Angela Leighton
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263037
- eISBN:
- 9780191734007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263037.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This lecture discusses form, which is a term that has multiform meanings and is contradictory. It looks at the sense of form found in the works of Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anne Stevenson. ...
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This lecture discusses form, which is a term that has multiform meanings and is contradictory. It looks at the sense of form found in the works of Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anne Stevenson. Form is not simply as a matter of formal technique, but as an object in a tradition that goes back to Victorian aestheticism's playful commodifications of its own formal pleasures. It states that the sense of elegy may be greater or lesser, depending on the poem.Less
This lecture discusses form, which is a term that has multiform meanings and is contradictory. It looks at the sense of form found in the works of Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anne Stevenson. Form is not simply as a matter of formal technique, but as an object in a tradition that goes back to Victorian aestheticism's playful commodifications of its own formal pleasures. It states that the sense of elegy may be greater or lesser, depending on the poem.
Lisa Siraganian
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199796557
- eISBN:
- 9780199932542
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199796557.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter considers changing conceptions of the art object when theorizations of framed, airless art enter the post-war era as adaptable and consumable “styles” competing with one another in the ...
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This chapter considers changing conceptions of the art object when theorizations of framed, airless art enter the post-war era as adaptable and consumable “styles” competing with one another in the marketplace. With Vincente Minnelli’s blockbuster film, An American in Paris (1951), setting the stage, late modernist texts about frameless, counterfeit, or bad art—William Gaddis’s The Recognitions (1955), Elizabeth Bishop’s North & South (1946)—grapple with the idea that kitsch is more egalitarian than high modern culture because for kitsch to work it must value the spectator’s experience. Granting this interdependent relationship between mass culture and high art, both Gaddis and Bishop use the relationship between avant-garde and kitsch to develop a “neo” rearguard aesthetic, one that follows Stein’s and Lewis’s insistence on the spectator’s irrelevance to the art object’s meaning but situates it differently as an “aesthetic of criticism” for the midcentury’s increasingly corporate culture. Defining art objects in relation to popular culture, they consider how the frame of an art object could work to distinguish high art from popular culture, while they also debate the role of different classes of spectators.Less
This chapter considers changing conceptions of the art object when theorizations of framed, airless art enter the post-war era as adaptable and consumable “styles” competing with one another in the marketplace. With Vincente Minnelli’s blockbuster film, An American in Paris (1951), setting the stage, late modernist texts about frameless, counterfeit, or bad art—William Gaddis’s The Recognitions (1955), Elizabeth Bishop’s North & South (1946)—grapple with the idea that kitsch is more egalitarian than high modern culture because for kitsch to work it must value the spectator’s experience. Granting this interdependent relationship between mass culture and high art, both Gaddis and Bishop use the relationship between avant-garde and kitsch to develop a “neo” rearguard aesthetic, one that follows Stein’s and Lewis’s insistence on the spectator’s irrelevance to the art object’s meaning but situates it differently as an “aesthetic of criticism” for the midcentury’s increasingly corporate culture. Defining art objects in relation to popular culture, they consider how the frame of an art object could work to distinguish high art from popular culture, while they also debate the role of different classes of spectators.
Linda Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748665747
- eISBN:
- 9780748695102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748665747.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's interest in narrative and time as reflected in her poetry. Drawing on some of her poems such as ‘Cape Breton’, ‘The Prodigal’, ‘The Shampoo’ and ‘The ...
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This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's interest in narrative and time as reflected in her poetry. Drawing on some of her poems such as ‘Cape Breton’, ‘The Prodigal’, ‘The Shampoo’ and ‘The Riverman’, it highlights Bishop's need to orientate herself spatially and her concern for temporality in her work. It also considers Bishop's awareness of the ‘other’ time of memory which intersects with her narrative, how alcoholism inhibited her productivity, her practice of painting and its connection to her ‘skewed time sense’. In addition, it looks at Bishop's period of psychoanalysis with Dr Ruth Foster in New York and her interest in the latter's theory about colour and dreaming. The chapter also reflects on her travel to South America, with reference to her turn to prose in her early years in Brazil.Less
This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's interest in narrative and time as reflected in her poetry. Drawing on some of her poems such as ‘Cape Breton’, ‘The Prodigal’, ‘The Shampoo’ and ‘The Riverman’, it highlights Bishop's need to orientate herself spatially and her concern for temporality in her work. It also considers Bishop's awareness of the ‘other’ time of memory which intersects with her narrative, how alcoholism inhibited her productivity, her practice of painting and its connection to her ‘skewed time sense’. In addition, it looks at Bishop's period of psychoanalysis with Dr Ruth Foster in New York and her interest in the latter's theory about colour and dreaming. The chapter also reflects on her travel to South America, with reference to her turn to prose in her early years in Brazil.
