På dette site bruger vi cookies til at levere vores ydelser, forbedre performance, til analyseformål, og (hvis brugeren ikke er logget ind) til reklamer. Ved at bruge LibraryThing anerkender du at have læst og forstået vores vilkår og betingelser inklusive vores politik for håndtering af brugeroplysninger. Din brug af dette site og dets ydelser er underlagt disse vilkår og betingelser.
"James Merrill described Elizabeth Bishop's poems as "more wryly radiant, more touching, more unaffectedly intelligent than any written in our lifetime" and called her "our greatest national treasure." Robert Lowell said, "I enjoy her poems more than anybody else's."" "This collection offers a full-scale presentation of a writer of startling originality, at once passionate and reticent, adventurous and perfectionist. It presents all the poetry that Bishop published in her lifetime, in such classic volumes as North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, and Geography III. In addition it contains an extensive selection of unpublished poems and drafts of poems (several not previously collected), as well as all her published poetic translations, ranging from a chorus from Aristophanes' The Birds to versions of Brazilian sambas." "Poems, Prose, and Letters brings together as well most of her published prose writings, including stories; reminiscences; travel writing about the places (Nova Scotia, Florida, Brazil) that so profoundly marked her poetry; and literary essays and statements, including a number of pieces published here for the first time. The book is rounded out with a selection of Bishop's engaging and self-revelatory letters. Of the 53 letters included here, written between 1933 and 1979, a considerable number are printed for the first time, and all are presented in their entirety."--BOOK JACKET.… (mere)
A friend of mine recently divulged his personal favorite among Bishop’s poems, "The End of March," which I immediately sought out, the end of March bearing some significance to me, now. I’d always thought of Elizabeth Bishop as a short story writer, and having sought out the Library of America edition of her collected poems, prose, and letters, I discover that I like best of all her essays, which read to me like her poems must read to others. Her essays are the real thing—life--in color, with context, in language as carefully chosen as any of her poems. She manages to pick among the all the true things in an experience for particular words which tell us volumes…she was a careful curator of the authentic, one with a true artist’s eye.
Bishop has a fearful darkness at the core of her writing. I don’t know why—it almost seems as though she must have an illness that tired her and reminded her how close nothingness is. I did not read any biography of her; perhaps I should. Why it is that poets can make blackness blacker than any other artists, I could not say. But even in her short stories, for instance "The Last Animal," there is an air of menace, a whiff of death. In the essay, "Gregorio Valdes, 1879-1939" we know right from the title that the character we read about is dead, or will die, as it happened. We had forgotten that at the promising start, all hot sun and bright flowers, the shade of palms and the act of creation (paintings) make us forget that death is waiting, and not patiently.
The poem, "The End of March," it shouldn’t surprise us, then, is also about death. Walking along the beach with a cold biting wind freezing one side of the face, the walkers come upon a "man-sized" tangle of kite string "but no kite" washed up on the shore. At the same time, one walker glimpses a boarded-up beach house tethered by a wire (electricity?) to something off beyond the dunes. The walker imagines a retirement there,
"....doing nothing, or nothing much, forever, in two bare rooms: look through binoculars, read boring books, old, long, long books, and write down useless notes, talk to myself, and, foggy days, watch the droplets slipping, heavy with light."
Robert Pinsky was asked in The New Yorkerpoetry podcast to choose a poem to read from the New Yorker archives and he chose a Bishop poem first published in that magazine in 1947. Called “At the Fishhouses,” the poem Pinsky calls "plain" has something of the “cold dark deep and absolutely clear” description that she reprises more than once.
"…I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, Slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, Icily free above the stones… …It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: Dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, Drawn from the cold hard mouth Of the world, derived from the rocky breasts Forever, flowing and drawn, and since Our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown."
As it often happens in the way of things, Colm Tóibín has recently published a book with Princeton University Press, On Elizabeth Bishop, whom he has been reading for forty years. Tóibín shares his thoughts on Elizabeth Bishop and the poet Thom Gunn in this article in The Guardian. Also in The Guardian, Lavinia Greenlaw reviews Tóibín's new book. Each of these yields great insights into Bishop's life and style.
"James Merrill described Elizabeth Bishop's poems as "more wryly radiant, more touching, more unaffectedly intelligent than any written in our lifetime" and called her "our greatest national treasure." Robert Lowell said, "I enjoy her poems more than anybody else's."" "This collection offers a full-scale presentation of a writer of startling originality, at once passionate and reticent, adventurous and perfectionist. It presents all the poetry that Bishop published in her lifetime, in such classic volumes as North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, and Geography III. In addition it contains an extensive selection of unpublished poems and drafts of poems (several not previously collected), as well as all her published poetic translations, ranging from a chorus from Aristophanes' The Birds to versions of Brazilian sambas." "Poems, Prose, and Letters brings together as well most of her published prose writings, including stories; reminiscences; travel writing about the places (Nova Scotia, Florida, Brazil) that so profoundly marked her poetry; and literary essays and statements, including a number of pieces published here for the first time. The book is rounded out with a selection of Bishop's engaging and self-revelatory letters. Of the 53 letters included here, written between 1933 and 1979, a considerable number are printed for the first time, and all are presented in their entirety."--BOOK JACKET.
▾Biblioteksbeskrivelser af bogens indhold
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThingmedlemmers beskrivelse af bogens indhold
Google Books — Indlæser...
(4.19)
1
Bishop has a fearful darkness at the core of her writing. I don’t know why—it almost seems as though she must have an illness that tired her and reminded her how close nothingness is. I did not read any biography of her; perhaps I should. Why it is that poets can make blackness blacker than any other artists, I could not say. But even in her short stories, for instance "The Last Animal," there is an air of menace, a whiff of death. In the essay, "Gregorio Valdes, 1879-1939" we know right from the title that the character we read about is dead, or will die, as it happened. We had forgotten that at the promising start, all hot sun and bright flowers, the shade of palms and the act of creation (paintings) make us forget that death is waiting, and not patiently.
The poem, "The End of March," it shouldn’t surprise us, then, is also about death. Walking along the beach with a cold biting wind freezing one side of the face, the walkers come upon a "man-sized" tangle of kite string "but no kite" washed up on the shore. At the same time, one walker glimpses a boarded-up beach house tethered by a wire (electricity?) to something off beyond the dunes. The walker imagines a retirement there,
Robert Pinsky was asked in The New Yorker poetry podcast to choose a poem to read from the New Yorker archives and he chose a Bishop poem first published in that magazine in 1947. Called “At the Fishhouses,” the poem Pinsky calls "plain" has something of the “cold dark deep and absolutely clear” description that she reprises more than once.
As it often happens in the way of things, Colm Tóibín has recently published a book with Princeton University Press, On Elizabeth Bishop, whom he has been reading for forty years. Tóibín shares his thoughts on Elizabeth Bishop and the poet Thom Gunn in this article in The Guardian. Also in The Guardian, Lavinia Greenlaw reviews Tóibín's new book. Each of these yields great insights into Bishop's life and style.
(