Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

Carlos has been invited to England — he was so rude to the French (& very witty, too) that England immediately invited him over. Now if he’d only study British Trade Unions — but he probably won’t!

Rio, April 10th, 1965

Dear Anne:

I suddenly have realized that more than a month has gone by — almost six weeks — since I wrote you and that I haven’t heard from you. I wonder if my letter could have got lost? — or perhaps yours back did?… The “revolution” did improve the mails at first, but lately we have been losing things again — one I know of, coming from England a few weeks back — maybe your letter was in the same batch (I think they disappear in batches, and occasionally re-appear in batches, weeks later). I am packing up to spend a week or ten days in Petrópolis this morning and started putting your BOOK in my bag, when I remembered that I hadn’t heard from you at all, and I thought how awful it would be if you hadn’t received my first letter about it … Heavens — so much has been happening here lately, I hadn’t realized just how long it had been. I do hope you haven’t been worried or thought — oh dear — I didn’t LIKE the book!

This is just a note — I’ll write from the country. I did write and acknowledge the book and said I’d be sending you a long letter soon — well, the soon is now six weeks — but I’ll get it off from Petrópolis. Just now all I’ll say is (and if you got my letter forgive me for more or less repeating myself) — I know how hard you had to struggle, so I think perhaps you’ll be surprised when I say my first impression was one of remarkable freshness and spontaneity. Compared to the other Twayne books I’ve seen, it sounds fresh, young, sensitive, — not a bit like those tired academics parading all their tired little theories and clichés. — It also sounded as if (or I think it did) you had really enjoyed some of my work — and I hope you did, and are not forever incapacitated from liking it again, after all your work. I liked the quotations (I’ll write more about Wittgenstein to you someday) and delighted you dedicated it to Mark. It you have already received a letter saying all these same things, forgive me — and if you haven’t, forgive the Post Office — and forgive me for letting so much time go by before it dawned on me I hadn’t heard from you.

My “long letter”—is just a sheet or two of small corrections, all in the biographical part — nothing to do with the other parts. I must have written you awfully hurried and confused letters, like this one. The corrections are all just facts,* nothing to do with your interpretations (very nice) or opinions, etc. — I thought I’d better get them straight, since yours is the first book to publish them, and probably the last — dates, names, etc. — So please don’t worry. And as I said before — congratulations on a really difficult piece of work well done. There was so little to say about me — and you did find enough, and said it awfully well — more later … Now I hope you haven’t been sick, or your family hasn’t, and that’s why I haven’t heard — and where is your book of poems? I am eager to see that.

Much love,

Elizabeth

Did the permission get cleared up? I wrote HM [ Houghton Mifflin ], and the agent — long ago now. The agent was also furious with HM—“absurd” he said.

Here for a few days only—

Ouro Prêto, Minas Gerais

May 20th, 1965

Dear Anne:

I hope you can forgive my long silence, and I do hope I haven’t held up the book or given you a lot of trouble about it … I really don’t know why I found such difficulty writing about it, except that I don’t seem to like to talk about myself any more. I am afraid you will think these many little corrections both finicky and egotistical. But you are the first person who has ever written any of this down, and you may well be the only one to, and so I’d really like to get the facts right, this once. I’m sure you can understand that feeling? They aren’t important to anyone but me, really. — I must have written to you hastily and incoherently and now I am putting you to a lot of work, and I am really sorry.

Perhaps I’ll mail off just this first page today and re-write the other corrections — all Chapter 1*—and mail them from Rio. I see I started to do this for you in March … I have never stalled so before. I really am dreadfully sorry.

You know, I didn’t receive your letter written from the hospital — and I am sure now that you didn’t get at least one of mine. I have lost a lot of letters lately — Write only to the Petrópolis address (oh — I think you already do that) — because I suspect I lose even more of those sent to Rio. Now I see that a month ago you said you’d write after you got properly moved, and I do hope that didn’t go astray. I hope your new house is working out nicely — how very exciting, and send me a snapshot of it! Lota and I were supposed to go to Italy on May 2nd — and had to change our plans because of her job. I had thought I might get back to England just about the time I did last year. Now we are planning to go to Italy in late September or the first of October — but I must say it seems a bit doubtful to me, she is so busy with this last stretch of park-building.

I am sorry to hear about the miscarriage — and I’ve always been told by my friends that they have an awfully depressing after-stage. I wonder when your child & husband take off on their summers, and if you are really all alone in Cambridge? Where is Mark going? And what are you writing? Yes — please don’t get a dog until I know when I am coming back! — unless you are just too lonely, or need a watchdog badly — Surely I could stay at some inn or other — only they’re apt to have dogs, too, in England. I am trying to persuade Lota — to come to England with me — telling her London is the best place to shop in the world, because that’s what she likes to do best — but so far I haven’t had much luck.

I have been working away seriously at Wittgenstein, some every morning, after coffee, in bed, — and it still comes and goes, but I have found some wonderful paragraphs. I think the quotation you use at the beginning is splendid.

I’ve read your book through three times now, I think. — And, I think I told you — and hope it finally reached you — that my first impression was one of real freshness, spontaneity — and feeling how wonderful it is to have even one reader as good as you. Do you suppose there are any others — or even a few half as perceptive? The other Twayne books are academic-sounding—“competent”, all done in the latest approved clichés — yours is very different, thank heavens, I think it must have been horrible to do — my life is so uneventful and I have done so very little, really — but you managed it, somehow. Lota read it, and said right away “This sounds as if she really liked your poetry.” And I hope you did at the time, and are not forever incapacitated from doing in the future. […]on Monday. Please do forgive me, once more — I feel very guilty about this slowness. I hope you’re all well and will please write me again very soon—

Love,

Elizabeth

INTRODUCTION

P iii, 5 lines from the bottom. Shouldn’t or be left out?

P v: My grammatical mistake, pure carelessness. PLEASE change to “interpret exactly as he sees fit.” Horrors.

CHRONOLOGY

1934 went like this: Met MM. Mother died. Graduated. And leave out Mary — we had been friends for three years, but she graduated in 1933, and other friends were more important to me. I’m afraid I sound a bit too friendless in this part and in chapter one — I really wasn’t!