Linda Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748665747
- eISBN:
- 9780748695102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748665747.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
During the 1930s, Elizabeth Bishop made two trips to Europe, the first from July 1935 until June 1936, and the second from June to December 1937. Bishop's first voyage triggered an intense physical ...
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During the 1930s, Elizabeth Bishop made two trips to Europe, the first from July 1935 until June 1936, and the second from June to December 1937. Bishop's first voyage triggered an intense physical reaction in her, especially when she was in the company of other people, and seems to have produced in her an intense self-consciousness. In her poem ‘The Man on the Raft’, she mentioned the ‘great Baroque circles’ made by the boat she rode. This chapter examines Bishop's travels to Europe and the way she encodes her intimate life in her poetry. It analyses the poems she wrote based on her experiences in Europe, her interest in art and architecture, the role of maps in her early childhood, and her ideas about geography and history as well as psychoanalysis. It also considers the influence of surrealism on her poems.Less
During the 1930s, Elizabeth Bishop made two trips to Europe, the first from July 1935 until June 1936, and the second from June to December 1937. Bishop's first voyage triggered an intense physical reaction in her, especially when she was in the company of other people, and seems to have produced in her an intense self-consciousness. In her poem ‘The Man on the Raft’, she mentioned the ‘great Baroque circles’ made by the boat she rode. This chapter examines Bishop's travels to Europe and the way she encodes her intimate life in her poetry. It analyses the poems she wrote based on her experiences in Europe, her interest in art and architecture, the role of maps in her early childhood, and her ideas about geography and history as well as psychoanalysis. It also considers the influence of surrealism on her poems.
Jonathan Ellis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846314841
- eISBN:
- 9781846316272
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846316272.004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter examines the topics covered when poets Anne Stevenson and Elizabeth Bishop started corresponding with each other in 1963. The letters sent between the two authors depict their common ...
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This chapter examines the topics covered when poets Anne Stevenson and Elizabeth Bishop started corresponding with each other in 1963. The letters sent between the two authors depict their common interest in several topics such as visual art and their passion for music. The correspondents began when Stevenson wrote to another poet named Marianne Moore informing the latter of her fear that Bishop might oppose Stevenson's practice of professionalized criticism. After Moore reached out to Bishop and told the author about Stevenson's plan of publishing a collection of literary works such as poems, the poet sent a letter to Stevenson encouraging her to pursue her goal. In the letter sent by Bishop to Stevenson, Bishop expressed her amusement for Stevenson's compliments for her works and justified one's distrust of academic criticism.Less
This chapter examines the topics covered when poets Anne Stevenson and Elizabeth Bishop started corresponding with each other in 1963. The letters sent between the two authors depict their common interest in several topics such as visual art and their passion for music. The correspondents began when Stevenson wrote to another poet named Marianne Moore informing the latter of her fear that Bishop might oppose Stevenson's practice of professionalized criticism. After Moore reached out to Bishop and told the author about Stevenson's plan of publishing a collection of literary works such as poems, the poet sent a letter to Stevenson encouraging her to pursue her goal. In the letter sent by Bishop to Stevenson, Bishop expressed her amusement for Stevenson's compliments for her works and justified one's distrust of academic criticism.
LINDA ANDERSON
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182894
- eISBN:
- 9780191673917
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182894.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Elizabeth Bishop displayed little enthusiasm for attempts to connect the writer's work to his or her life. She could well have feared and resented the possibility that sexual revelations (lesbianism) ...
