Elizabeth Bishop’s life and works

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Elizabeth Bishop’s life and works

Introduction

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in February 8 1911, Elizabeth Bishop was among the best poets in the world. Before she could even celebrate her first birthday, her father died and her mother experienced a sequence of nervous collapse. Her mother had to be taken to a mental hospital, thus permanently separated from her only baby, who was only five. Bishop was later taken to nova to live with her grandmother and later went to live with the family of her father in Boston and Worcester. Bishop attended walnut school, which was near Boston throughout her high school years and later at Vassar for her bachelors. Bishop was close to the Vassar librarian despite their age and she gained her poetic skills.

Bishop skills were influenced by a couple of people including Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, and Moore, where her first work emerged in the magazine of Vassar undergraduate Con Spirito that she had aided in founding. Elizabeth had chosen medicine as her career, but turned to poetry as a result of influence from Moore. Moore had published various poems done by Bishop in 1935 in an anthology entitled Trial Balances (Corelle and Laurel 73). When residing in New York, Bishop wrote her first full-grown poem like the man-moth and the map. Bishop lived occasionally in Europe for about three years before buying a house in 1938 in Key West in Florida.

Various New York publishers had rejected her several times, but one of her first poetry volumes the North and South was finally printed on 1946. The North and South introduced themes that were vital to Bishop’s poetry and they included landscape and geography, natural world and its connection to human, knowledge questions and perception, and the inability or ability chaos to be controlled by forms. In 1947, Randall Jarrell introduced Bishop to Robert Lowell, who turned into her lifelong friend (Walker and Cheryl 67). The Prize of Houghton Mifflin saw the North and South poem selected from about 800 entries for publication. Success continued following Bishop and in 1950, Bryn Mawr college awarded her the Lucy martin Donnely fellowship and later from the American Academy of Arts and letters attained an award.

In 1946 Bishop In her book North and South, she gave Mifflin the privilege of publishing the book as she undertook psychoanalysis. The analysis was a result of pilgrimage, which Bishop was to undertake that year to Nova Scotia fifteen years later. After all the trips she made to Nova, she wrote to her colleague and friend Lowell and stated “If I am not fulfilling my destiny and get wrecked, too, I think I can turn it into an article or maybe a poem or two” (One Art 221). The pilgrimage she made was very essential for her artistically and psychologically. The pilgrimage made her for the first time face her past unswervingly. There were various poems like “the prodigal”, “the moose”, and “the cape Breton”, that were as a result of this pilgrimage visit.

Bishop tried to write about the sable island, but never managed to complete it. The thought of writing about this island was after she went on a sea voyage to tour the world. The journey ended prematurely as Bishop went to Brazil and made that her home. Brazil was comfortable and she felt like she was home. Brazil made Bishop reflect about her home Nova. The stay at Brazil made her write a conclusion to Lowell about the experiences of Brazil stating “What I am really up to is re-creating a sort of de luxe Nova Scotia all over again, in Brazil. And now I’m my own grandmother” (Words in Air 676).

Bishop travelled to South America in 1951, where she traveled to Brazil to see the Amazon and made that her home for about Eighteen years. Bishop entered into a lesbian relation with Lota de Macedo Soares, who gave her life love and stability, and developed homes in Rio de Janeiro. In 1955, her second volume of poem named A Cold Spring appeared. The second collection was after an agreement between Bishop and Mifflin, where the first collection of Bishop Poems was supposed to be featured in the second collection. The Cold Springs won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956 (Schwartz and Lloyd 79).

After the Cold Springs was published, Bishop exhausted three years interpreting Helena Morely diary, an admired Brazilian work entitled Minha Vida de Menina. Helena’s life reminded Bishop of her life in great village and translating Helena’s work made her reflect on and write about her childhood. Many of Bishops poems were set in Brazil and a decade later various poems were collected in the Questions of Travel in 1965. The third book of Bishop included both her childhood reflections and poems about Brazil, which was her new home. Life became hard for Bishop in Brazil as Lota was involved in running various projects and this took her attention and time (Walker and Cheryl 95). Bishop relocated to Washington University, where she exhausted two semesters and later went back to Rio. As a result of their separation, both Lota and Bishop suffered psychological and physical distress and were hospitalized. Bishop regained health and travelled to New York and waited for Lota to regains hers and travel to New York. In September 19 1967, Lota arrived in New York, but later that night she died at the age of fifty-seven after taking an over doze of tranquilizers (Schwartz and Lloyd 87).

After Lota’s suicide, Bishop began living in the US and at Harvard University went ahead to become a poet-in –residence in 1969. The death of Lota affected Bishop terribly, but she went to publish and write. By the end of 1969, Bishop completed publishing Complete Poems. The Complete Poems included some of Bishop previously published works and other new sets. The Complete Poems won the prize of National award in 1970. Bishop had tried to reestablish herself in Brazil, but it was tough without Lota and she went back to New York. Bishop went to teach at Harvard University. Bishop started a close friendship with Alice Methfessel in 1971 and went to end after the death of Bishop in 1979. The last collection of Bishop published in 1976 was Geography III (Dodd and Elizabeth 105).

Geography III that included poems like “One Art” and “in the waiting Room”, made Bishop win the award of Neustadt International. Bishop remains to be the first and only American writer to receive the Neustadt Prize. Bishop served in the position of chancellor from 1966 to 1979. Bishop later passed on in October 9 1979 in Cambridge Massachusetts.

Conclusion

Bishop spent a lot of years scripting a single poem and spontaneity. Bishop recreated her worlds of America, Canada, Europe, and Brazil as she was committed to an accuracy passion. Eschewing self-pity, Bishop’s poems thinly concealed her estrangements as an orphan, woman, lesbian, a rootless geographical traveler, an alcohol and depression sufferer and a regularly hospitalized asthmatic patient. The attribute that Bishop possessed is what all female authors should adorn as a way of achieving success. Bishop never joined the women movement, and in fact was hostile towards such movement. Many of her fans after her death wrote in her eulogy that she had hid her private life from her work.

Work Cited

Bishop, Elizabeth, and Saskia Hamilton. Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print.

Corelle, Laurel S. A Poet’s High Argument: Elizabeth Bishop and Christianity. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008. Print.

Dodd, Elizabeth C. The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H.d., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992. Print.

Elizabeth Bishop, One Art: Letters, ed. Robert Giroux. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994.

Schwartz, Lloyd, and Sybil P. Estess. Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983. Print.

Thomas Travisano, ed., Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008.

Walker, Cheryl. God and Elizabeth Bishop: Meditations on Religion and Poetry. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.