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.
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
Textual Production
Marianne Moore
White argues that Moore was essentially two separate poets, pre- and post-World War Two. She chooses to present the earlier one of the two, the poet whom Eliot
, Stevens
, Williams
, and Bishop
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...
Literary responses
Flannery O'Connor
Reviews were more mixed than for FOC
's previous book, but included some responses from reviewers and friends that that delighted her, notably comments from Joan Didion
and Elizabeth Bishop
.
Gooch, Brad. Flannery. Little, Brown and Co.
320-1
Intertextuality and Influence
Ruth Padel
Having loved and immersed herself in poetry all her life, RP
took a gamble and changed her self-definition from university lecturer in classics to professional writer and poet. Fifteen years later, writing of her own...
Textual Features
Ruth Padel
RP
takes the journey as the most central of all poetic images. The first part of her book is a guide to reading poetry, divided under headings of which many include the words journey,...
Textual Features
Adrienne Rich
AR
focusses on such authors as Lorraine Hansberry
and Elizabeth Bishop
; on women's roles in academia; and on the shaping of the subjectivities of lesbian, Jewish, and other minority women in America.
Textual Features
Carol Rumens
In her introduction CR
calls for quality and professionalism. Those women writers, she says, who have been concerned with the stern art of poetry as an end in itself have tended to be swamped by...
Literary responses
Anne Sexton
Elizabeth Bishop
wrote to Robert Lowell
that these poems were good, in spots only, less fully realised than his on a similar subject-matter. I feel I know too much about her . . ....
Literary responses
Anne Sexton
Like To Bedlam and Part Way Back before it, this was nominated for the National Book Award but did not in the end win. It brought Sexton, however, the award of a travelling scholarship from...
Residence
Jo Shapcott
JSgrew up in a new town, Hemel Hempstead, which she felt to be a disadvantage for a young writer. There were absolutely no vowel meadows (as in Elizabeth Bishop
's Nova Scotia); instead,...
Wormald, Mark. “Making a virtue of double vision”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4497, pp. 241-2.
642
exemplifies...
Textual Production
Jo Shapcott
In 1999 JS
and Don Paterson
jointly edited Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century. In 2002 she and Linda Anderson
together edited Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, the first book...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jo Shapcott
Her lectures deal with the way poets are transformed by what they read, with her own relationships with Rainer Maria Rilke
(whom she has translated), Elizabeth Bishop
, and others, and with the question of...
