The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (Paperback)

by Elizabeth Bishop (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Elizabeth Bishop was vehement about her art--a perfectionist who didn't want to be seen as a "woman poet." In 1977, two years before her death she wrote, "art is art and to separate writings, paintings, musical compositions, etc., into two sexes is to emphasize values in them that are not art." She also deeply distrusted the dominant mode of modern poetry, one practiced with such detached passion by her friend Robert Lowell, the confessional.

Bishop was unforgiving of fashion and limited ways of seeing and feeling, but cast an even more trenchant eye on her own work. One wishes this volume were thicker, though the perfections within mark the rightness of her approach. The poems are sublimely controlled, fraught with word play, fierce moral vision (see her caustic ballad on Ezra Pound, "Visits to St. Elizabeths"), and reticence. From the surreal sorrow of the early "Man-Moth" (leaping off from a typo she had come across for "mammoth"), about a lonely monster who rarely emerges from "the pale subways of cement he calls his home," to the beauty of her villanelle "One Art" (with its repeated "the art of losing isn't hard to master"), the poet wittily explores distance and desolation, separation and sorrow.

Review
"Of all the splendid and curious works belonging to my time, these are poems that I love best and tire of least. And there will be no others."--James Merrill, The Washington Post Book World

"Bishop was one of the finest poets this country produced in [the twentieth] century; we are lucky to have all her work collected now in one volume."--Jane Howard, Mademoiselle

"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, Newsweek

"With their wit, honesty, abundance, imaginative breadth, and prosodic grace . . . thirty or forty of the poems in this book seem as valuable as any written in English since the last war."--Christopher Reid, The Sunday Times (London)
-- Review

Like all great poets, she was less a maker of poems than a maker of feelings. -- The New York Times Book Review, David Bromwich

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Product Details

• Paperback: 287 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 1, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374518173
• ISBN-13: 978-0374518172
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,098 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #1 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( B ) > Bishop, Elizabeth
  #52 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Single Authors > United States
  #53 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > United States > 20th Century

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't be ignored, January 31, 2003

By	J. Ott "John Ott" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Harvest of Joy, September 11, 2002

By	Randall Ivey "Randall" (USA) - See all my reviews

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.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the best in american poetry, December 13, 2003

By	[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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.