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Elizabeth Bishop displayed little enthusiasm for attempts to connect the writer's work to his or her life. She could well have feared and resented the possibility that sexual revelations (lesbianism) would overwhelm the singular and manifold achievement of her own creative work, or that the appearance of actively choosing within her own life — her capacity for growth and redirection — would be lost beneath the single determinant of sexual choice. She was an ardent and careful autobiographer in both her poetry and her prose. In addition, she is a writer who has frequently been praised for her powers of observation — for her ‘eye’ — but what is apparent is that her images are frequently layered, calling attention to an anterior relation to sound.Less
Elizabeth Bishop displayed little enthusiasm for attempts to connect the writer's work to his or her life. She could well have feared and resented the possibility that sexual revelations (lesbianism) would overwhelm the singular and manifold achievement of her own creative work, or that the appearance of actively choosing within her own life — her capacity for growth and redirection — would be lost beneath the single determinant of sexual choice. She was an ardent and careful autobiographer in both her poetry and her prose. In addition, she is a writer who has frequently been praised for her powers of observation — for her ‘eye’ — but what is apparent is that her images are frequently layered, calling attention to an anterior relation to sound.
Paul Giles
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691136134
- eISBN:
- 9781400836512
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691136134.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines how the contours of American literature have changed over time by focusing on the shifting geospatial dynamics associated with the American South. In particular, it juxtaposes ...
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This chapter examines how the contours of American literature have changed over time by focusing on the shifting geospatial dynamics associated with the American South. In particular, it juxtaposes South America with the American South in order to highlight the historically variable nature of their interrelationship and the complicated ways in which these domains have intersected over time. The chapter first considers how the American South was imagined in the writings of William Bartram, William Gilmore Simms, and José Martí before discussing the notions of southern “regionalism” and pseudo-geography in the works of Zora Neale Hurston and Elizabeth Bishop. It also analyzes the fiction of William Faulkner and Frederick Barthelme.Less
This chapter examines how the contours of American literature have changed over time by focusing on the shifting geospatial dynamics associated with the American South. In particular, it juxtaposes South America with the American South in order to highlight the historically variable nature of their interrelationship and the complicated ways in which these domains have intersected over time. The chapter first considers how the American South was imagined in the writings of William Bartram, William Gilmore Simms, and José Martí before discussing the notions of southern “regionalism” and pseudo-geography in the works of Zora Neale Hurston and Elizabeth Bishop. It also analyzes the fiction of William Faulkner and Frederick Barthelme.
Wyatt Prunty
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195057867
- eISBN:
- 9780199855124
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195057867.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
In successful poems written over the last forty years, the play of similitude has been a matter of degree, neither blind acceptance nor rejection of either the unifying or separating, uncovering or ...
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In successful poems written over the last forty years, the play of similitude has been a matter of degree, neither blind acceptance nor rejection of either the unifying or separating, uncovering or covering-over properties of language. This chapter examines the poetry of Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Mona Van Duyn, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, John Hollander, Robert Pack, and Robert Pinsky.Less
In successful poems written over the last forty years, the play of similitude has been a matter of degree, neither blind acceptance nor rejection of either the unifying or separating, uncovering or covering-over properties of language. This chapter examines the poetry of Donald Justice, Anthony Hecht, Mona Van Duyn, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, John Hollander, Robert Pack, and Robert Pinsky.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199299287
- eISBN:
- 9780191715099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299287.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The chapter explores the ways in which a metaphor central to Romanticism, that of ‘air’, reappears in the work of 20th-century poets. The metaphor is suggestive because of its multi-faceted ...
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The chapter explores the ways in which a metaphor central to Romanticism, that of ‘air’, reappears in the work of 20th-century poets. The metaphor is suggestive because of its multi-faceted associations. In Hart Crane's ‘The Broken Tower’, the poet is said to allegorise the Romantic tradition as the ‘tribunal monarch of the air’: awe-inspiring but, in the end, not inhibiting Crane's own inspiration. Shelley rhymes ‘air’ with ‘despair’, as if to keep in view the proximity of inspiration and dejection, and subsequent writers such as Wallace Stevens have a comparably double understanding of what Stevens calls ‘the mere air’. For Stevens, who is central to the chapter, the ‘air’ represents a poetic present both different from and imbued by the Romantic. Other post-Romantic poets whose work is discussed include Yeats (responding to Shelley and Wordsworth), Elizabeth Bishop (responding especially to Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Hemans), Adrienne Rich (responding to Blake and Wordsworth), and Sylvia Plath (responding to Coleridge). All are seen as sustaining even as they qualify and even interrogate Romanticism.Less
The chapter explores the ways in which a metaphor central to Romanticism, that of ‘air’, reappears in the work of 20th-century poets. The metaphor is suggestive because of its multi-faceted associations. In Hart Crane's ‘The Broken Tower’, the poet is said to allegorise the Romantic tradition as the ‘tribunal monarch of the air’: awe-inspiring but, in the end, not inhibiting Crane's own inspiration. Shelley rhymes ‘air’ with ‘despair’, as if to keep in view the proximity of inspiration and dejection, and subsequent writers such as Wallace Stevens have a comparably double understanding of what Stevens calls ‘the mere air’. For Stevens, who is central to the chapter, the ‘air’ represents a poetic present both different from and imbued by the Romantic. Other post-Romantic poets whose work is discussed include Yeats (responding to Shelley and Wordsworth), Elizabeth Bishop (responding especially to Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Hemans), Adrienne Rich (responding to Blake and Wordsworth), and Sylvia Plath (responding to Coleridge). All are seen as sustaining even as they qualify and even interrogate Romanticism.
