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The Complete Poems 1927-1979
Elizabeth Bishop was vehement about her art--a perfectionist who didn't want to be seen as a "woman poet." In 1977, two years before her death she wrote, "art is art and to separate writings, paintings, musical compositions, etc., into two sexes is to emphasize values in them that are not art." She also deeply distrusted the dominant mode of modern poetry, one practiced with such detached passion by her friend Robert Lowell, the confessional.
Bishop was unforgiving of fashion and limited ways of seeing and feeling, but cast an even more trenchant eye on her own work. One wishes this volume were thicker, though the perfections within mark the rightness of her approach. The poems are sublimely controlled, fraught with word play, fierce moral vision (see her caustic ballad on Ezra Pound, "Visits to St. Elizabeths"), and reticence. From the surreal sorrow of the early "Man-Moth" (leaping off from a typo she had come across for "mammoth"), about a lonely monster who rarely emerges from "the pale subways of cement he calls his home," to the beauty of her villanelle "One Art" (with its repeated "the art of losing isn't hard to master"), the poet wittily explores distance and desolation, separation and sorrow.
287 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
About the author
Elizabeth Bishop
112 books533 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and writer from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956. and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century.
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and writer from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956. and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 353 reviews
January 5, 2021
I cannot be objective: Bishop was a friend since HS, throughout the Vassar College years and beyond, of my mentor and patron Rhoda Sheehan; in fact, Bishop rented Rhoda's "Hurricane House" that floated over Westport Harbor in the '38 hurricane. That's where I met her once, individually, and asked her about prosody. I never realized until I read a Bishop biography, maybe Remembering Elizabeth Bishop, how much effort Rhoda must have put into getting Bishop to talk to me. She dreaded students, even when she was fairly remunerated out at U WA when she took over a year or two for Roethke.
Fairly remunerated she was not by my humble Bristol Community College, where she gave readings three years in a row in the late 70s, when she'd come back from Brazil--and when her longtime Brazilian friend committed suicide. One of those "readings" she played and discussed sambas--how everyone in Brazil wrote them, the janitor, the poet laureate. She played a few on an old 78 phonograph, to an audience of perhaps 25, while our community college students on break from class were in the next "room" (divided by a supposed wall, movable) playing rock on 6' speakers by their pool table. I recall thinking at the time: One major trouble with modern life is that the wrong people (and interests) have the best megaphones and speakers.
Since Rhoda was her friend, Bishop came to talk for a Department outlay of $100, too low for administrators to care about the event. A decade earlier we had had Ginsberg and even WH Auden (then priced at $3500) to read. By the late 80s, no adminstrator knew the distinguished history of our poetry readings, and when they came up with $1500 inflated dollars to invite a Pawtucket poet (with some name, yes), they bragged about "our first prominent poetry reading." We had also, in the 80s, had Marge Piercy from the Cape, and I would invite several including Alan Dugan.
I think Bishop is the Dickinson of my lifetime: low, under the radar of fame and celebration until
quite late in her life, though always known to the best editors and people like Roethke. Bishop tinkered with her great vilanelle "One Art" for years at Rhoda Sheehan's Hurricane House--perhaps the central achievement of Westport in verse, though we have housed in summers distinguished profs and critics galore, including from the New Yorker and the NYT.
Bishop's colloquialism is deceptive, appearing casual but in fact finely honed. Still, I do not find her poems easy to remember and recite, except "One Art." "The art of losing isn't hard to master..."
But as with any great poet, there are lines throughout that pop out when re-read. Last night we had tremendous thunder storms in the wake of the devastating tornadoes a couple weeks ago in Oklahoma.
Bishop has it, "Personal and spiteful as a neighbor's child,/ thunder began to bang and bump the roof" (Eectrical Storm).
Well, I did not know enough to learn much from her when I met her, though I learned lots every time she read at my college, but I can boast this: I cleaned a fish--a Bluefish-- for the author of The Fish, for her and her friends including Alice Methfessel from California.
Fairly remunerated she was not by my humble Bristol Community College, where she gave readings three years in a row in the late 70s, when she'd come back from Brazil--and when her longtime Brazilian friend committed suicide. One of those "readings" she played and discussed sambas--how everyone in Brazil wrote them, the janitor, the poet laureate. She played a few on an old 78 phonograph, to an audience of perhaps 25, while our community college students on break from class were in the next "room" (divided by a supposed wall, movable) playing rock on 6' speakers by their pool table. I recall thinking at the time: One major trouble with modern life is that the wrong people (and interests) have the best megaphones and speakers.
Since Rhoda was her friend, Bishop came to talk for a Department outlay of $100, too low for administrators to care about the event. A decade earlier we had had Ginsberg and even WH Auden (then priced at $3500) to read. By the late 80s, no adminstrator knew the distinguished history of our poetry readings, and when they came up with $1500 inflated dollars to invite a Pawtucket poet (with some name, yes), they bragged about "our first prominent poetry reading." We had also, in the 80s, had Marge Piercy from the Cape, and I would invite several including Alan Dugan.
I think Bishop is the Dickinson of my lifetime: low, under the radar of fame and celebration until
quite late in her life, though always known to the best editors and people like Roethke. Bishop tinkered with her great vilanelle "One Art" for years at Rhoda Sheehan's Hurricane House--perhaps the central achievement of Westport in verse, though we have housed in summers distinguished profs and critics galore, including from the New Yorker and the NYT.
