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Complete Poems

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Gosh, it is hard to sum up one's feelings about the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. She is one of those artists, like Shakespeare and Mozart and Cervantes, whose work contains such perfection it seems almost sacrilegious to comment upon it.

And she was ALWAYS a good poet. This volume proves it by publishing much of her juvenilia alongside more mature, better known poems as the wonderful "Florida", "Sestina", and the majestic "The Fish", a poem I enjoy teaching to my students every semester as a supreme example of imagery (I defy them to find instances of abstract language in the poem; there aren't many). Also included is an astonishing series of translations Bishop rendered over the years, mostly of South American poets, including Octavio Paz.

All in all, this is a treasure trove, a book for the ages, and a reminder of what we lost with Bishop's early death at age 68.

No matter what sort of poetry you are drawn to--and here I include the Beowulf poet, the Metaphysical poets, the Modernists, etc.--Elizabeth Bishop can't be ignored. Her poems, from set forms like the villanelle "One Art" ("The art of losing isn't hard to master.") to the patchwork of imagery that is "The Fish" are all at the peak of expression. Bishop demonstrates virtuousity in a number of forms of poetry in this (relatively) slim volume. I especially appreciate her poems on travel and Brazil. This is a dead writer whose ideas of culture are still ahead of our time.

This book is a treasure trove. It rewards multiple readings. Bishop's craftsmanship has ensured that this book will continue to endure even as bigger names of her era fall by the wayside.

Probably like a lot of people, I was led to Elizabeth Bishop by the dedication in Robert Lowell's great "Skunk Hour". I like many of the poems in this book. (I know next to nothing about poetry but, to give you an idea, my favorite poet is Yeats.) Bishop has a lot of thoughtful imagery, and she conceptualizes things in a fresh way. It often takes you aback. To take the very first poem here, "The Map," there're the lines: "The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still. / Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo / has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays, / under a glass as if they were expected to blossom"

The book is in roughly chronological format, and naturally the poems on the whole seem to get better, subtler, through the years (a few things later are a little strange). Armadillo, referred to by Lowell, reads a bit like a companion piece of Skunk Hour: "This is the time of year / when almost every night / the frail, illegal fire balloons appear. / Climbing the mountain height, / Rising toward a saint / still honored in these parts, . . ." I confess my favorite poem here would be "Crusoe in England", a revery: "I felt a deep affection for / the smallest of my island industries. / No, not exactly, since the smallest was / a miserable philosophy. / Because I didn't know enough. / Why didn't I know enough of something? / Greek drama or astronomy? The books / I'd read were full of blanks", and then, back in England, "The knife there on the shelf--/ it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix. / It lived. How many years did I / beg it, implore it, not to break? . . . / Now it won't look at me at all."

One thing I'd mention is, there isn't much in the way of unifying currents through the poems. Yeats, I think, has his Irish legends and politics and a pretty characteristic moral tone. Frost, his woods. Sylvia Plath, her hell. Bishop however comes across as an incidental observer of things. Her poems (even with each of the original collections, except maybe one) vary widely in theme, place, audience, mood. Here's a homage to Robert Lowell, and next an oddly rhyming poem on Rio de Janeiro. One page it's "View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress," next it's "Insomnia" (one of poems here that I guess could be seen as having a sapphic aspect to it). It's as if Bishop were always visiting different places and people and taking in what she came across (in fact, she was often in foreign lands; the cover has a drawing by her in Mexico). I don't necessarily like this aspect of her poetry as a whole--it reminds me of why I'm not a big fan of Katherine Mansfield. But of course that's saying nothing about each poem.

A poem by Manuel Bandeira which Bishop translated (included here) goes: "I would like my last poem thus . . . that it have the beauty of almost scentless flowers . . ." That's what a lot of these poems are like. These are said to be all of Bishop's known poems--she died in 1979--including stuff she wrote at 16 which, as this edition helpfully notes, "appeared in the Walnut Hill School magazine in 1927". It's a handsomely-done edition, with pleasant font and roomy margins. 275 pages.

