Elizabeth Bishop

"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 In addition it contains an extensive selection of unpublished poems and drafts of poems (several not previously collected), as well as all her published poetic translations, ranging from a chorus from Aristophanes' The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."--Jacket.

When the distinguished art critic Meyer Schapiro said that Elizabeth Bishop "writes poems with a painter's eye," Bishop was "very flattered: I'd love to be a painter." The fact is - though not many knew it - she painted throughout her life, as this handsome book, reproducing in full color forty of her works, demonstrates. The paintings were tracked down, identified, and collected by the poet and art writer William Benton, who arranged the first exhibit of Bishop's artwork (twenty-seven pieces) in January 1993 at the East Martello Tower Museum as part of the Key West Literary Seminar on Bishop's writing. William Benton gives the provenance, dimensions, and (where possible) the date of each work. In the second half of the book, he also cites many painterly passages from Bishop's writing.

"This collection is a magnificent confirmation of Lowell's prediction. From several thousand letters, written over fifty years - from 1928 when she was seventeen (and already a poet) to the day of her death, in Boston in 1979 - Robert Giroux, her editor during her lifetime, has selected over 500 and has written a detailed and informative introduction." "In one sense, Elizabeth Bishop's letters constitute her autobiography, including the story of her love for Lota Soares in Brazil, which ended with Lota's tragic suicide fifteen years later. They also record her intense relationships with her early mentor Marianne Moore and later with Robert Lowell. For Bishop, letter-writing was a joy and a necessity, an embodiment of the links between people, but also a facet of her art, conjuring the world in words. Some letters are carefully composed, elegant in style; some are spontaneous and witty, alive with unexpected detail; some contain poems sent as gifts; others are cries from the heart. Sometimes she ponders on her childhood, on her struggle to create, or to resist drink, but more often she responds fully and vividly to the immediate moment, the color of the sky, the books she has been reading, the friend she misses, the meal she is cooking, the toucan or cat she is observing, the room she is painting in a "Harlequinade" pattern of big colored diamonds." "One Art takes us behind Bishop's formal sophistication and reserve, displaying to the full the gift for friendship, the striving for perfection, and the passionate, questing, rigorous spirit that made her a great poet."--Jacket.

Miss Bishop's fifth book of poetry includes such recent works as Crusoe in England, Five Flights Up, and the prose poem 12 O'Clock News.

Works by fourteen Brazilian poets with translations by Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Blackburn, Ashley Brown, Jane Cooper, Richard Eberhart, Barbara Howes, June Jordan, Galway Kinnell, Jean R. Longland, James Merrill, W.S. Merwin, Louis Simpson, Mark Strand, Jean Valentine, Richard Wilbur, and James Wright.

For other editions, see Author Catalog.

Nineteen poems, and the story of a Nova Scotia childhood, "In the village".

Traces the artistic development of the award-winning poet as reflected by her literary relationship with "The New Yorker" throughout the mid-twentieth century, drawing on hundreds of letters to her editors that discussed her inspiration and experiences.

"This study explores how Bishop's personal and literary experience in Brazil influenced her work culturally, historically, and linguistically. Focusing on the "Brazilian" characteristics of Bishop's work as well as some of the major poems she composed before settling in Brazil, this volume offers fresh perspective on one of the 20th century's most celebrated writers"--Provided by publisher.

A ballad, based on an actual incident, in which an escaped convict, preferring ninety hours of being pursued to ninety years in prison, is hunted down by army soldiers near the Rio de Janeiro slum where he was raised.

"In 1952, soon after her arrival in Brazil, Elizabeth Bishop asked her new Brazilian friends which of their country's books she should read. They recommended Minha Vida de Menina - a diary kept by a young girl who lived in a mining town at the end of the nineteenth century. As a labor of love, Elizabeth Bishop devoted three years to translating the diary, a delightful account of a young girl's life in Brazil"-- Amazon.com.