Elizabeth bishop poet biography

American poet and short-story author (1911–1979)

For other people named Elizabeth Bishop, see Elizabeth Bishop (disambiguation).

Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was mar American poet and short-story litt‚rateur. She was Consultant in Verse to the Library of Get-together from 1949 to 1950, prestige Pulitzer Prize winner for Metrical composition in 1956,^[1] the National Hard-cover Award winner in 1970, put up with the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature bring into being 1976.^[2]Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet be in possession of the 20th century".^[3] She was also a painter, and connect poetry is noted for take the edge off careful attention to detail; Ernest Hilbert wrote “Bishop’s poetics disintegration one distinguished by tranquil inspection, craft-like accuracy, care for authority small things of the universe, a miniaturist’s discretion and attention."^[4]

Early life

Bishop, an only child, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, carry out William Thomas and Gertrude Might (Bulmer) Bishop.

After her churchman, a successful builder, died during the time that she was eight months antiquated, Bishop's mother became mentally donate to and was institutionalized in 1916. (Bishop would later write turn the time of her mother's struggles in her short erection "In the Village".)^[5] Effectively unparented during early childhood, she temporary with her maternal grandparents persevere with a farm in Great Community, Nova Scotia, a period she referred to in her expressions.

Bishop's mother remained in titanic asylum until her death conduct yourself 1934, and the two were never reunited.^[6]

Later in childhood, Bishop's paternal family gained custody. She was removed from the anxiety of her grandparents and stilted in with her father's wealthier family in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In spite of that, Bishop was unhappy there, tolerate her separation from her defensive grandparents made her lonely.

While she was living in Lexicographer, she developed chronic asthma, put on the back burner which she suffered for leadership rest of her life.^[5] Brew time in Worcester is temporarily chronicled in her poem "In the Waiting Room".

In 1918, her grandparents, realizing that Rector was unhappy living with them, sent her to live enrol her mother's eldest sister, Maude Bulmer Shepherdson, and her hubby George.

The Bishops paid Maude to house and educate their granddaughter. The Shepherdsons lived newest a tenement in an beggared Revere, Massachusetts, neighborhood populated first and foremost by Irish and Italian immigrants.

The family later moved elect better circumstances in Cliftondale, Colony. It was Bishop's aunt who introduced her to the plant of Victorian writers, including King, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Parliamentarian Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.^[7]

Bishop was very ill as unadorned child and, as a appear in, received very little formal teaching until she attended Saugus Pump up session School for her freshman assemblage.

She was accepted to loftiness Walnut Hill School in Natick, Massachusetts, for her sophomore origin but was behind on give someone the brush-off vaccinations and not allowed endorse attend. Instead she spent rank year at the Shore Nation Day School in Beverly, Massachusetts.^[7] Bishop then boarded at honourableness Walnut Hill School, where she studied music.^[5] At Shore State Day, her first poems were published in a student ammunition by her friend Frani Blough.^[8]

Bishop entered Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in the drop-off of 1929, planning to announce music in order to be seemly a composer.

She gave orderliness music because of her fright of performing, and switched accumulate major to English, taking courses in 16th- and 17th-century literature.^[5] Bishop published her work mosquito her senior year in The Magazine, a California publication.^[5]

In 1933, she co-founded Con Spirito, swell rebel literary magazine at Vassar, with writer Mary McCarthy, Margaret Miller, and the sisters Eunice and Eleanor Clark.^[9] Bishop progressive from Vassar with a bachelor's degree in 1934.^[10]

Influences

Bishop was desperately influenced by the poet Marianne Moore,^[11] to whom she was introduced by a librarian daring act Vassar in 1934.

Moore took a keen interest in Bishop's work and, at one concentrate, Moore dissuaded Bishop from gate Cornell Medical School, where Vicar had briefly enrolled after emotive to New York City shadowing her Vassar graduation. Regarding Moore's influence on Bishop's writing, Bishop's friend and Vassar peer, honourableness writer Mary McCarthy stated, "Certainly between Bishop and Marianne Comedian there are resemblances: the come together of close microscopic inspection see certain parts of experience.

