Elizabeth Bishop's Poetry and Prose
Poetry:
A Cold Spring
The Complete Poems 1927-1979
Geography III
North and South
Questions of Travel
Prose:
The Collected Prose
North and South
First book of poems.
Favorites include:
- "The Unbeliever"
- "Sleeping on the Ceiling"
- "Roosters"
- "The Fish"
Some of her humor and quirkiness foreshadows
Kay Ryan.
Many of the others are weak, prose-like poems.
Some simple statistics:
| Number of pages
| 50
|
| Number of poems
| 30
|
| Mean number of pages per poems
| 1.7
|
| Number of stanzas per poems
| Between 1 and 44.
|
| Number of poems with regular stanzaic form plus rhymed or off-rhymed (sometimes irregularly)
| 70% (21 of 30)
|
A Cold Spring
Together with
North and South,
formed Poems, second book of poems.
Favorites include:
- "The Bight" (for its amazing last couplet):
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.
|
- "The Prodigal"
- "Letter to N.Y."
Again, some of her humor and quirky rhymes foreshadows
Kay Ryan.
Some simple statistics:
| Number of pages
| 30
|
| Number of poems
| 16
|
| Mean number of pages per poems
| 1.9
|
| Number of stanzas per poems
| Between 1 and 12.
|
| Number of poems with regular stanzaic form plus rhymed or off-rhymed (sometimes irregularly)
| 57% (9 of 16)
|
Questions of Travel
Third book of poems.
Favorites include:
- "Squatter's Children"
- "Song for the Rainy Season"
- "The Burglar of Babylon"
- "First Death in Nova Scotia"
Some simple statistics:
| Number of pages
| 45
|
| Number of poems
| 19
|
| Mean number of pages per poems
| 2.4
|
| Number of stanzas per poems
| Between 1 and 47.
|
| Number of poems with regular stanzaic form, and rhymed or off-rhymed (sometimes irregularly)
| 40% (12 of 30)
|
Geography III
Fourth book of poems.
A brilliant book; very readable.
Favorites include:
- The phenomenally good villanelle: "One Art".
- "The Moose"
- "12 O'Clock News"
- "Crusoe in England"
Some simple statistics:
| Number of pages
| 23
|
| Number of poems
| 9
|
| Mean number of pages per poem:
increases with each book.
| 2.5
|
| Number of stanzas per poem
| Between 4 and 28.
|
Number of poems with regular stanzaic form, and rhymed or off-rhymed
(sometimes irregularly): decreases with each book.
| 33% (3 of 9)
|
The Complete Poems 1927-1979
Contains:
The translations are interesting.
What was unpublished of her own poems are on the whole of lower caliber and interest than those Bishop published.
The Collected Prose
Contains:
- Memory: Persons and Places.
- Primer Class
- The Country Mouse
- The U.S.A. School of Writing
- Gregorio Valdes
- Mercedes Hospital
- To the Botequim and Back
- The Diary of 'Helena Morley': The Book and Its Author
- A Trip to Vigia
- Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore
- Stories
- The Baptism
- The Sea and its Shore
- In Prison
- The Farmer's Children
- The Housekeeper
- Gwendolyn
- Memories of Uncle Neddy
- In the Village
Time Line.
- 1911
- Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.
- 1916
- Mother institutionalized (mental illness).
- 1930
- Enters Vassar College.
- 1934
- While a Senior at Vassar College, introduced to Marianne Moore,
who became her Modernist Mentor.
- Bachelor's degree from Vassar College.
- 1945
- Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship
- 1946
-
North and South (first book of poems).
- 1947
- Guggenheim Fellowship.
- Meets
Randall Jarrell;
Robert Lowell;
James Merrill.
- 1949
- Appointed Consultant in Poetry to the U.S. Library of Congress, the
position today known as the USA
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
- 1950
- End of appointment as Consultant in Poetry to the U.S. Library of Congress, the
position today known as the USA
Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
- 1951
- Arrives in Brazil; stays 15 years.
- 1953
- Grieved for the death of Dylan Thomas, of whom she had said:
"I have met few people in my life I felt such an instantaneous sympathy and pity for"
[p. 65 of
The Wounded Surgeon by Adam Kirsch].
- 1955
- Poems (2nd book of poems)
including
North and South
and
A Cold Spring.
- 1956
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
- 1962
- Prose: Brazil
- 1964
- Academy of American Poets Fellowship.
- 1965
-
Questions of Travel (3rd book of poems).
- 1969
- The Complete Poems.
- National Book Award.
- 1972
- Wrote to
Robert Lowell:
"In general I deplore the 'confessional' ... Now--ye gods--anything goes, and I am so sick
of poems about
...
mothers and fathers and sex lives and so on"
[p. 65 of
The Wounded Surgeon by Adam Kirsch].
- 1975
- Teaches at Harvard; her "Studies in Modern Poetry" class is attended by
graduate student Dana Gioia, who publishes an essay on his experience in
The New Yorker (15 September 1986).
- 1976
- Neustadt International Prize for Literature: first American and first woman to receive it.
- 1972
- Anthology
Anthology of Twentieth Century Brazilian Poetry
- 1976
-
Geography III (4th and last book of poems).
- 1977
- National Book Critics Circle Award.
- 1978
- Guggenheim Fellowship.
- 1979
- Died.
- 1983
- The Complete Poems 1927-1979.
- 1984
- The Collected Prose.
- 1993
- One Art: Letters
- 2005
- One of six poets in
The Wounded Surgeon by Adam Kirsch:
The Wounded Surgeon by Adam Kirsch:
- 2008.
- One of 48 women poets in
100 essential modern poems by women:
-
Links and Books.
-
[Thanks for visiting.]
Books read.