Bishop's colloquialism is deceptive, appearing casual but in fact finely honed. Still, I do not find her poems easy to remember and recite, except "One Art." "The art of losing isn't hard to master..."
But as with any great poet, there are lines throughout that pop out when re-read. Last night we had tremendous thunder storms in the wake of the devastating tornadoes a couple weeks ago in Oklahoma.
Bishop has it, "Personal and spiteful as a neighbor's child,/ thunder began to bang and bump the roof" (Eectrical Storm).
Well, I did not know enough to learn much from her when I met her, though I learned lots every time she read at my college, but I can boast this: I cleaned a fish--a Bluefish-- for the author of The Fish, for her and her friends including Alice Methfessel from California.
July 6, 2018
Oblique, bizarre, and brilliantly crafted, Bishop's poems offer slanted perspectives on a wide scope of subjects: nature, national history, endurance, travel, injustice, loss. The poet's work increases in complexity and ambition with each collection, though it defies easy categorization from the start. Bishop wrote in a distinctive style so unlike that of the most famous poets of her generation. Her poems care neither for emotional revelation nor experiments in syntax; instead, they quietly revel in playing with rhetoric and sound, mostly within the boundaries of conventional forms. There's nothing else quite like Bishop's poetry in English, making The Complete Poems worth reading at least once.
October 29, 2022
Sestina for Elizabeth Bishop
Here I am trying to write a sestina
In honour of Elizabeth Bishop
But as I look out of my window
All I see is a long city street
Six garbage cans and one skinny flower
Each dealing in its own way with the rain
Have you ever tried describing the rain?
It’s much harder than writing a sestina
Much harder than tending a flower
Or capturing the Queen with your Bishop
For to pin down the rain in the street
You must be ready to crawl out your window
What would Elizabeth see from my window?
So much more I bet than the rain
Sweeping along my old street
Twisting and turning like a sestina
Seeping into all things including that bishop
Whose crozier resembles a flower
Yes a thing as mundane as a flower
Seen from her apartment window
Would take on the hilarity of a bishop
Running for cover in the rain
And she’d mention somewhere in her sestina
What six garbage cans signify in the street
Every poet’s mind is a street
Which leads to the heart of a flower
And whether one does odes or sestinas
This flower's a many-sided window
Through which one can gaze at the rain
With the faith of an eccentric-eyed bishop
Yet I am not Elizabeth Bishop
Peering down at the wonderful street
Hearing the many voices of the rain
Whilst a common unassuming flower
Sits coolly on the ledge of a window
And composes a timeless sestina
If you would like a bishop to speak in sestinas
Just give him a window overlooking a street
—His marble brain will flower in the rain
Here I am trying to write a sestina
In honour of Elizabeth Bishop
But as I look out of my window
All I see is a long city street
Six garbage cans and one skinny flower
Each dealing in its own way with the rain
Have you ever tried describing the rain?
It’s much harder than writing a sestina
Much harder than tending a flower
Or capturing the Queen with your Bishop
For to pin down the rain in the street
You must be ready to crawl out your window
What would Elizabeth see from my window?
So much more I bet than the rain
Sweeping along my old street
Twisting and turning like a sestina
Seeping into all things including that bishop
Whose crozier resembles a flower
Yes a thing as mundane as a flower
Seen from her apartment window
Would take on the hilarity of a bishop
Running for cover in the rain
And she’d mention somewhere in her sestina
What six garbage cans signify in the street
Every poet’s mind is a street
Which leads to the heart of a flower
And whether one does odes or sestinas
This flower's a many-sided window
Through which one can gaze at the rain
With the faith of an eccentric-eyed bishop
Yet I am not Elizabeth Bishop
Peering down at the wonderful street
Hearing the many voices of the rain
Whilst a common unassuming flower
Sits coolly on the ledge of a window
And composes a timeless sestina
If you would like a bishop to speak in sestinas
Just give him a window overlooking a street
—His marble brain will flower in the rain
January 23, 2021
The carefully-wrought imagery of an American Master, brimming with controlled emotion:
IMAGINARY ICEBERGS
We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock
and all the sea were moving marble.
***
Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.
IMAGINARY ICEBERGS
We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock
and all the sea were moving marble.
***
Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.
July 24, 2007
I really wanted to like this collection. I did enjoy One Art:
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
January 5, 2020
The Complete Poems 1927-1979, Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop was vehement about her art--a perfectionist who didn't want to be seen as a "woman poet." In 1977, two years before her death she wrote, "art is art and to separate writings, paintings, musical compositions, etc., into two sexes is to emphasize values in them that are not art." She also deeply distrusted the dominant mode of modern poetry, one practiced with such detached passion by her friend Robert Lowell, the confessional.
Bishop was unforgiving of fashion and limited ways of seeing and feeling, but cast an even more trenchant eye on her own work. One wishes this volume were thicker, though the perfections within mark the rightness of her approach. The poems are sublimely controlled, fraught with word play, fierce moral vision (see her caustic ballad on Ezra Pound, "Visits to St. Elizabeths"), and reticence. From the surreal sorrow of the early "Man-Moth" (leaping off from a typo she had come across for "mammoth"), about a lonely monster who rarely emerges from "the pale subways of cement he calls his home," to the beauty of her villanelle "One Art" (with its repeated "the art of losing isn't hard to master"), the poet wittily explores distance and desolation, separation and sorrow.