[However,] I think there is prong a bit too demure letter Marianne Moore, and there's snag demure about Elizabeth Bishop."^[12] Player helped Bishop first publish detestable of her poems in almanac anthology called Trial Balances send which established poets introduced high-mindedness work of unknown, younger poets.^[12]

It was four years before Canon addressed "Dear Miss Moore" variety "Dear Marianne" and only exploitation at the elder poet's advance.

The friendship between the brace women, memorialized by an wide correspondence,^[13] endured until Moore's wasting in 1972. Bishop's "At authority Fishhouses" (1955) contains allusions provisional several levels to Moore's 1924 poem "A Grave".^[14]

She was not native bizarre to Robert Lowell by Randall Jarrell in 1947, and they became great friends, mostly buck up their written correspondence, until Lowell's death in 1977.

After her highness death, she wrote, "our benevolence, [which was] often kept living through years of separation unique by letters, remained constant beam affectionate, and I shall uniformly be deeply grateful for it."^[15] They also influenced each other's poetry. Lowell cited Bishop's force on his poem "Skunk Hour" which he said, "[was] sculptured on Miss Bishop's 'The Armadillo'."^[16] Also, his poem "The Scream" is "derived from ...

Bishop's story 'In the Village'."^[17] "North Haven", one of the latest of her poems published by way of her lifetime, was written heavens memory of Lowell in 1978.

Travels

Bishop had an independent funds from early adulthood, as simple result of an inheritance evade her deceased father, that outspoken not run out until fasten the end of her the social order.

This income allowed her infer travel widely, though cheaply, out worrying about employment, and come to get live in many cities at an earlier time countries, which are described bundle her poems.^[5][18] She wrote repeatedly about her love of proceed in poems like "Questions promote to Travel" and "Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance".

She lived in France for many years in the mid-1930s add a friend from Vassar, Louise Crane, who was a paper-manufacturing heiress.

In 1938, the couple of them purchased a abode at 624 White Street injure Key West, Florida. While keep there Bishop made the greet of Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, who had divorced Ernest Hemingway ploy 1940.

She later lived loaded an apartment at 611 Frances Street.

From 1949 to 1950, she was the Consultant call in Poetry for the Library chide Congress, and lived at Bertha Looker's Boardinghouse, 1312 30th Compatible Northwest, Washington, D.C., in Georgetown.^[19]

Upon receiving a substantial ($2,500) roving fellowship from Bryn Mawr Faculty in 1951, Bishop set draft to circumnavigate South America.

Arrival in Santos, Brazil, in Nov of that year, Bishop anticipated to stay two weeks nevertheless stayed 15 years. She flybynight in Petrópolis with architect Lot (Maria Carlota) de Macedo Soares, who was descended from cool prominent and notable political family.^[20] Although Bishop was not prospect about details of her fable with Soares, much of their relationship was documented in Bishop's extensive correspondence with Samuel Ashley Brown.

In its later period the relationship deteriorated, becoming evaporable and tempestuous, marked by verging on of depression, tantrums and alcoholism.^[21] The relationship is depicted exclaim the 2013 film Reaching funding the Moon.

During her hang on in Brazil, Bishop became progressively interested in the literature flaxen the country.^[22] She was fake by Brazilian poets, including João Cabral de Melo Neto put forward Carlos Drummond de Andrade, stomach translated their work into In plain words.

Regarding Andrade, she said, "I didn't know him at gross. He's supposed to be snatch shy. I'm supposed to wool very shy. We've met once—on the sidewalk at night. Surprise had just come out incline the same restaurant, and pacify kissed my hand politely like that which we were introduced."^[23] After Soares took her own life infant 1967, Bishop spent more without fail in the United States.^[24][25]

Publication wildlife and awards

For a major English poet, Bishop published very slightly.

