Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (Paperback)

~ (Author), Alice Quinn (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This book is as much Alice Quinn's as Elizabeth Bishop's. The New Yorker poetry editor spent countless hours with the 3,500 pages of Bishop (1911–1979) material housed in the Vassar College library, and particularly with two notebooks that contain drafts from the period 1936–1948, which, Quinn says in an introduction, furnished the "kernel" of the book. None of the material (aside from "One Art," of which 16 drafts are included as an example of Bishop's exacting process) was marked by Bishop for publication but, as Quinn notes, much of it has been quoted extensively by Bishop scholars. Quinn, who also directs the Poetry Society of America, hopes this volume "will provide an adventure for readers who love the established canon," and it is, indeed, a fan's book. But it also contains some terrific lines and images; a few fully realized poems that will eventually enter the Bishop canon; and a delicious look into Bishop's thinking and composition—seeing a bad Bishop poem is a revelation. There are 108 poems (seven less than the Collected), 11 prose pieces, the "One Art,"some sketches and other visual art, drafts and 120 pages of Quinn's excellent notes. Some of the poems are fragmentary; many contain Bishop's own question marks and possible substitutions; all will be cherished by those who love her work. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“You are living in a world created by Elizabeth Bishop . . . nothing matches the impact of a great artist, and in the second half of the 20th century, no American artist in any medium was greater than Bishop (1911-79). That she worked in one of our country’s least popular fields, poetry, doesn’t matter. That she was a woman doesn’t matter. That she was gay doesn’t matter. That she was an alcoholic, and expatriate and essentially an orphan—none of this matters. What matters is that she left behind a body of work that teaches us, as Italo Calvino once said of literature generally, ‘a method subtle and flexible enough to be the same thing as an absence of any method whatever.’ The publication of Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box, which gathers for the first time Bishop’s unpublished material, isn’t just a significant event in our poetry; it’s part of a continuing alteration in the scale of American life . . . Quinn’s notes throughout are superb . . . This is the devoted editing this material needed and deserved.” –David Orr, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374530769
• ISBN-13: 978-0374530761
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #828,689 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Making Of A Poet, April 1, 2006

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (Hardcover)

Elizabeth Bishop published less than 100 poems prior to her death in 1979. This new collection is similiar to a box CD set of studio out-takes of a rock musician : not essential for the causal reader but a must for a true believer of the artist. It is the definitive edition of her unpublished work with extensive notes and annotations. Some of her private poetry is considerably more erotic and emotional than her previously published work and the new poems (over 100+) are the reason to buy this edition. Having said this, the reader is referred to "The Complete Poems, 1927-1979" (1983) of Elizabeth Bishop.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Reading Of "(Florida Revisited)?", March 6, 2009

By	Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Length:: 3:07 Mins

These previously unpublished poems and essays (exhausively footnoted) indeed do not display the fine craftsmanship of Bishop at her best. But they do reveal the extraordinarily chaotic life of a poet beset by all manner of dire events: bouts of alcoholism, suicides of lovers, relatives dying in madhouses etc. that make it a very gripping read.

I chose this particular poem to read because it best represents these elements in Bishop's life. Her approach to it and herself was extremely sardonic. Indeed, having read all the poems included herein aloud, I find it impossible to get the tone correct without adopting a sardonic, self-mocking manner. It's simply the only plausible way to read these poems.

This is not the best Bishop poem, but it's the most representative of this volume. It reveals the dark side of herself which she hid from the world and did not want us to see.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gems from among the leavings, June 9, 2006

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (Hardcover)

This rather strangely titled book is a tribute to the demand for Elizabeth Bishop's work. It is a set of pieces gleaned from some 3,500 pages in the Vassar College library collection. Not exactly random (but almost) here are 108 poems, some prose, notes she took, some sketches, some facimilies of her papers, some sketches she made, and other pieces harder to describe.

Obviously this is a book that will appeal most to people who are already Elizabeth Bishop fans. This is more of a work in process. It tells more about her as a person, it illustrates the great effort she went to get her poems just right before sending them off for publication. It shows something of the way her mind worked.

The work here is not Ms. Bishop's best. It's unfinished. Some of the shorter pieces, fragments really, make you wonder where she might have taken it.