Elizabeth Bishop was vehement about her art--a perfectionist who didn't want to be seen as a "woman poet." In 1977, two years before her death she wrote, "art is art and to separate writings, paintings, musical compositions, etc., into two sexes is to emphasize values in them that are not art." She also deeply distrusted the dominant mode of modern poetry, one practiced with such detached passion by her friend Robert Lowell, the confessional.
Bishop was unforgiving of fashion and limited ways of seeing and feeling, but cast an even more trenchant eye on her own work. One wishes this volume were thicker, though the perfections within mark the rightness of her approach. The poems are sublimely controlled, fraught with word play, fierce moral vision (see her caustic ballad on Ezra Pound, "Visits to St. Elizabeths"), and reticence. From the surreal sorrow of the early "Man-Moth" (leaping off from a typo she had come across for "mammoth"), about a lonely monster who rarely emerges from "the pale subways of cement he calls his home," to the beauty of her villanelle "One Art" (with its repeated "the art of losing isn't hard to master"), the poet wittily explores distance and desolation, separation and sorrow.
April 11, 2016
Very few Bishop poems touch overtly on the subject of romantic love. The following poem does, and it tugs on one's heartstrings as deftly as any Lucinda Williams country song:
"Insomnia"
The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
By the Universe deserted,
SHE'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well
into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.
***
At the other end of the spectrum, Bishop's poem "Pink Dog" stands out as a stomach-turningly potent piece of social commentary. It appears that this woman excelled at virtually every form and genre of poetry.
"Insomnia"
The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
By the Universe deserted,
SHE'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well
into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.
***
At the other end of the spectrum, Bishop's poem "Pink Dog" stands out as a stomach-turningly potent piece of social commentary. It appears that this woman excelled at virtually every form and genre of poetry.
September 12, 2021
Elizabeth Bishop war mir absolut kein Begriff, bis ich diesen Band geschenkt bekam, der eine breite Auswahl an Gedichten aus ihrem Werk enthält. Obwohl es immer schwierig ist Lyrik adäquat in eine andere Sprache zu übertragen, ist das Steffen Popp nach meinem Empfinden gut gelungen. Seine Versionen bleiben zwar nah am Original, bewahren aber stets eine gewisse Eigenständigkeit. Neben dem Inhalt verdient auch die formschöne Gestaltung ein Lob. Ein Buch, das ich im Laufe der letzten Monate, immer wieder gerne zur Hand genommen habe.
Eine kleine Kostprobe:
Eine kleine Kostprobe:
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
(…)
Verlieren, diese Kunst zu lernen ist nicht schwer;
so viele Dinge, scheints, sind geradezu bereit
für das Verlorengehen, sie fehlen dir nicht sehr.
Verlier was jeden Tag. Das Durcheinander
verlorener Türschlüssel nimm hin, die vertane Zeit.
Verlieren, diese Kunst zu lernen ist nicht schwer.
Dann üb Verlieren weiter, und verliere schneller:
Orte, und Namen, und wohin deine Reise
gehen sollte. Nichts davon schmerzt dich sehr.
(…)
One Art / Eine Kunst
Read
October 6, 2021Elizabeth Bishop is about the closest thing I know of to a "pure" poet in 20th Century America, untrammeled by attempts at linguistic experimentation, song-like prosody, or confessional rambling. Simply a perspective encapsulated in the purest, truest language imaginable. And she deserves all of her plaudits. Sure there are other poets whom I connect to more, but Bishop seems to me the queen of the form. I'm terribly glad I finally took in all her work at once.
June 23, 2018
Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
That very thought has occurred to me on occasion. This collection was a slow start. The images were dense, looped and anchored in rocky soil. There was a trace of fear upon entry: a hesitation. Perhaps there was a benefit; I know nothing about Bishop’s biography, though I’m guessing there were extensive travels to Brazil. It was Teju Cole who pointed the way. He has proved a reliable curator.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
That very thought has occurred to me on occasion. This collection was a slow start. The images were dense, looped and anchored in rocky soil. There was a trace of fear upon entry: a hesitation. Perhaps there was a benefit; I know nothing about Bishop’s biography, though I’m guessing there were extensive travels to Brazil. It was Teju Cole who pointed the way. He has proved a reliable curator.
July 8, 2016
The brown enormous odor he lived by
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare--
even to the sow that always ate her young--
till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts
(he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours),
the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red
the burning puddles seemed to reassure.
And then he thought he almost might endure
his exile yet another year or more.
But evenings the first star came to warn.
The farmer whom he worked for came at dark
to shut the cows and horses in the barn
beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,
with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,
safe and companionable as in the Ark.
The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.
The lantern--like the sun, going away--
laid on the mud a pacing aureole.
Carrying a bucket along a slimy board,
he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight,
his shuddering insights, beyond his control,
touching him. But it took him a long time
finally to make up his mind to go home.
was too close, with its breathing and thick hair,
for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty
was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.
Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts,
the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare--
even to the sow that always ate her young--
till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head.
But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts
(he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours),
the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red
the burning puddles seemed to reassure.