Willard Spiegelman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195368130
- eISBN:
- 9780199852192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195368130.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter examines the works of American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Many critics have categorized her as either an epigone of Marianne Moore or another in the line of female imagists but her best ...
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This chapter examines the works of American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Many critics have categorized her as either an epigone of Marianne Moore or another in the line of female imagists but her best poems show her to be an epistemological poet in the tradition of William Wordsworth and S. T Coleridge. This chapter argues that Bishop's poems pose essential questions about the relationship between experience and knowledge, between what is empirically ascertainable and what must be deducted or inferred.Less
This chapter examines the works of American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Many critics have categorized her as either an epigone of Marianne Moore or another in the line of female imagists but her best poems show her to be an epistemological poet in the tradition of William Wordsworth and S. T Coleridge. This chapter argues that Bishop's poems pose essential questions about the relationship between experience and knowledge, between what is empirically ascertainable and what must be deducted or inferred.
Linda Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748665747
- eISBN:
- 9780748695102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748665747.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's artistic passions that include wavering lines, appearance and disappearance, and kites. It considers Bishop's appreciation of visual art and her interest in ...
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This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's artistic passions that include wavering lines, appearance and disappearance, and kites. It considers Bishop's appreciation of visual art and her interest in painting, as shown by her admiration for the work of the painter Paul Klee. It also discusses Bishop's use of lines in her paintings and as a means of tracing other representational objects. Drawing on some of her poems ranging from ‘The Moose’ to ‘One Art’ and ‘Santarém’, the chapter argues that voice is part of the achievement of her poetry. It also explores Jacques Derrida's views about the line or trace and Bishop's allusions to nets in her writing.Less
This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's artistic passions that include wavering lines, appearance and disappearance, and kites. It considers Bishop's appreciation of visual art and her interest in painting, as shown by her admiration for the work of the painter Paul Klee. It also discusses Bishop's use of lines in her paintings and as a means of tracing other representational objects. Drawing on some of her poems ranging from ‘The Moose’ to ‘One Art’ and ‘Santarém’, the chapter argues that voice is part of the achievement of her poetry. It also explores Jacques Derrida's views about the line or trace and Bishop's allusions to nets in her writing.
Linda Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748665747
- eISBN:
- 9780748695102
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748665747.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This book explores Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, from her early days at Vassar College to her last great poems in Geography III and the later uncollected poems. Drawing on Bishop's notebooks and ...
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This book explores Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, from her early days at Vassar College to her last great poems in Geography III and the later uncollected poems. Drawing on Bishop's notebooks and letters, the book situates Bishop both in her historical and cultural context and in terms of her own writing process, where the years between beginning a poem and completing it, for which Bishop is legendary, are seen as a necessary part of their composition. The book begins by offering a new reading of Bishop's relationship with Marianne Moore and with modernism. Through her journeys to Europe, Bishop, it is also argued, learned a great deal from visual artists and from surrealism. However, the book also follows the way Bishop came back to memories of her childhood, developing ideas about narrative, in order to explore time, both the losses it demands and the connections it makes possible. The lines of connections are both those between Bishop and her contemporaries and her context and those she inscribed through her own work, suggesting how her poems incorporate a process of arrival and create new possibilities of meaning.Less
This book explores Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, from her early days at Vassar College to her last great poems in Geography III and the later uncollected poems. Drawing on Bishop's notebooks and letters, the book situates Bishop both in her historical and cultural context and in terms of her own writing process, where the years between beginning a poem and completing it, for which Bishop is legendary, are seen as a necessary part of their composition. The book begins by offering a new reading of Bishop's relationship with Marianne Moore and with modernism. Through her journeys to Europe, Bishop, it is also argued, learned a great deal from visual artists and from surrealism. However, the book also follows the way Bishop came back to memories of her childhood, developing ideas about narrative, in order to explore time, both the losses it demands and the connections it makes possible. The lines of connections are both those between Bishop and her contemporaries and her context and those she inscribed through her own work, suggesting how her poems incorporate a process of arrival and create new possibilities of meaning.
