altered private letters from his ex-wife,
Elizabeth HardwickElizabeth Hardwick was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer. -Life:Hardwick was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1939...
(whom he'd recently divorced after 23 years of marriage), as material for his poems. In a letter to Lowell, dated March 21, 1972, Bishop strongly urged him against publishing the book, writing, "One can use one's life as material [for poems]--one does anyway—but these letters—aren't you violating a trust? IF you were given permission—IF you hadn't changed them. . .etc. But
art just isn't worth that much."
Later career
In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize, Bishop won the
National Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
and the
National Book Critics Circle AwardThe National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
as well as two
Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
s and an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant. In 1976, she became the first woman to receive the
Neustadt International Prize for LiteratureThe Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award for literature sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication, World Literature Today. It is widely considered to be the most prestigious international literary prize after the Nobel Prize in...
, and remains the only American to be awarded that prize.
Bishop lectured in higher education for a number of years starting in the 1970s when her inheritance began to run out. For a short time she taught at the
University of WashingtonUniversity of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
, before teaching at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
for seven years. She often spent her summers in her summer house in the island community of
North Haven, MaineNorth Haven is a town in Knox County, Maine, United States, in Penobscot Bay. The town is both a year-round island community and a prominent summer colony. The population was 381 at the 2000 census...
. She taught at
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, before finishing at the
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. She commented "I don’t think I believe in writing courses at all… It’s true, children sometimes write wonderful things, paint wonderful pictures, but I think they should be discouraged."
In 1971 Bishop began a relationship with Alice Methfessel.
[Random House essay by Ernest Hilbert Retrieved 2008-04-25] Never a prolific writer, Bishop noted that she would begin many projects and leave them unfinished. She published her last book in 1977,
Geography III.
Two years later, she died of a
cerebral aneurysmA cerebral or brain aneurysm is a cerebrovascular disorder in which weakness in the wall of a cerebral artery or vein causes a localized dilation or ballooning of the blood vessel.- Signs and symptoms :...
in her apartment at Lewis Wharf, Boston. She is buried in Hope Cemetery in
Worcester, MassachusettsWorcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....
. Alice Methfessel was her literary executor.
Works by Bishop
Poetry collections:
- North & South (Houghton Mifflin, 1946)
- Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1955)
- A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1956)
- Questions of Travel (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965)
- The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969)
- Geography III, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976)
- The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983)
- Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop ed. Alice Quinn, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006)
Other works:
- The Diary of Helena Morley, by Alice Brant, translated and with an Introduction by Elizabeth Bishop, (Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1957
The year 1957 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Lawrence Durrell publishes the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet. The final of the four volumes will be published in 1960....
)
- The Ballad of the Burglar of Babylon (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968
The year 1968 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Dean R. Koontz's first novel, Star Quest is published....
)
- An Anthology of Twentieth Century Brazilian Poetry edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil, (Wesleyan University Press (1972)
- The Collected Prose (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1984
The year 1984 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is widely read....
)
- One Art: Letters selected and edited by Robert Giroux, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994)
- Exchanging Hats: Elizabeth Bishop Paintings, edited and with an Introduction by William Benton, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996
The year 1996 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, is removed from an advanced placement English reading list in Lindale, Texas because it "conflicted with the values of the community."* In the United Kingdom, the first...
)
- Poems, Prose and Letters Robert Giroux
Robert Giroux was an influential American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he became a partner and, eventually, its chairman...
and Lloyd SchwartzLloyd Schwartz is an American poet who is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston...
, eds. (New York: Library of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2008)
- Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
, ed. Thomas Travisano, Saskia HamiltonSaskia Hamilton is an American poet. She graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A., and from New York University with an M.A. She worked for the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Lannan Foundation...
(Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2008)
- Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop . George Monteiro Ed. (University Press of Mississippi 1996)
Awards and honors
- 1945: Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship
- 1947: Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
- 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
The Shelley Memorial Award of more than $3,500, given out by the Poetry Society of America, was established by the will of the late Mary P. Sears, and named after the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The prize is given to a living American poet selected with reference to genius and need. The selection is...
- 1954: Elected to lifetime membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters
- 1956: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
- 1960: Chapelbrook Foundation Award
- 1964: Academy of American Poets Fellowship
- 1968: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
- 1968: Ingram-Merrill Foundation Grant
- 1969: National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
- 1969: The Order of the Rio Branco (awarded by the Brazilian government)
- 1974: Harriet Monroe
Harriet Monroe was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet and patron of the arts. She is best known as the founding publisher and long-time editor of Poetry Magazine, which made its debut in 1912. As a supporter of the poets Ezra Pound, H. D., T. S...
Poetry Award
- 1976: Books Abroad/Neustadt International Prize
- 1976: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 1977: National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
- 1978: Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
Profiles
Articles and critical analysis
- "Hemingway, Bishop and Key West: Two Writers’ Perspectives", Thomas Travisano, Berfrois, June 15, 2011
- Helen Vendler phone interview on Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop audio podcast from The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
. (Audio, 28 mins) Accessed 2010-09-11
- "Elizabeth Bishop, The Art of Poetry No. 27". Interview in Paris Review Summer 1981 No. 80
- "'Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters" April 29, 2008 (audio file 22 mins) from NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
and "Poets' Letters Describe A Love Of Words" December 14, 2008
- "Casual Perfection: Why did the publication of Elizabeth Bishop's drafts cause an uproar?" June 13, 2006. Slate Magazine
- Works on Paper: the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
84/35 (November 3, 2008) : 106–110 Retrieved 2008-04-25
- "The Politics of Editing Bishop’s 1962 Brazil Volume for Life World Library", Angus Cleghorn, Berfrois, September 20, 2011
- Yale College Lecture on Elizabeth Bishop audio, video and full transcripts from Open Yale Courses. (Audio file, Lecture 24). Yale lecture continued, (Audio file, Lecture 25)
Archive