The Complete Poems, 1927–1979

Elizabeth Bishop’s collected poems – her life’s work – can be read in a single afternoon. It will take a lot longer than that to ponder its meaning, test it against one’s own life experience, and see oneself reflected in these lines and stanzas. Although the settings change with Bishops’ extensive travels, some themes thread throughout her work – ships and sailors battling rough seas, weary laborers, unrequited or unfulfilled loves and lovers. It’s evident from the frequent biblical allusions that Bishop had a religious education, and it’s also evident Bishop found no solace in religion.

Among the most intriguing poems to me are the ones addressed to Robert Lowell and Marianne Moore. It would be interesting to explore show more how these highly regarded poets influenced each other’s work. show less

Possibly my favorite poem of all time, "Skunk Hour" by Robert Lowell, is dedicated to Elizabeth Bishop, so I had to check her out.

Many of these poems are impressionistic, capturing a moment - like "Late Air". Some use extended metaphor, like "The Unbeliever" - taking a line from John Bunyan about the dangers of unbelief and twisting it into something different - making it seem that the atheist is both able to dream differently than those on the deck below:

Asleep he was transported there
asleep he curled
in a gilded ball at the mast's top,
or climbed inside
a gilded bird, or blindly seated himself astride

The metaphor becomes something strange and mysterious - what is the unbeliever? A dreamer? A sage?

Bishop likes to weave natural imagery show more in with the emotions and ideas expressed in her poems - a classic example is "The Fish", where the defeat of the veteran fish by the fisherman is problematized by the imagery of the decrepit boat, where there is a "pool of bilge / where oil had spread a rainbow / around the rusted engine"

The fish is something noble battling against the crude ugly trappings of man. show less

Elizabeth Bishop is not just a good poet but a great one. Bishop accomplished the magical illumination of the ordinary, forcing us to examine our surroundings with the freshness of the friendly alien.

Elizabeth Bishop waited until she was thirty-five to publish her first book of poetry, North & South. It contains thirty poems, which open this volume of her complete poems. The first poem, “Maps”, immediately drew me in. It is a naive, almost child-like look at something familiar through strange eyes. The following poem, “Imaginary Iceberg”, presents the conundrum of preferring the iceberg to the ship. Do we prize approaching danger to a safe conveyance? I took it more generally: What we see in front of us interests us more than where we stand. Yet the title refers to an imaginary iceberg, which is related to the soul in the last stanza.
Taken together, these two poems suggested to me, in different ways, the task of the poet: to show more look at the familiar with fresh eyes and to question the relation of representation to that which it ostensibly represents.
There are more standout poems in this first collection, “Roosters” and “Seascape”, for example. There are recurrent themes, such as the sea and the coast, and Bible references abound. Bishop evokes the places in which her poems are set with precision. The settings vary from the New England coast to Paris to Key West.
Nine years later, Bishop presented A Cold Spring, which contains nineteen poems. She revisits familiar places (“Cape Breton”), but there are poems set in Greenwich Village and Washington, D. C., where she was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.
Both collections garnered Pulitzer Prizes, and Bishop relocated to Brazil, where more than half the poems of her following collection, Questions of Travel (1965), are set. These poems reflect the lush vegetation in which she found herself and the precarious hold the poor have on life.
Bishop published only one more collection in her lifetime, Geography III (1977). In addition to these four collections, this edition includes four new poems and several unpublished pieces, including several written in her youth. Although these don’t yet reflect her mature voice, she was already an accomplished poet; these can’t be dismissed as juvenilia. Rounding out the anthology are her translations from Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
Bishop’s poems reflect the detailed observation and precise expression that mark great poetry. She enabled me to see places I’ve never been and to share in the emotions her experience of those places evoked. I enjoyed reading this collection. show less

Elizabeth Bishop often complained that her poetic output was inadequate, but in truth, she never wrote (or, rather, published) a bad poem in her lifetime, and her final product resembles a series of crystalline jewels on a string--absolutely delicious and evocative and inventive.

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.

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 show more 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. show less