Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

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Prose: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Elizabeth Bishop’s prose is not nearly as well known as her poetry, but she was a dazzling and compelling prose writer too, as the publication of her letters has shown. Her stories are often on the borderline of memoir, and vice versa. From her college days, she could find the most astonishing yet thoroughly apt metaphors to illuminate her ideas. This volume — edited by the poet, Pulitzer Prize — winning critic, and Bishop scholar Lloyd Schwartz — includes virtually all her published shorter prose pieces and a number of prose works not published until after her death. Here are her famous as well as her lesser-known stories, crucial memoirs, literary and travel essays, book reviews, and — for the first time — her original draft of
, the Time/Life volume she repudiated in its published version, and the correspondence between Bishop and the poet Anne Stevenson, the author of the first book-length volume devoted to Bishop.

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You are right about my admiring Klee very much — but as it happens, THE MONUMENT was written more under the influence of a set of frottages by Max Ernst I used to own, called Histoire Naturel. I am passionately (I think I might say) fond of painting; in fact I’d much rather talk about painting than poetry, as a rule. I am equally fond of music — although I am rather behind with that, living in Brazil. Next time round I’d like to be a painter — or a composer — or a doctor — I seriously considered studying medicine for several years and still wish I had. I am also very much interested in architecture and helped translate a huge tome on contemporary Brazilian architecture a few years ago.

I want to get this in the mail so I must get to Petropolis quickly — I live about 8 miles outside the town, although at present I divide my time about equally between here and Rio—50 miles away. While I am here this week I’ll write you another note — I’ll answer your questions about whens and wheres — although I don’t believe there are any rules about the place —poems — after, during, or before — And I’ll certainly try to get off the other book to you in MMS — or see that you get a copy—

I do want to see your analyses — but I believe that everyone has the right to interpret exactly as they see fit, of course, so as I said, please do not think I shall be “interfering.” My only request of that sort may be quite unecessary — It is just that I am rather weary of always being compared to, or coupled with, Marianne — and I think she is utterly weary of it, too! We have been very good friends for thirty years now — but except for 1 or 2 early poems of mine and perhaps some early preferences in subject matter, neither she nor I can see why reviewers always drag her in with me. For one thing — I’ve always been an umpty-umpty poet with a traditional “ear.” Perhaps it is just another proof that critics andreviewers really very rarely pay much attention to what they’re reading & just repeat each other

I hope your little girl is better and I am extremely sorry to hear of the death of your mother. I believe you teach, don’t you? I wonder what and where? I’ll write again in a few days—

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth Bishop

Please forgive this bad typing — the machine I keep here is very different from that in Rio & it takes me a few days to get used to it—

Caixa Postal 279, Petrópolis

Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

March 20th (?), 1963

Dear Mrs. Elvin:

I mailed a very hurried letter to you two days ago and now I’ll try to answer your other questions. I am also writing the agent today — Carl Brandt, 101 Park Avenue, to see if he can have a copy of the MMS of the new book, almost complete, sent to you — and I’ll mention that DIARY of Helena Morley as well.

There isn’t any particular logic to when and where the poems were written. The first 5 in the book I gather you have were written in N.Y, in 1934–5. Large Bad Picture was written a good many yearslater, in Key West. (Memory poems are apt to pop up from time to time no matter where one happens to be, I find. — I mean childhood-memory poems.) Man-Moth is another very early one, and Country to the City, the Miracle sestina, Love Lies Sleeping, later N.Y. ones, after my first winter in Paris, I think. The Weed I wrote on Cape Cod (It seems so obviously derived, to me, that I’m sure you’ve spotted it by now!) Paris 7 Am I did write in Paris, Quai D’Orleans, too but the second stay there — in between comes Florida — and Cirque d’Hiver was written during a later stay on Cape Cod. You ask about the title — well, the Cirque d’Hiver did usehave a team of little trained ponies wearing ostrich plumes, etc. — but I think the title referred to the mood more than anything else. (Again, I think you’ll probably spot the derivation of this poem, although I believe it was unconscious.) All the others in the first book are from Key West — except Anaphora — the first stanza came to me in Puebla when the cathedral bells clanged just a few yards away from my pillow, or so it seemed — and a year or two later I finished it in Key West. So you see there is no system to them at all.

A Cold Spring is not in chronological order. There is some more Key West in it, two trips to Nova Scotia, a little New York, and at the end, the first year in Brazil. The poem about Miss Moore was written instead of an “essay” for a commemorativebirthday number of Quarterly Review.

The book you will receive has necessarily a lot of Brazil in it — But the one Amazon poem — (unless I finish another one in time to get in it, too) was written before I made a trip on the Amazon. There are also several memory poems in it.

Varick Street — I had a garret on King Street in N Y for a good many years — the buildings are now torn down — between 6th Avenue and Varick Street, & in warm weather it was very noisy. I use dream-material whenever I am lucky enough to have any and this particular poem is almost all dream — just rearranging a bit — so was Rain Towards Morning — and most of the 1st stanza of Anaphora — The last four lines of the 1st stanza of At the Fishhouses—“ He has scraped the scales”* etc where also a donnee, as James would say, in a dream. But all this is nothing at all out of the ordinary, I’m sure.

I studied music — piano and counterpoint — for some years and have a clavichord here, although I’m afraid I don’t play it much. It is hard to hear good music in Brazil,† except recordings — and they are hard to get in — but I do listen to the hi fi a lot. (Roosters, I remember, I got rather stuck with, and a recording of Kirkpatrick — I took a few lessons with him long ago — of Scarlatti got me going again in a particular rhythm.) I do like Webern — from the album I have — perhaps because he is small-scale and reminds me of Klee‡ (I believe they were friends). I don’t care much for grand, all-out efforts — but on the other hand, I sometimes do … I admire Robert Lowell’s poetry very much and much of Lord Weary’s Castle couldn’t be more all-out …

He and I have been very good friends since 1946, I think it was — and Jarrell is another friend, although of course I rarely see him. The Lowells were here visiting me last summer. I suppose that he & I both like the SEA a lot, which sounds rather silly — but we always seem to be going swimming together when we meet! But I have lived so much out of New York that I have never had much “literary” life, just occasional stretches of it. Edmund Wilson helped me once a great deal by publishing Roosters in a Literary Supplement to The Nation he was getting out. Jarrell has also always been very kind, critically — in general I feel I have been extremely lucky that way—

Calder is a friend (not close) who gets to Brazil every once in a while, and Loren MacIver, the American painter is an old friend, too — from about 1938— Fizdole & Gold, the pianists, are old friends— Calder is someone else who although so unlike Dewey impresses one by the old-fashioned uncompromising New England honesty of his character — and sweetness, like Dewey.

Of course I read all Miss Moore’s generation from about 1928 on and undoubtedly learned enormously from them. I think of Marianne, Cummings (we shared the same maid in N.Y. for several years), Dr. Williams, Crane, Frost, as Heroes … I wrote a poem about Pound (it is in the last Partisan Review anthology) that expresses my feelings about him fairly well, I think. Strange to say, it was put to music by Ned Rorem and, I hear, was sung a few days ago in Carnegie Hall by Jennie Tourel. (She’d already sung it here & there before — but really, I think she must be about 80 now…?) I hope I get the recording safely.

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