One of my favorite books of all time, I take it with me everywhere I move and regularly pull it off the shelf (or out of the box). Each poem takes about 30 minutes and 3 readings on the first attempt, but her artistry is so subtle and humble (not to mention absolutely wonderful) that it's worth it every time. After that first reading, you will still go back to the poems forever, they do not wane.

Addendum November 2008: I have recently discovered that Elizabeth Bishop is my favorite poet. I never knew who my favorite poet was or even if I had one, but I always come back to her poetry and I love it more deeply than any other poetry I've ever read. Reading her poems feels like coming home to someone I know almost as well as family (not her per se but the speaker or style) even if I have never read that particular poem before. Absolutely highly recommended. Everyone should have more Bishop in their life. ( )

She was a fine poet. ( )

A lifetime's work, all crafted with care. Wonderful poet. ( )

Amazon.com
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.

The New York Times Book Review, David Bromwich
Like all great poets, she was less a maker of poems than a maker of feelings.

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.

The New York Times Book Review, David Bromwich
Like all great poets, she was less a maker of poems than a maker of feelings. ( )