Elizabeth Bishop is one of the greatest American poets we've ever had--only Frost and perhaps maybe Whitman are more important. She is certainly Emily Dickinson's equal, and in my opinion, a finer poet. When discussing American poetry, Bishop can't be ignored. Her imagery, her use of form, her command over the language is rarely matched, and this collection contains all her work. There's her first book, _North & South_, which is one of the finest volumes of poetry produced. You'll find poems like "The Map," "The Man-Moth," "The Weed," "The Imaginary Iceberg," "Seascape," and the masterful poem, "The Fish." _A Cold Spring_ follows, containing "At the Fishhouse" and "Letter to N.Y." "The Armadillo" (Bishop's poem to Robert Lowell), "Filling Station," "Visits to St. Elizabeths" and "Sestina" (one of the few poems in this form that actually works) follows in _Questions of Travel_. Then there is a selection of uncollected work (1969) before we hit _Geography III_ which contains two of her best poems, "Cruso in England" and "One Art"--which is in my opinion her best poem. The collection rounds out with some more uncollected poems, juvenalia, and some fine translations. Overall, you have an important book by one of our most important poets.

Poetry's allure is its ability to capture the essence of a moment: a picture in time, an emotion, a look. More than any other American poet, Elizabeth Bishop was able to do this, as her _Complete Poems_ illustrates. Regardless of poetic form she consistently is able to distill and share her unique vision of the world. It is a pity that there is not more of her work; the poetry she left us is beautiful and brilliant.

Bishop writes powerful and poignant poetry. She succeeds especially at embodying emotion in her poetry through the use of complex stylistic devices, as well as a superb command of the English language. I'd give the book five stars, but I think it lacks biographical information on the author which makes her already beautiful verse absolutely brilliant. Bishop has a way of discussing loss so that it is actually felt by even the casual reader, creating intense emotions that do not subside when the book is put down. A must read for fans of Marianne Moore, look especially at poems such as "One Art" and "Paris, 7 a.m." which demonstrate the breadth and depth of her incredible talent.

This is a beautifully comprehensive collection of Bishop's work, complete with translations from Portuguese (she spent much of her adult life in Brazil) and verses she wrote in her youth that will be new to most readers.

Bishop wrote far less than most of her contemporaries, but the work in this slim volume cements her (at least in my mind!) as one of the foremost female poets of her generation.

Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911 and died more than 30 years ago in 1979. Along the way, she picked up just about every writing award that's given - the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book critics Circle Award, two Guggenheim fellowships, and a lot more.

I was introduced to her poetry in the mid-1970s, and I "backed" into it. At the time I was reading everything ever written by and about Flannery O'Connor, and she and Bishop had been good friends until O'Connor's death in 1964 of complications from lupus. I reintroduced myself to Bishop's poetry this year, and I'm glad I did.

This volume of her complete poems (including some done at 16 that she might have preferred to remain unpublished) was first issued in 1984. It includes all of the poetry published in her lifetime, either in separate volumes or in magazines and journals. But there's more - the poems from youth, various poems not collected until this volume, the translations of other poets' work from the Portuguese and Spanish, such as Octavio Paz.

The poems cover territory that ranges from the sublime to the mundane (and it doesn't get more mundane that waiting in a dentist's office; see "In the Waiting Room"). Her poems are spare, exhibiting almost a hardness at times, before a certain wryness pulls you back. From "A Cold Spring" (1955):

A cold spring;
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your bug and aimless hills.
One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,
on the side of one a calf was born.
The mother stopped lowing
and took a long time eating the after-birth,
a wretched flag,
but the calf got up promptly
and seemed inclined to feel gay.

To read a volume of poems like this one is to read the poet's life. The reader has the benefit of seeing that life collected; the poet, of course, didn't live it that way. But the poems tell us she lived a great life, and a full one, and it is a tribute to the poet that they read as well today as they did when they written40 and 50 and 60 years ago.

While this book would make a worthy addition to anyone's library, its greatest value may derive from its ability to show the reader examples of poetry's potential realized. One cannot help but admire Bishop's craftsmanship.

Elizabeth Bishop was a poet's poet. Without fail, I return to this book and re-read it at least once a year, and without fail, Bishop's work continues to become increasingly important to me both as a reader, and as a poet. If you are a serious reader of poetry, you must own this book. If you are at all serious about writing poetry, you must own this book.