And then he thought he almost might endure
his exile yet another year or more.
But evenings the first star came to warn.
The farmer whom he worked for came at dark
to shut the cows and horses in the barn
beneath their overhanging clouds of hay,
with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light,
safe and companionable as in the Ark.
The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.
The lantern--like the sun, going away--
laid on the mud a pacing aureole.
Carrying a bucket along a slimy board,
he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight,
his shuddering insights, beyond his control,
touching him. But it took him a long time
finally to make up his mind to go home.
Want to read
June 26, 2015into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.
- Insomnia
From my favorite poem
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.
- Insomnia
From my favorite poem
Read
January 9, 2023While they're not necessarily her "best" work, the small handful of prose poems in the "Uncollected" section, all of which deal with animal personifications, are of especial interest to me and those of similar aesthetic sensibilities. I wish she had written more of those.
From "Giant Snail":
"If and when I reach the rock, I shall go into a certain crack there for the night. The waterfall below will vibrate through my shell and body all night long. In that steady pulsing I can rest. All night I shall be like a sleeping ear."
From "Giant Snail":
"If and when I reach the rock, I shall go into a certain crack there for the night. The waterfall below will vibrate through my shell and body all night long. In that steady pulsing I can rest. All night I shall be like a sleeping ear."
November 17, 2009
In the May 14, 2009 issue of The London Review of Books, Colm Tóibín writes that in the poems of Elizabeth Bishop, "Description was a desperate way of avoiding self-description; looking at the world was a way of looking out from the self." He goes on to say that "The fact that the world was there was both enough and far too little for Bishop. Its history or her own history were beside the point." Given that the lyric mode† has become the dominant mode of contemporary poetry (as opposed to epic or didactic or pastoral modes), and given that contemporary lyric is often conceived as "overheard" or confessional poetry, Tóibín's contention is an interesting one. When we overhear Bishop, we don't hear her talking about herself. She's talking about fish or armadillos or moose. For a reader steeped in the patent egoism (and occasional egotism) of contemporary lyric poets like Louise Glück, Frederick Seidel, John Ashberry, or Jorrie Graham, Elizabeth Bishop cuts an odd figure. There seems to be not very much Elizabeth Bishop in the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. Biographical critics, meet your ultimate foe.
Yet reading this collection, which includes all published poems, unpublished poems from her youth, and a series of translations, one sees that Tóibín is not altogether right. Bishop's description was not a desperate way of "avoiding self-description"; it was in fact her very method of self-description. In fish and armadillos and moose she saw human characteristics that dissolved the boundaries we are wont to erect between human and animal. Observe how in "The Fish," Bishop struggles to reject the animal as something fully other:
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip--
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
...
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
The narrator toggles between anthropomorphizing description ("his sullen face") and clinical, distant language ("the mechanism of his jaw"), correcting herself mid-stride ("if you could call it a lip," "or four and a wire leader"). This is a wonderful poem that transmutes the fish-out-of-water disorientation to the person who has caught the fish. She cannot make sense of it, categorize it, and when she tries, she wrestles with signs of noble struggle, even wisdom, and confirmations that it is a beast with eyes "shallower" and "yellowed" when compared with human eyes, eyes that don't "return my stare." It's wise and mundane, deep and shallow, all at once. In the final lines, the mystery of the fish overwhelms the narrator's sense of victory:
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
Surrendering the fish means surrendering her attempt to figure it out. Much of what I find stirring and delightful about Bishop's poetry is this surrendering posture, an angle of defeat that never fully lets on quite what it's up to. In more overt poems like "Questions of Travel," Bishop unabashedly poses a series of difficult questions that imply defeat, including the famous closing lines:
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there ... No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?
It is in the struggle for understanding that Bishop finds the vitality of the self. This reminds me of Louise Glück's poetry, but Bishop's feels less like therapeutic self-expression, and it is the better for it. For Bishop locates the turmoil between what she thinks she knows and what she cannot or does not know not only in her own head but also in heads of seemingly the weakest or most ridiculous creatures. In doing so, she suggests an identification between herself and vulnerable animals like the armadillo or the sandpiper. This identification has a way of both expanding the range of her conundrums--they afflict even weak animals--and reducing their self-importance--if even a sandpiper can have the view that "The world is mist. And then the world is / minute and vast and clear," how special is it that we can, too?
"Sandpiper" closes
he is preoccupied,
looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray,
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
This is Bishop, too. We find her looking for something, something, something, darting her head among the objects and mysteries of material life like a sandpiper flitting its head along the pebbled shore. Her collected poems prove that among the million grains she knows where the rose and amethyst lie.
†On the rise of the lyric mode in modern and contemporary poetry, see Michael Silk's important chapter "Lyric and Lyrics: Perspectives Ancient and Modern" in the Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric, pp. 373ff. Silk ably demonstrates how privileging one mode of poetry, the lyric mode, reached such an extent that the mode itself is now synonymous with poetry.
Yet reading this collection, which includes all published poems, unpublished poems from her youth, and a series of translations, one sees that Tóibín is not altogether right. Bishop's description was not a desperate way of "avoiding self-description"; it was in fact her very method of self-description. In fish and armadillos and moose she saw human characteristics that dissolved the boundaries we are wont to erect between human and animal. Observe how in "The Fish," Bishop struggles to reject the animal as something fully other:
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip--
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
...
