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Posted by Christopher Waldrop
April 30, 2008 |
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A new collection of work by Elizabeth Bishop, has been co-edited by Lloyd Schwartz, who was a student of hers and a friend. The book is titled Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, And Letters. In , Schwartz talks about his initial meeting with Bishop. Obviously he was starstruck, and, like almost any of us in the same situation, wasn’t entirely sure what to say. And, like most of us, probably hoped he’d develop a friendship with her. He got lucky enough to do that, and, in fact, rescued a deeply personal poem by Bishop, Breakfast Song, that Bishop apparently never intended to be published. Schwartz found the poem by looking in her notebook while she was in the hospital, and he admits to having mixed feelings about doing this “behind her back”. I’d probably feel the same way, especially with a poet whose work I love so much. A lot of poets write “occasional poems”, and it’s unfortunate that most disappear. And Breakfast Song (which you can read at the blog Revolution Me) is a special poem. On the one hand it’s unusual in her work for being so personal–both addressed to a lover and also about her fear of death–but on the other hand it’s a beautiful Elizabeth Bishop poem, full of her playfulness and cleverness with language, clearly rhyming but also artfully simple. Bishop loved forms: in her Complete Poems there are two sestinas, and one of her most famous poems, One Art, is a villanelle. And yet she also experimented with form, as in her poem Sonnet, which breaks the traditions of the form.
Caught — the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed — the broken
thermometer’s mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!
Comments
I hadn’t really experienced Bishop until the NPR interview. I think I like her a lot.