Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century." She was also a painter, and her poetry is noted for its careful attention to detail; Ernest Hilbert wrote “Bishop’s poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist’s discretion and attention."
Early life Bishop was an only child, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, to William Thomas and Gertrude May (Bulmer) Bishop on February 8, 1911. After her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight months old, Bishop's mother became mentally ill and was institutionalized in 1916. (Bishop would later write about the time of her mother's struggles in her short story "In the Village.")"Elizabeth Bishop, The Art of Poetry No. 27" Interview in The Paris Review Summer 1981 No. 80 Effectively orphaned during early childhood, she lived with her maternal grandparents on a farm in Great Village, Nova Scotia, a period she referred to in her writing. 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. She was removed from the care of her maternal grandparents and moved in with her father's wealthier family in Worcester, Massachusetts. However, Bishop was unhappy there; her separation from her maternal 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". In 1918, her paternal grandparents, realizing that Bishop was unhappy living with them, sent her to live with her mother's eldest sister, Maude Bulmer Shepherdson, and her husband, George.
The Bishops paid Maude to house and educate their granddaughter. The Shepherdsons lived in a tenement in an impoverished Revere, Massachusetts, neighborhood populated mostly by Irish and Italian immigrants. The family later moved to better circumstances in Cliftondale, Massachusetts. It was Bishop's aunt who introduced her to the works of Victorian writers, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Bishop was very ill as a child and, as a result, received very little formal schooling until she attended Saugus High School for her freshman year. She was accepted to the Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts, for her sophomore year, but was behind on her vaccinations and not allowed to attend. Instead she spent the year at the Shore Country Day School in Beverly, Massachusetts. Bishop then boarded at the Walnut Hill School her junior and senior years, where she studied music.
At Shore Country Day, her first poems were published in a student magazine by her friend Frani Blough.
Bishop entered Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in the fall of 1929, planning to study music in order to become a composer. She gave up music because of her terror of performing, and switched her major to English, taking courses in 16th- and 17th-century literature. Bishop published her work in her senior year in The Magazine, a California publication.
In 1933, she co-founded Con Spirito, a rebel literary magazine at Vassar, with writer Mary McCarthy, Margaret Miller, and the sisters Eunice and Eleanor Clark. Bishop graduated from Vassar with a bachelor's degree in 1934.
Influences Bishop was greatly influenced by the poet Marianne Moore,Kalstone, David. Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. University of Michigan Press (2001): 4. In an early letter to Moore, Bishop wrote: "[W]hen I began to read your poetry at college I think it immediately opened up my eyes to the possibility of the subject-matter I could use and might never have thought of using if it hadn't been for you.—(I might not have written any poems at all, I suppose.) I think my approach is so much vaguer and less defined and certainly more old-fashioned—sometimes I'm amazed at people's comparing me to you when all I'm doing is some kind of blank verse—can't they see how different it is? But they can't apparently." 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, where Bishop had briefly enrolled after moving to New York City following her Vassar graduation. Regarding Moore's influence on Bishop's writing, Bishop's friend and Vassar peer, the writer Mary McCarthy stated, "Certainly between Bishop and Marianne Moore there are resemblances: the sort of close microscopic inspection of certain parts of experience. [However,] I think there is something a bit too demure about Marianne Moore, and there's nothing demure about Elizabeth Bishop."Voices and Visions Series. Elizabeth Bishop episode. New York Center for Visual History: New York, 1988. Moore helped Bishop first publish some of her poems in an anthology called Trial Balances in which established poets introduced the work of unknown, younger poets.
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,Bishop, Elizabeth. One Art; Letters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1995) 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."Stewart, Susan (2002) Poetry and the Fate of the Senses. University of Chicago Press 141, 357 fn. 78 and fn. 79).
