Alan’s review of The Complete Poems 1927-1979 > Likes and Comments

Thanks for sharing your experiences with Elizabeth, Alan.
It is Great when someone does this, as it really makes the 'famous' person come to Life as an ordinary but Real human being with their individual ways just like everybody else.

I met Elizabeth in 1983 when a very keen-on-poetry Canadian friend sent me her "Geography III" which I have ALWAYS enjoyed. Of course, it was there I read "One Art" which I would have LOVED to have written
myself, but have always been grateful for because I am quite sure I never could have!!!

It was the next year that I bought her Complete Works...and I'm ashamed to say it has spent an awfully long time on my Poetry Shelf with some too rare dips inside!
However, as you may be aware,a film was made in 2013 titled "Reaching for the Moon", about her friendship and love for the Brazilian architect, Lota De Macedo
Soares. Elizabeth is played by an excellent Australian actress, Miranda Otto, although she isn't really how I imagined Elizabeth to be. It would be a bigger challenge to you!!! Have you seen it yet?? I've only seen the trailer, but already it has got me rereading; almost completed another reading of "Geography III" and happily the Complete Works is OFF the shelf and already started.

I think both You and the Fish were pretty lucky, but as with a lot of things in Life we often don't realise it. Quite an UNlucky fish really!!!!

Regards, Wayne, Sydney Australia.

Thanks for your wonderful note. You could not make a film character out of the E Bishop I knew--largely from her residence at Rhoda Sheehan' Hurricane House (that blew across Westport Harbor from Boathouse Lane in the '38 hurricane. It's still there, now winterized where Rhoda's son lives. Should have a plaque on it, of course, though it's a half mile from the road, so no one would see it.) She was a quiet, interior person. Her friend Alice M invited me to San Fran, but I never made it. Lost chance to know EB's friend better.
I don't get to many films, though I would be curious to see what they made of EB in Brazil, and of course L's suicide in NY.
EB gave these wonderful talks about Brazilian sambas and Brazilian poets. Her own poetry is so understated it does not draw memorization (I have said an hour of Yeats from memory, and an hour of Dickinson, an hour of Shakespeare, about 20 min of D Thomas, about an hour of 17C poets from Donne through Marvell, subject of my Ph.D.--in Pope Benedict's Regensberg Library, but few others. Called This Critical Age (a quote from Izaak Walton.
By the way, my mentor and friend Hollis Taylor, composer and Pied Butcherbird expert, teaches in Sydney occasionally. She enjoyed my first book on science and lit, Birdtalk, and "promoted" me to her site, www.zoomusicology.com. One of my jazz compositions based on birdtalk is on youtube, Blues for AJ (on my habitableworld channel).

Alan - so you knew Ms Bishop! I'm awe-struck.

I got to know her work several years ago after reading much of her correspondence with Robert Lowell - though I confess that was from curiosity about Lowell's table-talk. Then I grew to love and appreciate a song cycle of her poems by the stellar American composer Elliott Carter.

It was only last winter that I broke down and got this book. I found it to be perfect wintertime reading, as I was going slowly and carefully through each subtle masterpiece - every one with its deep, unplumbed depths!

Thank you!

Fergus wrote: "Alan - so you knew Ms Bishop! I'm awe-struck.

I got to know her work several years ago after reading much of her correspondence with Robert Lowell - though I confess that was from curiosity about ..."

Yes, I knew Bishop because of Rhoda Sheehan, her friend from a Boston prep school and Vassar '33...along with Rhoda's other famous writer friend Mary McCarthy, who put Rhoda in The Group I think, the compulsive reader. In fact, spent today noonish with Rhoda's daughter Eileen, who has a grand houe overlooking Westport Harbor. Eileen left her NYC banking career maybe 30 years ago, has a business in Fall River, MA. Her brother Phillip lives in the cottage, "Hurricane House" now winterized, that Bishop rented--it floated across the harbor in the '38 hurricane. Today Eileen visited my wife's Sailshade Studios, newly on Tripadvisor.

Alan, I love you Rhoda stories. I think I will read Bishop at our next poetry night. I have on my pile the latest biography of her my Meghan Marshall.

Jorge wrote: "Alan, I love you Rhoda stories. I think I will read Bishop at our next poetry night. I have on my pile the latest biography of her my Meghan Marshall."

Just by chance, spent yesterday with Rhoda's daughter Eileen at Sailshade Studios, photo on my FB of her and S in front of art SMP made when we rented Rhoda's farmhouse--art that was shown at Squibb International Headquarters, Princeton, NJ.

It’s wonderful to read this again! You were blessed to live and grow in such fertile academic ground as the US North-East was in those glory days. What memories! Thanks, old friend.

Impressive review, Alan! I enjoyed reading it.

Beautiful story.
This line made me cry:
“One major trouble with modern life is that the wrong people (and interests) have the best megaphones and speakers.”

Thanks from my side as well for sharing your experiences with Elizabeth, Alan! It's always wonderful to read your write up and your association with books and authors!

Fergus wrote: "It’s wonderful to read this again! You were blessed to live and grow in such fertile academic ground as the US North-East was in those glory days. What memories! Thanks, old friend."

Thanks, Fergus, for re-reading. Must say, I thought I was the only one to do that...found a typo near the bottom here, this time. Maybe I'll leave it...to remind myself I do make plenty of errors.

ninamo wrote: "Beautiful story.
This line made me cry:
“One major trouble with modern life is that the wrong people (and interests) have the best megaphones and speakers.”"

Wow, appreciate how moved you were--though I respond six months later.

Fiona McGrath, Thanks for liking my review. Wish your profile were not private, so we could compare books we both have read.

Joey R, Thanks for liking my review. Wish I could message you on the one book we both agree on, by my fellow AmColl grad Scott Turow, and the ones we don't.

Jane Upshall, Thanks for liking my review. Wish I could message you, especially about the book I'm re-reading, some in Russian, which you have read, Oblomov. Few have.

Margarita Alexandra, Thanks for liking. My newest book, Conversations with Birds: the Metaphysics of Bird and Human communication...is in a library near Sydney, Australia.

Patrick D, Thanks for liking. Wish we could message each other. By the way, I visited Milfod when my good friend Tom Weiskel (and wife Portia Williams) lived thee, 1st couple years at Yale grad school. He became Harold Bloom's fave, Bloom had Tom teaching grad students at 24. But his wife, daughter of a Harvard prof, refused to live at a university. They bought a house in Leverett, MA, near Echo Lake. Tom came home weekends, when Portia was p.g with their 2nd. Tom took a borrowed sled onto the ice Dec 1, the rope split, 1stborn Shelburne slipped off through the ice...the rest is in my verse account, Parodies Lost. In sum, Tom died at the age Shelley did.

Toby, Thanks for liking. See you smoke a pipe. Always liked the smell, but found when I tied it 5 decades ago, couldn't taste it.

Great review, Alan. I’ll check her out. Dealing with Billy Collins at the moment.

Lyn Franger, Thanks. Wish I cd messge you.

Susan Webb, Thanks. Wish I cd message you.

Lily Feinman, Thanks for liking. A deceptively fine poet, Though hard to memorize-- my theory, the best, memorable. Homer, Shakespeare recited from m.