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
The narrator toggles between anthropomorphizing description ("his sullen face") and clinical, distant language ("the mechanism of his jaw"), correcting herself mid-stride ("if you could call it a lip," "or four and a wire leader"). This is a wonderful poem that transmutes the fish-out-of-water disorientation to the person who has caught the fish. She cannot make sense of it, categorize it, and when she tries, she wrestles with signs of noble struggle, even wisdom, and confirmations that it is a beast with eyes "shallower" and "yellowed" when compared with human eyes, eyes that don't "return my stare." It's wise and mundane, deep and shallow, all at once. In the final lines, the mystery of the fish overwhelms the narrator's sense of victory:
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
Surrendering the fish means surrendering her attempt to figure it out. Much of what I find stirring and delightful about Bishop's poetry is this surrendering posture, an angle of defeat that never fully lets on quite what it's up to. In more overt poems like "Questions of Travel," Bishop unabashedly poses a series of difficult questions that imply defeat, including the famous closing lines:
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there ... No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?
It is in the struggle for understanding that Bishop finds the vitality of the self. This reminds me of Louise Glück's poetry, but Bishop's feels less like therapeutic self-expression, and it is the better for it. For Bishop locates the turmoil between what she thinks she knows and what she cannot or does not know not only in her own head but also in heads of seemingly the weakest or most ridiculous creatures. In doing so, she suggests an identification between herself and vulnerable animals like the armadillo or the sandpiper. This identification has a way of both expanding the range of her conundrums--they afflict even weak animals--and reducing their self-importance--if even a sandpiper can have the view that "The world is mist. And then the world is / minute and vast and clear," how special is it that we can, too?
"Sandpiper" closes
he is preoccupied,
looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray,
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
This is Bishop, too. We find her looking for something, something, something, darting her head among the objects and mysteries of material life like a sandpiper flitting its head along the pebbled shore. Her collected poems prove that among the million grains she knows where the rose and amethyst lie.
†On the rise of the lyric mode in modern and contemporary poetry, see Michael Silk's important chapter "Lyric and Lyrics: Perspectives Ancient and Modern" in the Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric, pp. 373ff. Silk ably demonstrates how privileging one mode of poetry, the lyric mode, reached such an extent that the mode itself is now synonymous with poetry.
July 18, 2012
Elizabeth, I liked some of your poems, found some of them beautiful, or touching or delicately structured. Not especially profound, but you don't strike me as having invested much in the profound, rather the fleeting, the unintended and the suddenly honest. You also did not speak often of love, except perhaps in your manuscript poems, which you hid and which did not escape until after your death. So much for the love poems. They were some or your best, by the way-- if only you had been bolder about the sexy bits. So thank you for sharing your poetry, because I read it all-- within the space of 24 hours or so and I have learned (as least) one important thing: good poems are hard to come by, even from oneself. Perhaps especially so.
February 24, 2016
4,5 stars. I wrote about this book here: Questions of displacement - http://wp.me/p79SOn-BT #readwomen
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November 5, 2020I can't rate a collection that compiles collections. That seems more arbitrary than the already arbitrary notion of numerical ratings in general.
North & South: 4/5
A Cold Spring: 2/5
Questions of Travel: 4/5
Geography III: 4.5/5 or maybe a 5/5
I don't know. Poetry is so hard to quantify.
I love Bishop's distance. At times, it becomes too much, and I struggle to gather meaning from the crumbs she throws my way, but, other times, she really delves deep into locale, object, memory and excavates some genuine cognition within her turn of phrase. Her rhymes are remarkably witty without ever attaining the standard status of rhyme as sing-song, rhyme as lilt, instead allowing her rhymes to breathe sonorously through their genuine nature. Her topics are broad, and I can't say I was ever truly bored except for a few scant flops and for most of A Cold Spring. One Art and In the Waiting Room deserve the hype.
North & South: 4/5
A Cold Spring: 2/5
Questions of Travel: 4/5
Geography III: 4.5/5 or maybe a 5/5
I don't know. Poetry is so hard to quantify.
I love Bishop's distance. At times, it becomes too much, and I struggle to gather meaning from the crumbs she throws my way, but, other times, she really delves deep into locale, object, memory and excavates some genuine cognition within her turn of phrase. Her rhymes are remarkably witty without ever attaining the standard status of rhyme as sing-song, rhyme as lilt, instead allowing her rhymes to breathe sonorously through their genuine nature. Her topics are broad, and I can't say I was ever truly bored except for a few scant flops and for most of A Cold Spring. One Art and In the Waiting Room deserve the hype.
November 8, 2017
Io ho delle serie resistenze riguardo al periodo ittico di Elizabeth Bishop.
Non so: “aria che sa di merluzzo” e raschiare scaglie e triglie, tovaglie e stoviglie (da pesce, presumibilmente).
Anche riguardo alla sua fase ornitologica sono ritrosissima. Un po’ come mi capita con il periodo botanico di Marianne Moore, per dire.
Niente. Rivoglio i pesci e i fiori di Sexton, Plath, Rich, Hacker. Con tutte le spine.
Non so: “aria che sa di merluzzo” e raschiare scaglie e triglie, tovaglie e stoviglie (da pesce, presumibilmente).
