Saskia Hamilton (1967–2023)

I have never read correspondence before (except in epistolary novels) so I was pleasantly surprised by how readable it was. These letters cover a 30 year span which allows the reader to really get to know Bishop and Lowell. I would recommend either reading their poetry first or having it handy to refer to as (not surprisingly) there are a lot of references to specific poems (even to specific lines or words in the poems).

I only made it through 1947-1951. It was visits with Ezra Pound, stays in Key West on the Hemmingway property and stays at Yaddo with the likes of Flannery O'Connor, stays on the rocky coast of Novia Scotia. Coercing Dylan Thomas to make a recording of his work for the poetry collection at the Library of Congress, because that's where you work. Attending a reception for Edith and Osbert Sitwell at New York City's Gotham Book Mart with Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Tennessee show more Williams, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Randall Jarred and others. Can you imagine? Mental breakdown, asthmatic collapse, failed marriage. The graffiti in Florence, Italy, reads: "Death to the criminal MacArthur," but back in New York your dissecting stanza 5, line 7 of the Kavanaughs. Don't even get me started on Harcourt Brace. 1951-1977 and trips to Brazil with Aldous Huxley for another time. After all, 811 pages of letters isn't exactly summer reading. show less

This is a book I'll keep dipping into in front of the fire, the poems at hand, without concern for finishing.

I'm not sure what terrain I was expected to traverse in this collection. The poems felt brittle and tepid without cracks or breaks, or moments of "ah."