Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Bishop
-
Standard Name: Bishop, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Bishop
Pseudonym: Mr Margolies
EB
, a leading US poet of the later twentieth century, published six volumes of poetry during her lifetime, of which several collect writing already published. Her prose included translations, essays, a travel book, and scintillating personal letters. Her fellow-poet Anne Stevenson
calculates her total output at fewer than a hundred poems, including prose poems, of which Bishop herself would have accepted by no means all as worthy or finished. Yet her impact has been extraordinary.
Stevenson, Anne. “The Geographical Mirror”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, pp. 31-41.
31
Scholar Linda Anderson
argues that EB
has had unprecedented significance . . . for a younger generation of British poets.
Anderson, Linda. “Introduction”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, pp. 7-11.
Home in this collection opens, Where is that I wonder? It then evokes comfortable, elegant settings of both childhood and adult life, and also a place where the poet awakes from dreaming of her dead...
Intertextuality and Influence
Felicia Hemans
Casabianca was for years a set piece for recitation in schools, prompting numerous responses including Elizabeth Bishop
's powerful poem of the same name.
Wormald, Mark. “Making a virtue of double vision”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4497, pp. 241-2.
642
exemplifies...
Friends, Associates
Flannery O'Connor
A less likely friend among the many relationships sustained largely by letter was Mary Ataway Lee
, known as Maryat, sister of a new president of Georgia State College for Women. She lived in New...
Friends, Associates
Seamus Heaney
A friendship that helped SH
's poetry was that with Philip Hobsbaum
, who managed a living transplant of the 1960s Group from London to Belfast.
MM
met Elizabeth Bishop
, who became in literary terms one of her most important friends and whom she mentored and helped to get published.
Astley, Neil. “Elizabeth Bishop: A Bibliography; Elizabeth Bishop: Chronology”. Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, edited by Linda Anderson and Jo Shapcott, Bloodaxe Books, pp. 175-00.
194
Education
Mary McCarthy
A year later, in 1926 MMC
enrolled at Annie Wright Episcopal Boarding School in Tacoma. She would travel home to Seattle some weekends by boat or on the Interurban streetcar. Further elaborating on different...
Cultural formation
Mavis Gallant
Despite living much the greater part of her life in Paris, MG
never thought of herself as anything but Canadian, saying I suppose that a Canadian is someone who has a logical reason to think...