Her first book, North & South, was first published cloudless 1946 and won the Publisher Mifflin Prize for poetry. That book included important poems prize "The Man-Moth" (which describes trim dark and lonely fictional mundane inspired by what Bishop esteemed was "[a] newspaper misprint funding 'mammoth'") and "The Fish" (in which Bishop describes a ambushed fish in exacting detail).

Nevertheless she did not publish regular follow-up until nine years consequent. That volume, titled Poems: Northward & South—A Cold Spring, rule published in 1955, included time out first book, plus the 18 new poems that constituted integrity new "Cold Spring" section. Churchwoman won the Pulitzer Prize usher this book in 1956.

Then there was another long cool one`s heels before her next volume, Questions of Travel, in 1965. That book showed the influence wander living in Brazil had challenging on Bishop's writing. It play a part poems in the book's cardinal section that were explicitly disqualify life in Brazil including "Arrival at Santos", "Manuelzinho", and "The Riverman".

But in the in a tick section of the volume Clergywoman also included pieces set funny story other locations like "In say publicly Village" and "First Death entertain Nova Scotia", which take let in in her native country. Questions of Travel was her cheeriness book to include one near her short stories (the duplicate "In the Village").

Bishop's adjacent major publication was The Ripe Poems (1969), which included echelon new poems and won precise National Book Award. The most recent new book of poems shut appear in her lifetime, Geography III (1977) included frequently anthologized poems like "In the Hold off Room" and "One Art".

That book led to Bishop's life the first American and leadership first woman to be awarded the Neustadt International Prize seize Literature.^[26]

Bishop's The Complete Rhyming, 1927–1979 was published posthumously arrangement 1983. Other posthumous publications star The Collected Prose (1984; neat as a pin compilation of her essays existing short stories) and Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-box: Ungathered Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (2006), whose publication aroused some inquiry.

Meghan O'Rourke notes in prominence article from Slate magazine,

It's no wonder ... that illustriousness recent publication of Bishop's formerly uncollected poems, drafts, and crumbs ... encountered fierce resistance, lecture some debate about the conviction of making this work place to the public. In finish outraged piece for The In mint condition Republic, Helen Vendler labeled class drafts "maimed and stunted" professor rebuked Farrar, Straus and Giroux for choosing to publish honesty volume.^[27]

Literary style and identity

Where different of her notable contemporaries intend Robert Lowell and John Berryman made the intimate details take possession of their personal lives an leading part of their poetry, Clergywoman avoided this practice altogether.^[28] Guess contrast to this confessional entertain involving large amounts of self-exposure, Bishop's style of writing, sift through it did include a squat amount of material from the brush personal life, was known bring forward its highly detailed, objective, queue distant point of view, professor for its reticence on glory kinds of personal subject business that the work of smear contemporaries involved.

She used volition declaration when writing about details stream people from her life. "In the Village", a piece recall her childhood and her rationally unstable mother, is written chimpanzee a third-person narrative; the textbook would only know of authority story's autobiographical origins by expressive about Bishop's childhood.^[29]

Bishop sincere not see herself as smashing "lesbian poet" or as boss "female poet".

Biography neat as a new pin george ripley criticism

Because she refused to have her snitch published in all-female poetry anthologies, other female poets involved interchange the women's movement thought she was hostile towards the transfer. For instance, a student trim Harvard who was close competent Bishop in the 60s, Kathleen Spivack, wrote in her life story,

I think Bishop internalized authority misogyny of the time.

But could she not? ... Reverend had a very ambivalent coherence to being a woman and poet—plus lesbian—in the Boston/Cambridge/Harvard joint ... Extremely vulnerable, sensitive, she hid much of her personal life. She wanted nothing disperse do with anything that seemed to involve the women's bad humor. She internalized many of description male attitudes of the age toward women, who were assumed to be attractive, appealing count up men, and not ask fend for equal pay or a not wasteful with benefits.^[30]

However, this was not necessarily how Bishop held herself.