Anche riguardo alla sua fase ornitologica sono ritrosissima. Un po’ come mi capita con il periodo botanico di Marianne Moore, per dire.
Niente. Rivoglio i pesci e i fiori di Sexton, Plath, Rich, Hacker. Con tutte le spine.
February 2, 2014
Bishop forces me to slow down and savor -- I don't always want to do that but when I do the rewards are great.
December 29, 2017
Better with every reading.
Read
September 10, 2022JPO STEP ONE: DONE ✅✅
to the one and only elizabeth bishop. miss elizabeth bishop. lizzy. ms. bishop. bishie bish. love of my life! elizabeth,
if “somebody loves us all” then i’m the somebody who loves you. it’s me & u to the end. would follow u anywhere!!! ur ruining my life.
with love,
grace
some snippets of lines i rly loved:
“then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips”
“and we remained unchanged together for a year, a minute, an hour”
“what right have you to give commands and tell us how to live” (in reference to a rooster)
“we can sit down and weep; we can go shopping, or play at a game of constantly being wrong with a priceless set of vocabularies, or we can bravely deplore, but please please come flying”
“oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?”
“But surely it would have been a pity not to have seen the trees along this road”
“patch upon patch up one patch, your wife keeps all of you covered”
“i scarcely dared to look to see what it was i was”
“home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?”
“why didn’t I know enough of something?”
“i’d like to retire there and do nothing, or nothing much, forever”
“costume and custom are complex”
these are obviously out of context but still!!! she’s fabulous and everyone should read her!!
disclaimer: i didn’t technically “finish” this collection because I didn’t read Elizabeth’s translations of other poems, but I read all of her own work so i’m counting it
to the one and only elizabeth bishop. miss elizabeth bishop. lizzy. ms. bishop. bishie bish. love of my life! elizabeth,
if “somebody loves us all” then i’m the somebody who loves you. it’s me & u to the end. would follow u anywhere!!! ur ruining my life.
with love,
grace
some snippets of lines i rly loved:
“then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips”
“and we remained unchanged together for a year, a minute, an hour”
“what right have you to give commands and tell us how to live” (in reference to a rooster)
“we can sit down and weep; we can go shopping, or play at a game of constantly being wrong with a priceless set of vocabularies, or we can bravely deplore, but please please come flying”
“oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?”
“But surely it would have been a pity not to have seen the trees along this road”
“patch upon patch up one patch, your wife keeps all of you covered”
“i scarcely dared to look to see what it was i was”
“home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?”
“why didn’t I know enough of something?”
“i’d like to retire there and do nothing, or nothing much, forever”
“costume and custom are complex”
these are obviously out of context but still!!! she’s fabulous and everyone should read her!!
disclaimer: i didn’t technically “finish” this collection because I didn’t read Elizabeth’s translations of other poems, but I read all of her own work so i’m counting it
Read
December 23, 2022my favorites:
Questions of Travel
Visits to St. Elizabeths
House Guest
The Reprimand
Questions of Travel
Visits to St. Elizabeths
House Guest
The Reprimand
May 21, 2013
"i lost two cities, lovely ones. and, vaster,
some realms i owned, two rivers, a continent.
i miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
- even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
i love) i shan't have lied. it's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (write it!) like disaster"
some realms i owned, two rivers, a continent.
i miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
- even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
i love) i shan't have lied. it's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (write it!) like disaster"
March 22, 2018
To be fair I've only read a handful of poems but I've really enjoyed them, Bishop is exquisitely evocative and poetic without being puzzling.
September 21, 2020
Spectacular, insightful, vivid.
June 2, 2013
The 1955 volume POEMS reissued Elizabeth Bishop's debut collection North and South, but it also contained an entirely new collection titled A Cold Spring. One of the best places to get this material is the Library of America volume (ISBN 1598530178) that contains Bishop's complete poems and prose with a choice of letters, but I have found it interesting to slowly examine Bishop's collections on their own.
North and South was published in 1946, but of the poems predate the war (or at least American involvement in it) and reflect Bishop's development as a poet through the 1930s and very early 1940s. From the very first poem, "The Map", we find Bishop's distinctive concern with describing specific scenes in detail, that then give way to some kind of universal, transcendental experience. After various musings on the printers' layout of the eponymous map, the poem ends: "Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is, / lending the land their waves' own conformation: / and Norway's hare runs south in agitation, / profiles investigate the sea, where land is. / Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors? / -- What suits the characters or the native waters best. / Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West. / More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors."
And the best poems in North and South continue this style. "Roosters", acclaimed by Robert Lowell as the best work by an American female poet, goes from describing the dawn chorus around Bishop's home to meditations on tribal violence and religious salvation. "The Fish" recounts a victory during an angling trip, only to ultimately make a point about how insignificant such victories are. And there's humour here to, such as in "Large Bad Picture" where Bishop meditates on her great-uncle's painting, only eliptically revealing how bad it is.
Only Bishop's dabbling in surrealism in "The Weed" and "The Man-Moth" marks this collection with a certain immaturity. But still, this is an impressive debut, and Bishop's poetry has a music to it that should appeal to a wide public. The only difficulty comes in reviewing it: Bishop's poetry is so concerned with a twist somewhere towards the end of a poem that her poems can only be quoted in full.
