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.
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...
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...
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.
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,...
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
Literary responses
Marianne Moore
Elizabeth Bishop
, who wrote on MM
on several occasions, mentioned her in a letter of advice to a would-be poet as one of the great poets of our own century, who should be read...
Friends, Associates
Marianne Moore
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
Author summary
Medbh McGuckian
MMG
, who lives in Northern Ireland, is well-regarded among contemporary poets writing in English. She began by writing a very private and reserved poetry. Using images from the home and from nature, she explored...
Reception
Medbh McGuckian
Single Ladies was most enthusiastically reviewed by Anne Stevenson
in the Times Literary Supplement. She judged MMG
's talent too original to be spoiled by the praise or misunderstanding of critics: her successes are...
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...
Material Conditions of Writing
Mary McCarthy
When MMC
first started writing, she focused her efforts on critical reviews and essays. While still at Vassar
she started a rebel literary magazine, Con Spirito, with two of her classmates, Frani Blough
and...
Textual Production
Frances Horovitz
Greg Gatanby
included FH
's poem Invocation in his Whales: A Celebration, 1983. This anthology comprises excerpts from literature, legends, myths, religions, and poetry from around the world. Among others included are Jonathan Swift
