Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters (Library of America) [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Bishop (Author), Robert Giroux (Editor), Lloyd Schwartz (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Library of America | Publication Date: February 14, 2008

Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz, editors

James Merrill described Elizabeth Bishop's poems as "more wryly radiant, more touching, more unaffectedly intelligent than any written in our lifetime" and called her "our greatest national treasure." Robert Lowell said, "I enjoy her poems more than anybody else's." Long before a wider public was aware of Bishop's work, her fellow poets expressed astonished admiration of her formal rigor, fiercely observant eye, emotional intimacy, and sometimes eccentric flights of imagination. Today she is recognized as one of America's great poets of the 20th century. This unprecedented collection offers a full-scale presentation of a writer of startling originality, at once passionate and reticent, adventurous and perfectionist. It presents all the poetry that Bishop published in her lifetime, in such classic volumes as North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, and Geography III. In addition it contains an extensive selection of un_published poems and drafts of poems (several not previously collected), as well as all her published poetic translations, ranging from a chorus from Aristophanes' The Birds to versions of Brazilian sambas.

Poems, Prose, and Letters brings together as well most of her published prose writings, including stories; reminiscences; travel writing about the places (Nova Scotia, Florida, Brazil) that so profoundly marked her poetry; and literary essays and statements, including a number of pieces published here for the first time. The book is rounded out with a selection of Bishop's irresistibly engaging and self-revelatory letters. Of the 53 letters included here, written between 1933 and 1979, a considerable number are printed for the first time, and all are presented in their entirety. Their recipients include Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Randall Jarrell, Anne Stevenson, May Swenson, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. No further proof is necessary to show that Bishop—still not widely known beyond literary circles at the time of her death in 1979—has, posthumously in the last three decades, become one of America's most popular 20th-century poets, but this hefty and handsome volume from the Library of America certainly clinches the deal. Between its covers one can find most of the perfectionist author's oeuvre, more than enough to confirm Bishop as a master at revealing the complexity of simple, often painful things (I said to myself: three days/ and you'll be seven years old./ I was saying it to stop/ the sensation of falling off the round, turning world/ into cold, blue-black space./ But I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth). All the poems gathered in the now-classic Collected Poems are here, as are the unpublished drafts released in 2006's controversial Edgar Allen Poe and the Jukebox. The memoir and fiction pieces of Collected Prose are also reprinted, along with a few other pieces of scattered nonfiction, as well as a generous selection of Bishop's enthralling letters. Bishop's work is deeply compassionate and necessary reading, and now almost all of it can be found in one place. (Feb)
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Review

"Bishop was not just a good poet but a great one. She accomplished a magical illumination of the ordinary, forcing us to examine our surroundings with the freshness of a friendly alien."
-David Lehman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 975 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; Reprint edition (February 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598530178
• ISBN-13: 978-1598530179
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Where are the rest of Bishop's letters?, September 1, 2008

By 

Boopy Snoopers - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters (Library of America) (Hardcover)

This carefully edited book collects much of Bishop's poetry and prose--fiction, memoir, reportage, reviews--between two covers for the first time, and that is all for the good.

The best introduction to Bishop's work, however, is still "The Complete Poems, 1927 - 1979," supplemented by the best pieces in "The Collected Prose" (1984), edited by Robert Giroux, who is also co-editor of the present Library of America book and editor of "One Art" (1994), the mammoth selection of Bishop's letters. The earlier editions of her poems and prose were published in an era when editors still respected Bishop's excellent judgment about which of her poems and prose pieces should appear in print. Bishop was her own best editor, and I don't think the publication of so many of her abortive poems serves her particularly well.

My main criticism of this book has to do with the "Letters" section. As with the Library of America edition of Flannery O'Connor's writing, this selection offers letters not available in "One Art" (or in O'Connor's case, "The Habit of Being"); but the Library of America edition does not supersede "One Art" because it offers fewer letters in total. Both O'Connor and Bishop were epistolary geniuses on the level of Keats and Hopkins and we deserve editions of their letters that aspire to comprehensiveness. There is a new edition of Bishop's correspondence with Lowell on the way, but what about her letters to Marianne Moore, May Swenson, and other friends with whom she had significant correspondences?

I suppose ardent readers of Bishop's letters are supposed to photocopy the letters published in this Library of America edition and stick them in "One Art" in order to have all of the in-print Bishop letters (which are a fraction of the letters she actually wrote) in one place. I am happy to do this, but aren't Library of America editions supposed to collect ALL of a writer's most important work in one or more volumes? I would rather have Bishop's poems and non-epistolary prose in one Library of America volume, and a more complete edition of her letters in another, even if the letters book were longer in coming. The Library of America edition of Hart Crane, another epistolary genius, is comprised mostly of letters, in part (I suspect) because the editor had a new edition of Crane's letters to select from. (In fact the same person edited both Crane books).

Giroux refers to his "files of Elizabeth's vast correspondence" (p. 944). When will these files become available to the rest of us in the form of a "Collected Letters of Elizabeth Bishop," which would no doubt be a multi-volume work, or even an expanded edition of "One Art"? The latter book, as far as I can tell, is not mentioned at all in this Library of America edition--why not? Has Giroux decided to "disappear" his own wonderful edition of Bishop's letters?

I suspect this Library of America edition of Bishop was rushed to press in order to capitalize on all the recent attention paid to Alice Quinn's selection of Bishop's unpublished poems, and the attention that is about to be paid to the forthcoming Bishop/Lowell correspondence. Why not wait a few more years until the shape of the Bishop canon is a bit clearer to publish an apparently definitive volume such as the present Library of America book? Quinn is currently editing Bishop's notebooks and journals, which promise to be fascinating, but which this Library of America book does not excerpt at all.

Bishop herself was a voracious reader of other writer's letters and journals, and she even taught a course in epistolary writing at Harvard in the early 1970s. I wish editors and publishers would take a cue from Bishop's own interest in letter-writing and publish more of her letters. As anyone who has read "One Art" or the letters published in this Library of America edition knows, Bishop's letters are the ultimate pleasure reading. A bigger edition of her letters would probably not supplant the latest Dan Brown book on the best-seller lists, but there is a larger market for it than one might suppose.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful Book, Highly Recommended, March 25, 2009

By 

J. Cohen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters (Library of America) (Hardcover)

For my money, this book beats out Bishop's "Collected Poems" (from Farrar Sraus & Giroux) or any of the other separate volumes of Bishop's writing (be it letters, prose, etc.). In this volume you not only get all of her collected and uncollected poems, but there's also a very generous selection of her letters and prose. So for all but the most hardcore Bishop fans, this one volume should satisfy most of their Bishop-reading needs. Also, as with all of Library of America's books, this volume is a very handsome edition in hardcover with a very professional binding that will last much longer than any of Bishop's cheaper, soft-cover editions. In addition, I greatly prefer this edition's typography to the above-mentioned "Collected Poems."

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The absolute definitive compilation of Elizabeth Bishop's works, March 4, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters (Library of America) (Hardcover)

Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters is the Library of America's compilation of the works of twentieth century poet and author Elizabeth Bishop - including all her published poetic translations, an extensive selection of her unpublished poems and drafts of poems, several not previously collected, and of course, all the poetry published in her lifetime. Non-poetry writings range from her stories and reminiscences to travel writings, literary essays, and statements, even a number of pieces published for the first time. The absolute definitive compilation of Elizabeth Bishop's works, highly recommended especially for public and college library collections.