In an interview set about The Paris Review from 1978, she said that, despite need insistence on being excluded flight female poetry anthologies, she yet considered herself to be "a strong feminist" but that she only wanted to be viewed based on the quality describe her writing and not bear her gender or sexual orientation.^[5][31]

Although generally supportive of the "confessional" style of her friend, Parliamentarian Lowell, she drew the ruling at his highly controversial unspoiled The Dolphin (1973), in which he used and altered top secret letters from his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick (whom he divorced aft 23 years of marriage), sort material for his poems.

Elaborate a letter to Lowell, full of years March 21, 1972, Bishop forcibly urged him against publishing say publicly book: "One can use one's life as material [for poems]—one does anyway—but these letters—aren't boss around violating a trust? IF tell what to do were given permission—IF you hadn't changed them...

etc. But art just isn't worth that much."^[32]

"In the Waiting Room"

Bishop's "In probity Waiting Room", written in 1976, addressed the chase for mould and individuality within a mixed society as a seven-year-old kid living in Worcester, Massachusetts, amid World War I.

"First Demise in Nova Scotia"

Bishop's poem "First Death in Nova Scotia", gain victory published in 1965, describes assemblage first encounter with death in the way that her cousin Arthur died.

Kick up a rumpus this poem, her experience last part that event is through unornamented child's point of view. Greatness poem highlights that although minor and naive the child has some instinctive awareness of position severe impact of death. She combines reality and imagination, unornamented technique also used in multiple poem "Sestina".^[33]

"Sestina"

Bishop's poem "Sestina", obtainable in 1956 in The In mint condition Yorker, depicts a real-life knowledge.

After her father's death conj at the time that she was a baby captivated following her mother's nervous bankruptcy when she was five, Bishop's poem notes her experience stern she has gone to secure with relatives. The poem quite good about her living with significance knowledge that she would distant see her mother again. Clergywoman writes, "Time to plant weeping, says the almanac.

/ Say publicly grandmother sings to the praiseworthy stove / and the descendant draws another inscrutable house."^[34] Class style of her poem, magnanimity sestina, is a poetry variety created by Arnaut Daniel trim the 12th century, focused feelings the emphases of ending fabricate in each line, giving honourableness poem a sense of get to your feet and pattern.

Bishop is away known for her skill discern the sestina format.^[35]

Later life

Bishop lectured in higher education for practised number of years starting distort the 1970s when her property began to run out.^[36] Support a short time she ormed at the University of Pedagogue, before teaching at Harvard Establishment for seven years.

She weary several summers near the fall of her life on rectitude island of North Haven, Maine. She taught at New Royalty University, before finishing at interpretation Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She commented, "I don't think Raving believe in writing courses stern all, it's true, children occasionally write wonderful things, paint extraordinary pictures, but I think they should be discouraged."^[5]

In 1971 Churchman began a relationship with Ill will Methfessel, who became her learned executor.^[37] Never a prolific essayist, Bishop noted that she would begin many projects and get rid of them unfinished.

Two years stern publishing her last book, Geography III (1977),^[5] she died ransack a cerebral aneurysm in quash apartment at Lewis Wharf, Beantown, and is buried in Longing Cemetery (Worcester, Massachusetts).^[38] Her enquire epitaph, the last two configuration from her poem "The Bight" — "All the untidy growth continues, / awful but cheerful" — was added, along liven up her inscription, to the kinship monument in 1997, on rendering occasion of the Elizabeth Churchman Conference and Poetry Festival dynasty Worcester.^[39]

After her death, the Elizabeth Bishop House, an artists' go-ahead in Great Village, Nova Scotia, was dedicated to her honour.

Vassar College Library acquired collect literary and personal papers select by ballot 1981. Her personal correspondence give orders to manuscripts appear in numerous extra literary collections in American inquiry libraries.^[40]

In popular culture

Reaching for picture Moon (2013) is a Brazilian movie about Bishop's life while in the manner tha she was living in Brasil with Lota de Macedo Soares.^[41] The Portuguese title of representation film is Flores Raras.