She was introduced to Robert Lowell by Randall Jarrell 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."Bishop, Elizabeth. Poems, Prose, and Letters. New York: Library of America, 2008. 733. They also 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.'"Lowell, Robert (2003) Collected Poems New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, p. 1046. Also, his poem "The Scream" is "derived from ... Bishop's story 'In the Village.'"Lowell, Robert. (2003) Collected Poems New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux p. 326. "North Haven," one of the last of her poems published during her lifetime, was written in memory of Lowell in 1978.
Another figure Bishop often mentioned as integral to her ideals of mystery and accuracy was French poet and art critic, Charles Baudelaire. In fact, Samuel Ashley Brown "...noted that Bishop kept a photograph of Baudelaire near her writing desk." In terms of writing, Baudelaire provided Elizabeth Bishop the concept of urban experiences within life; "its assaults on the senses, its confusion of the real and unreal."
In 1924, Bishop encountered English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins upon reading his work in Harriet Monroe’s Anthology of Modern Poets. This interest would continue throughout her college years at Vassar College leading up to her original essay, "Notes on Timing in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins," which appeared in the Vassar Review in February 1934.
While Hopkins’ striking metaphors and clear descriptions of nature appealed to her, it was “...his ‘timing’ and his auditory invention that had the most lasting influence on Bishop's work.” For example, her appreciation for Hopkins’ love of alliteration and hyphenation can be seen in Song for the Rainy Season. Through her works, such as her final poem titled Sonnet, it is believed that a tribute to Hopkins himself is made, and with it “...the memory of his dynamic intensity” remains.
Travels Bishop had an independent income from early adulthood, as a result of an inheritance from her deceased father, that did not run out until near the end of her life. This income allowed her to travel widely, though cheaply, without worrying about employment, and to live in many cities and countries, which are described in her poems."Elizabeth Bishop", poets.org, Retrieved April 25, 2008 She wrote frequently about her love of travel in poems like "Questions of Travel" and "Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance." She lived in France for several years in the mid-1930s with a friend from Vassar, Louise Crane, who was a paper-manufacturing heiress.
In 1938, the two of them purchased a house at 624 White Street in Key West, Florida. While living there Bishop made the acquaintance of Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, who had divorced Ernest Hemingway in 1940.
She later lived in an apartment at 611 Frances Street.
From 1949 to 1950, she was the Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress, and lived at Bertha Looker's Boardinghouse, 1312 30th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C., in Georgetown.
Upon receiving a substantial ($2,500) traveling fellowship from Bryn Mawr College in 1951, Bishop set off to circumnavigate South America. Arriving in Santos, Brazil, in November of that year, Bishop expected to stay two weeks but stayed 15 years. She lived in Petrópolis with architect Lota (Maria Carlota) de Macedo Soares, who was descended from a prominent and notable political family. "The Love of Her Life". June 2002 The New York Times review of Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares. Retrieved April 25, 2008 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 Brown. In its later years the relationship deteriorated, becoming volatile and tempestuous, marked by bouts of depression, tantrums, and alcoholism.Bishop Biography Retrieved April 25, 2008 The relationship is depicted in the 2013 film Reaching for the Moon.
During her time in Brazil, Bishop became increasingly interested in the literature of the country.Schwartz and Estess (1983) p. 236 She was influenced by Brazilian poets, including João Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and translated their work into English. Regarding 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."Schwartz and Estess (1983) p329 After Soares took her own life in 1967, Bishop spent more time in the United States.Poetry Foundation profileOliveira, Carmen (2002) Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares, Rutgers University Press,
Publication history and awards
For a major American poet, Bishop published very sparingly. Her first book, North & South, was first published in 1946 and won the Houghton Mifflin Prize for poetry. This book included important poems like "The Man-Moth" (which describes a dark and lonely fictional creature inspired by what Bishop noted was "[a] newspaper misprint for 'mammoth'") and "The Fish" (in which Bishop describes a caught fish in exacting detail). But she did not publish a follow-up until nine years later. That volume, titled Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring, first published in 1955, included her first book, plus the 18 new poems that constituted the new "Cold Spring" section. Bishop won the Pulitzer Prize for this book in 1956.