The second collection, A Cold Spring, consists of poems written in the 1940s and early 1950s. Here too we Bishop's careful eye for detail, basing a whole poem on a pensive contemplation of one small object or scene, but it also includes a number of striking poems based on turbulent personal relationships. "O Breath" and "Insomnia" are nighttime meditations on problems with a lover. "View of the Capitol of the Library of Congress" is an amusing jab at politics from a literary intellectual. Some of the poems in A Cold Spring are among my favourite English-language poems, but it's a pity that in a review one cannot quote at length those many lines that have so touched your heart.
North and South was published in 1946, but of the poems predate the war (or at least American involvement in it) and reflect Bishop's development as a poet through the 1930s and very early 1940s. From the very first poem, "The Map", we find Bishop's distinctive concern with describing specific scenes in detail, that then give way to some kind of universal, transcendental experience. After various musings on the printers' layout of the eponymous map, the poem ends: "Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is, / lending the land their waves' own conformation: / and Norway's hare runs south in agitation, / profiles investigate the sea, where land is. / Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors? / -- What suits the characters or the native waters best. / Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West. / More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors."
And the best poems in North and South continue this style. "Roosters", acclaimed by Robert Lowell as the best work by an American female poet, goes from describing the dawn chorus around Bishop's home to meditations on tribal violence and religious salvation. "The Fish" recounts a victory during an angling trip, only to ultimately make a point about how insignificant such victories are. And there's humour here to, such as in "Large Bad Picture" where Bishop meditates on her great-uncle's painting, only eliptically revealing how bad it is.
Only Bishop's dabbling in surrealism in "The Weed" and "The Man-Moth" marks this collection with a certain immaturity. But still, this is an impressive debut, and Bishop's poetry has a music to it that should appeal to a wide public. The only difficulty comes in reviewing it: Bishop's poetry is so concerned with a twist somewhere towards the end of a poem that her poems can only be quoted in full.
The second collection, A Cold Spring, consists of poems written in the 1940s and early 1950s. Here too we Bishop's careful eye for detail, basing a whole poem on a pensive contemplation of one small object or scene, but it also includes a number of striking poems based on turbulent personal relationships. "O Breath" and "Insomnia" are nighttime meditations on problems with a lover. "View of the Capitol of the Library of Congress" is an amusing jab at politics from a literary intellectual. Some of the poems in A Cold Spring are among my favourite English-language poems, but it's a pity that in a review one cannot quote at length those many lines that have so touched your heart.
July 14, 2018
Nearly all of these poems are remarkable in some way. Bishop deftly handles fixed forms, such as the sonnet and the sestina, and her villanelle "One Art" has been lingering in my mind for awhile. Her verses in open form are well chiseled sculptures. She can shift her creative focus from the quotidian to the marvelous and leave the reader the better for it.
Some more favorites include "The Hanging of the Mouse" and "Roosters".
Also notable are her translations of other poets, including "The Table" and "Don't Kill Yourself" by Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
Some more favorites include "The Hanging of the Mouse" and "Roosters".
Also notable are her translations of other poets, including "The Table" and "Don't Kill Yourself" by Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
November 10, 2022
Elizabeth Bishop's work is dense and light at once. In the first poem of this collection, she reveals her larger metaphor with a powerful simile in a single line: in exploring the colors of maps and their intricate detail, she describes their printers as "experiencing the same excitement / as when an emotion too far exceeds its cause". Therein lies the motive for her digressive journey from direct descriptions of land to the map: the emotion that one retroactively gives their own history, as in the colors of the map, as when an emotion too far exceeds its cause.
Bishop's style alternates throughout the poems from her lifetime, but the same innovation and intensity shine through in each. It's difficult to mention any one poem specifically for fear of having to mention 20 others; except for Louise Bogan's "The Blue Estuaries", no other poetry book I've read has required so many post notes so often because I wanted to return to specific works. The only few that I didn't find as moving were translated works, not Bishop's writing, and even those I was glad to have read.
Though I have a proclivity for writing that draws on existing literature, Bishop differed from Bogan in that she much more frequently chose modern subjects for her poetry. However, the same discipline and deep understanding of the idea she was writing into existence still made for great poetry. Very often, people using modern symbols make nothing more from them than the simple tenor of the anxieties of modern life, a life that can't rest on traditions of the past, which gets old quickly (ironically enough). But Bogan treats "The Shampoo" the same way that ancient poets treated the moon.
Bogan's use of conventional symbols such as the moon was also creative and intriguing. In "Insomnia", the moon she presents is a solitary, defiant being, discerning everything around it before she eventually connects the moon back to herself, a deserted, former lover, lost in half-dreams of what was. But, as with so many of her other poems, "Insomnia" has many more layers than just the trope. Bishop arranged the syntax such that the last line, seeming to be lulling into regularity (as one lulls into unconsciousness), is snapped into awareness. Describing the place her feelings for her lost lover have gone, she describes "that world inverted / where left is always right, / where the shadows are really the body, / where we stay awake all night, / where the heavens are as shallow as the sea / is now deep, and you love me."
There was so much more that I loved about her poetry, but this review is already pretty long. The only suggestion I have is to read her poems, and then reread them. One last thing that comes to mind is how well Bishop bent the atmosphere of her poems through the syntax and fluency between lines, as in "Insomnia" described above, and in another example that comes to mind, the opening lines of Casabianca. I'll leave that one in its entirety below.