Linda Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748665747
- eISBN:
- 9780748695102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748665747.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's relationship with fellow poet Marianne Moore, whom she met in 1934 as a senior student about to graduate from Vassar College. Aside from drafts of poems and ...
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This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's relationship with fellow poet Marianne Moore, whom she met in 1934 as a senior student about to graduate from Vassar College. Aside from drafts of poems and prose, Bishop often sent Moore gifts. In her memoir of Moore, ‘Efforts of Affection’, which she wrote after the latter's death in 1972, Bishop revealed that a nautilus shell was one of the most ‘successful’ gifts she had given to Moore. The nautilus shell, which became the subject of Bishop's poem ‘The Paper Nautilus’, is possibly the same nautilus shell that Bishop's lover and companion at the time, Louise Crane, presented to Moore in February 1937. Bishop compared Moore with Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of her own early influences for poetry. However, some aspects of Moore's poetics were less congenial to Bishop. For her part, Moore was both astute and generous as a reader of Bishop's poems.Less
This chapter examines Elizabeth Bishop's relationship with fellow poet Marianne Moore, whom she met in 1934 as a senior student about to graduate from Vassar College. Aside from drafts of poems and prose, Bishop often sent Moore gifts. In her memoir of Moore, ‘Efforts of Affection’, which she wrote after the latter's death in 1972, Bishop revealed that a nautilus shell was one of the most ‘successful’ gifts she had given to Moore. The nautilus shell, which became the subject of Bishop's poem ‘The Paper Nautilus’, is possibly the same nautilus shell that Bishop's lover and companion at the time, Louise Crane, presented to Moore in February 1937. Bishop compared Moore with Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of her own early influences for poetry. However, some aspects of Moore's poetics were less congenial to Bishop. For her part, Moore was both astute and generous as a reader of Bishop's poems.
William Logan
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166867
- eISBN:
- 9780231537230
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166867.003.0022
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter begins with a brief sketch of Elizabeth Bishop's early childhood. It then describes her experiences at Camp Chequesset, where she returned every summer for five years, starting in 1924. ...
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This chapter begins with a brief sketch of Elizabeth Bishop's early childhood. It then describes her experiences at Camp Chequesset, where she returned every summer for five years, starting in 1924. In the summer of 1925, the camp held a poetry contest. Bishop's entry, printed that fall in the Camp Chequesset Log, is her first published poem. The chapter also provides excerpts of Bishop's letters to her friend Louise Bradley, whom she met in 1924 at South Station in Boston, where they were both waiting for the train to Chequesset. They remained loyal correspondents through Bishop's years at Vassar. The last letters were mailed in 1950, after the women had met briefly in New York while Bishop was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.Less
This chapter begins with a brief sketch of Elizabeth Bishop's early childhood. It then describes her experiences at Camp Chequesset, where she returned every summer for five years, starting in 1924. In the summer of 1925, the camp held a poetry contest. Bishop's entry, printed that fall in the Camp Chequesset Log, is her first published poem. The chapter also provides excerpts of Bishop's letters to her friend Louise Bradley, whom she met in 1924 at South Station in Boston, where they were both waiting for the train to Chequesset. They remained loyal correspondents through Bishop's years at Vassar. The last letters were mailed in 1950, after the women had met briefly in New York while Bishop was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
J. Samaine Lockwood
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625362
- eISBN:
- 9781469625386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625362.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This introduction argues that New England regionalism included not only fiction writing but a range of women-dominated cultural practices including colonial home restoration, history writing, antique ...