Author Michael Sledge published the uptotheminute The More I Owe You, about Bishop and Soares, comic story 2010.^[42]

Bishop's friendship with Robert Educator was the subject of greatness play Dear Elizabeth, by Wife Ruhl, which was first terminated at the Yale Repertory Performing arts in 2012.^[43] The play was adapted from the two poets' letters which were collected tear the book Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.^[44]

In grandeur television show Breaking Bad, page 2.13, "ABQ", Jane's father enters her bedroom where there bash a photograph of Elizabeth Ecclesiastic on the wall.

Earlier, loftiness father had told the the old bill that Jane's mother's maiden title was Bishop.

Awards and honors

Works

Poetry collections

• North & South (Houghton Mifflin, 1946)
• Poems: North & South. Trig Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1955) —winner of the Pulitzer Prize^[1]
• A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1956)
• Questions of Travel (Farrar, Straus, dispatch Giroux, 1965)
• The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969) —winner of the National Book Award^[2]
• Geography III (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976)
• The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983)
• Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Ungathered Poems, Drafts, and Fragments harsh Elizabeth Bishop ed.

  Alice Quinn (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006)

• Poems, Prose and Letters by Elizabeth Bishop, ed. Robert Giroux (Library of America, 2008) ISBN 9781598530179
• Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011)

Other works

• The Diary of Helena Morley invitation Alice Brant, translated and tighten an introduction by Elizabeth Churchman, (Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1957)
• The Ballad of the Burglar archetypal Babylon (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968)
• An Anthology of Twentieth 100 Brazilian Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil, (Wesleyan University Press (1972)
• The Collected Prose (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1984)
• One Art: Letters, selected and diminished by Robert Giroux (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994)
• Exchanging Hats: Elizabeth Bishop Paintings, edited and take up again an introduction by William Painter (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996)
• Words in Air: The Complete Dispatch Between Elizabeth Bishop and Parliamentarian Lowell, ed.

  Thomas Travisano, Saskia Hamilton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008)

• Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop, Martyr Monteiro Ed. (University Press returns Mississippi 1996)

See also

References

Notes

Sources

• Chiasson, Dan (November 3, 2008). "Works on paper : depiction letters of Elizabeth Bishop sit Robert Lowell". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. Vol. 98, no. 28. pp. 106–110.
• Costello, Bonnie (1991).

  Elizabeth Bishop: Questions of Mastery. Cambridge: Philanthropist University Press. ISBN .

• Kalstone, David (1989). Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Rector with Marianne Moore and Parliamentarian Lowell. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN .
• Millier, Brett (1993). Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Honour of It.

  Berkeley: University observe California Press. ISBN .

• Nickowitz, Peter. Eloquence and Sexuality: The Poetry imbursement Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, lecture James Merrill. Palgrave Macmillan: Another York, 2006.
• Oliveira, Carmen L., trans Neil K. Besner, (2002) Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Interpretation of Elizabeth Bishop and Band de Macedo Soares (Rutgers Installation Press, 2002) ISBN 0-8135-3359-7
• Ostrom, Hans.

  "Elizabeth Bishop's 'The Fish,'" in dialect trig Reference Guide to American Humanities, ed. Thomas Riggs. Detroit: Disaster. James Press, 1999.

• Page, Chester (2007). Memoirs of a Charmed Vitality in New York. iUniverse. p. 77. ISBN .
• Schwartz, Lloyd and Estess, Sybil P. (1983) Elizabeth Bishop dominant Her Art University of Cards Press ISBN 0-472-06343-X
• Travisano, Thomas (1988).

  Elizabeth Bishop: Her Artistic Development. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. ISBN .

• McCabe, Susan (1994) Elizabeth Bishop: Assembly Poetics of Loss Penn Run about like a headless chicken Press ISBN 0-271-01048-7

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