"Casabianca"
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.
Bishop's style alternates throughout the poems from her lifetime, but the same innovation and intensity shine through in each. It's difficult to mention any one poem specifically for fear of having to mention 20 others; except for Louise Bogan's "The Blue Estuaries", no other poetry book I've read has required so many post notes so often because I wanted to return to specific works. The only few that I didn't find as moving were translated works, not Bishop's writing, and even those I was glad to have read.
Though I have a proclivity for writing that draws on existing literature, Bishop differed from Bogan in that she much more frequently chose modern subjects for her poetry. However, the same discipline and deep understanding of the idea she was writing into existence still made for great poetry. Very often, people using modern symbols make nothing more from them than the simple tenor of the anxieties of modern life, a life that can't rest on traditions of the past, which gets old quickly (ironically enough). But Bogan treats "The Shampoo" the same way that ancient poets treated the moon.
Bogan's use of conventional symbols such as the moon was also creative and intriguing. In "Insomnia", the moon she presents is a solitary, defiant being, discerning everything around it before she eventually connects the moon back to herself, a deserted, former lover, lost in half-dreams of what was. But, as with so many of her other poems, "Insomnia" has many more layers than just the trope. Bishop arranged the syntax such that the last line, seeming to be lulling into regularity (as one lulls into unconsciousness), is snapped into awareness. Describing the place her feelings for her lost lover have gone, she describes "that world inverted / where left is always right, / where the shadows are really the body, / where we stay awake all night, / where the heavens are as shallow as the sea / is now deep, and you love me."
There was so much more that I loved about her poetry, but this review is already pretty long. The only suggestion I have is to read her poems, and then reread them. One last thing that comes to mind is how well Bishop bent the atmosphere of her poems through the syntax and fluency between lines, as in "Insomnia" described above, and in another example that comes to mind, the opening lines of Casabianca. I'll leave that one in its entirety below.
"Casabianca"
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.
April 24, 2011
I fell for Elizabeth Bishop on the first page of this double-collection.
There's a little tingle of eroticism here, similar to that in Judith Schalansky'sAtlas of Remote Islands - of defining and outlining a shape, in your mind, with your fingers - a description that moves quickly from land to paper to flesh. And the sense of physicality: 'does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, / drawing it unperturbed around itself'; 'These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger / like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods'.
And finally, the structure of that last phrase, a tingle in itself: 'More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors'. That's a memory tingle - that line's been ringing in my ear for a week now, waiting for me to find the other line it matches to. I'm almost certain it's an E.E. Cummings. I'm hanging on 'nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands', but that's just close, not want I'm looking for. Hmmmmm.
I like Bishop the most when her poems are rooted in very specific details: from 'Roosters'
From the very famous 'The Fish':
Often I find her rhythms and rhymes almost daring, reckless - a kind of challenge to 'good taste', packing more and more in: also from 'Roosters'
But perhaps most of all I like 'Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore'. There's such a strong femininity to it, but also a strength, and an intellect - a sense of rushing air and swirling water and gleeful anticipation that I just can't get enough of:
The Map
Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?
The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,
or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
The names of seashore towns run out to sea,
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
-the printer here experiencing the same excitement
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.
Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is,
lending the land their waves' own conformation:
and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,
profiles investigate the sea, where land is.
Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?
-What suits the character or the native waters best.
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.
There's a little tingle of eroticism here, similar to that in Judith Schalansky'sAtlas of Remote Islands - of defining and outlining a shape, in your mind, with your fingers - a description that moves quickly from land to paper to flesh. And the sense of physicality: 'does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, / drawing it unperturbed around itself'; 'These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger / like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods'.
And finally, the structure of that last phrase, a tingle in itself: 'More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors'. That's a memory tingle - that line's been ringing in my ear for a week now, waiting for me to find the other line it matches to. I'm almost certain it's an E.E. Cummings. I'm hanging on 'nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands', but that's just close, not want I'm looking for. Hmmmmm.
I like Bishop the most when her poems are rooted in very specific details: from 'Roosters'
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare
with stupid eyes
while from their beaks there rise
the uncontrolled, traditional cries.
Deep from protruding chests
in green-gold medals dressed,
planned to command and terrorize the rest,
the many wives
who lead hens' lives
of being courted and despised
From the very famous 'The Fish':
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
Often I find her rhythms and rhymes almost daring, reckless - a kind of challenge to 'good taste', packing more and more in: also from 'Roosters'
The crown of red
set on your little head
is charged with all your fighting blood
Yes, that excrescence
makes a most virile presence,
plus all that vulgar beauty of iridescence
Now in mid-air
by two they fight each other.
Down comes a first flame-feather,
and one is flying,
with raging heroism defying
even the sensation of dying.
But perhaps most of all I like 'Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore'. There's such a strong femininity to it, but also a strength, and an intellect - a sense of rushing air and swirling water and gleeful anticipation that I just can't get enough of:
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.
Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.
Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.
Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.
Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.
For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.
With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.
Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
October 2, 2021
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
One Art is my all time favorite. I'm in love with One Art or maybe with Sestina too.
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
One Art is my all time favorite. I'm in love with One Art or maybe with Sestina too.
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