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This introduction argues that New England regionalism included not only fiction writing but a range of women-dominated cultural practices including colonial home restoration, history writing, antique collecting, colonial fancy dressing, and photography. Using the example of Elizabeth Bishop Perkins, this introduction demonstrates the alternative intimate forms and temporalities central to New England regionalism's history-making project. It explicates how regionalist writers placed the unmarried daughter at the center of New England history, representing her as cosmopolitan, mobile, and queer. In foregrounding the unmarried daughter of New England as the ideal inheritor of a legacy of dissent, these regionalists theorized modes of white belonging based on women's myriad alternative desires rather than marriage and maternity.Less
This introduction argues that New England regionalism included not only fiction writing but a range of women-dominated cultural practices including colonial home restoration, history writing, antique collecting, colonial fancy dressing, and photography. Using the example of Elizabeth Bishop Perkins, this introduction demonstrates the alternative intimate forms and temporalities central to New England regionalism's history-making project. It explicates how regionalist writers placed the unmarried daughter at the center of New England history, representing her as cosmopolitan, mobile, and queer. In foregrounding the unmarried daughter of New England as the ideal inheritor of a legacy of dissent, these regionalists theorized modes of white belonging based on women's myriad alternative desires rather than marriage and maternity.
J. Samaine Lockwood
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625362
- eISBN:
- 9781469625386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625362.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
This chapter demonstrates how the historical project of New England regionalism extended beyond the supposed end of that mode's popularity (c. 1915) and into the modernist era. It focuses on the ...
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This chapter demonstrates how the historical project of New England regionalism extended beyond the supposed end of that mode's popularity (c. 1915) and into the modernist era. It focuses on the writings of three women fiction writers left out of accounts of regionalism: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Brown, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Each of these writers used New England-based colonial revivalism in her fiction to explore problems of race and queer desires in history. These writers consistently limned the contours of identity in time by portraying women characters as fusing with ghosts of the colonial and Revolutionary-era past. This chapter troubles traditional accounts of literary history by revealing the modernist sensibilities of New England regionalism and its very practice up through the so-called modernist moment.Less
This chapter demonstrates how the historical project of New England regionalism extended beyond the supposed end of that mode's popularity (c. 1915) and into the modernist era. It focuses on the writings of three women fiction writers left out of accounts of regionalism: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Brown, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Each of these writers used New England-based colonial revivalism in her fiction to explore problems of race and queer desires in history. These writers consistently limned the contours of identity in time by portraying women characters as fusing with ghosts of the colonial and Revolutionary-era past. This chapter troubles traditional accounts of literary history by revealing the modernist sensibilities of New England regionalism and its very practice up through the so-called modernist moment.
Tricia Lootens
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691170312
- eISBN:
- 9781400883721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691170312.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores the relationship between suspended spheres and interdisciplinary poetic reading, drawing on popular and pedagogical writing that invites reflection on patriotic fantasies' ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between suspended spheres and interdisciplinary poetic reading, drawing on popular and pedagogical writing that invites reflection on patriotic fantasies' relations to post-Victorian processes of reading—and unreading—sentimental poetic texts. It first analyzes Virginia Woolf's “The Works of Mrs. Hemans,” which not only presents learning to unread sentimental poetry as an educational rite of passage, but encourages the cultivation of part comic, part courtly, part anxious visions of naïve and sentimental readers. It then considers Felicia Dorothea Hemans's “Casabianca” and compares it to Elizabeth Bishop's “Casabianca,” arguing that consent to the patriotic Poetess terrors of Hemans may well serve as prerequisite for rendering the terrifying critical and political as well as poetic achievement of Bishop's modernist elegy fully legible. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the New York Times' volume Portraits: 9/11/01; The Collected “Portraits of Grief”.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between suspended spheres and interdisciplinary poetic reading, drawing on popular and pedagogical writing that invites reflection on patriotic fantasies' relations to post-Victorian processes of reading—and unreading—sentimental poetic texts. It first analyzes Virginia Woolf's “The Works of Mrs. Hemans,” which not only presents learning to unread sentimental poetry as an educational rite of passage, but encourages the cultivation of part comic, part courtly, part anxious visions of naïve and sentimental readers. It then considers Felicia Dorothea Hemans's “Casabianca” and compares it to Elizabeth Bishop's “Casabianca,” arguing that consent to the patriotic Poetess terrors of Hemans may well serve as prerequisite for rendering the terrifying critical and political as well as poetic achievement of Bishop's modernist elegy fully legible. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the New York Times' volume Portraits: 9/11/01; The Collected “Portraits of Grief”.
Paul Muldoon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748681327
- eISBN:
- 9781474422239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748681327.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter offers a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Armadillo’ and Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour’ in the light of the recently published letters between the two poets, as well as Bishop’s ...
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This chapter offers a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Armadillo’ and Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour’ in the light of the recently published letters between the two poets, as well as Bishop’s correspondence with The New Yorker. It looks at letters as ‘the other life that [a poem] might have had’ and a poem as ‘the other life that [letters’ might have had’, concluding that the relationship between Lowell and Bishop was often less benign than we’ve led ourselves to believe.Less
This chapter offers a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Armadillo’ and Robert Lowell’s ‘Skunk Hour’ in the light of the recently published letters between the two poets, as well as Bishop’s correspondence with The New Yorker. It looks at letters as ‘the other life that [a poem] might have had’ and a poem as ‘the other life that [letters’ might have had’, concluding that the relationship between Lowell and Bishop was often less benign than we’ve led ourselves to believe.
Linda Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748665747
- eISBN:
- 9780748695102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748665747.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
There was a time in her career when Elizabeth Bishop was wary of literary theory and literary criticism. Bishop was particularly dismissive of any attempt to read too much into her poems, even as she ...
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There was a time in her career when Elizabeth Bishop was wary of literary theory and literary criticism. Bishop was particularly dismissive of any attempt to read too much into her poems, even as she read widely in art criticism and was an astute critic herself. She employed face-to-face encounters and a child's point of view in her poetry, along with puns and half-rhymes. This book deals primarily with Bishop's poetry and her writing process, with emphasis on the complicated ‘lines’ that connect her poems and other writing. Drawing extensively on her letters and unpublished notebooks, it examines Bishop's richly textured words and voice, her literary and cultural context, and her connection with other important contemporary figures such as Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva and Melanie Klein.Less
There was a time in her career when Elizabeth Bishop was wary of literary theory and literary criticism. Bishop was particularly dismissive of any attempt to read too much into her poems, even as she read widely in art criticism and was an astute critic herself. She employed face-to-face encounters and a child's point of view in her poetry, along with puns and half-rhymes. This book deals primarily with Bishop's poetry and her writing process, with emphasis on the complicated ‘lines’ that connect her poems and other writing. Drawing extensively on her letters and unpublished notebooks, it examines Bishop's richly textured words and voice, her literary and cultural context, and her connection with other important contemporary figures such as Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva and Melanie Klein.
Harris Feinsod
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190682002
- eISBN:
- 9780190682033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190682002.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter reveals exchanges among Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Heberto Padilla. Bishop’s relation to the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) inflects her Brazil poems, ...
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This chapter reveals exchanges among Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Heberto Padilla. Bishop’s relation to the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) inflects her Brazil poems, described here not as self-conscious critiques of travel literature but as negotiations of liberal ideas about international class politics and poverty, revealed in elaborate sound patterns. Transfiguring middle-generation formalism, Walcott lyricized his increasingly vexed relation to the hemispheric tours he attended with support from the CCF. Actively influenced by Lowell’s psycho-political stance, Padilla’s critiques of revolutionary Cuba aggravated a crisis of cultural permissiveness in the state bureaucracy known as “the Padilla Affair” after the poet was imprisoned and forced to recite a coerced confession as a condition of his release. Lyric sequences by Bishop, Lowell, Walcott, and Padilla sought new strategies of hemispheric cultural diplomacy by enacting crises of confessional lyric formalism as an aesthetic ideology in service to anticommunist policy.Less
This chapter reveals exchanges among Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Heberto Padilla. Bishop’s relation to the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) inflects her Brazil poems, described here not as self-conscious critiques of travel literature but as negotiations of liberal ideas about international class politics and poverty, revealed in elaborate sound patterns. Transfiguring middle-generation formalism, Walcott lyricized his increasingly vexed relation to the hemispheric tours he attended with support from the CCF. Actively influenced by Lowell’s psycho-political stance, Padilla’s critiques of revolutionary Cuba aggravated a crisis of cultural permissiveness in the state bureaucracy known as “the Padilla Affair” after the poet was imprisoned and forced to recite a coerced confession as a condition of his release. Lyric sequences by Bishop, Lowell, Walcott, and Padilla sought new strategies of hemispheric cultural diplomacy by enacting crises of confessional lyric formalism as an aesthetic ideology in service to anticommunist policy.
