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Elizabeth Bishop

When Elizabeth Bishop’s 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Poems: North and South – A Cold Spring first appeared in August of 1955, reviewer Donald Hall called her “one of the best poets alive.” Later, Questions of Travel would lead Robert Mazzocco to call her “one of the shining, central talents of our day.” Bishop’s work has gained increasing attention in recent years, marking her as one of Worcester’s great poets. Though she only spent a few short years in Worcester, those years had a marked impact on her writing, namely in her prose piece “The Country Mouse” and one of her most well known poems, “In the Waiting Room.”

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 8, 1911, Elizabeth Bishop’s began her life with a series of tragedies: her father William died of Bright’s Disease when she was just eight months old. Baby Elizabeth and her mother Gertrude moved to her grandparents’ house in Nova Scotia, as Gertrude had lost her US citizenship on William’s death. Gertrude Boomer Bishop suffered a series of nervous breakdowns and was committed to the Nova Scotia Hospital in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 1916. It was the last time Elizabeth Bishop saw her mother. This ordeal was chronicled in Bishop’s prose piece, “In the Village.” Despite a tragic beginning, Bishop was happy in Nova Scotia; her family there was warm and caring.

At the age of six, Bishop was called to live with her responsible but emotionally aloof paternal grandparents in Worcester. As recounted in her narrative “The Country Mouse,” Bishop resented moving to Worcester and hated living with her grandparents. She was afflicted with many physical and nervous ailments while staying with the Bishops. Bishop, miserable from illness, was very lonely. Though the Bishops had wanted to raise her in Worcester, they had to conclude that their “experiment” had failed – Bishop, never a healthy child, was so weak from illness she could barely walk. Being rescued from her grandparents’ home by Maud Shepherdson, her mother’s sister, was a major turning point in young Bishop’s life.

In 1918, Elizabeth Bishop moved to the South Boston area with Maud and George Shepherdson. She was much happier with her new surroundings, and slowly began to regain her health. She spent summers in Nova Scotia, and attended Camp Chequesset on Cape Cod. Influenced by Maud’s love of literature, Bishop began writing her own poetry. Though her prolonged previous illnesses delayed the start of her formal schooling until she was 14, she enrolled and was an excellent student at the Walnut Hill School for Girls in Natick, Massachusetts, and enrolled in Vassar College in 1930. While she was at Vassar, Bishop and others started Con Spirito, an underground literary magazine that was more socially conscious and avant-garde than the legitimate Vassar Review.

1934 was a significant year for Bishop. She met lifelong friend Marianne Moore that year on the front steps of the Vassar library. It was Moore who influenced Bishop to think about pursuing poetry as a vocation. In Bishop’s poem, “Invitation to Marianne Moore,” she hints at a “priceless set of vocabularies,” indicating an interest in pursuing something of a literary nature. This was not the only major event to happen to Bishop that year, though. In May, Gertrude Boomer Bishop died. In June, Elizabeth Bishop graduated from Vassar and moved to New York City.

After winning the Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship in May of 1945, Bishop’s first book, North & South, was published in 1946. North and South established themes prevalent to Bishop’s poetry: the relation between humans and the natural world, and questions of knowledge and perception. There were also a number of poems in that collection that dealt with loneliness and detachment; these were perhaps a reflection upon her years in Worcester with her grandparents. Around the time North and South was published, Bishop also met and became friends with Robert Lowell. Like Marianne Moore, Lowell encouraged Bishop to pursue poetry. He also opened many doors for Bishop by showing her grants, fellowships and awards she could get. In 1950, Bishop secured the post of Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress with Lowell’s help.

In fall of 1951, Bishop won the Amy Lowell Travel Fellowship and embarked upon a trip to South America. While she was in Brazil, however, she had a violent allergic reaction to a cashew fruit she had eaten and was hospitalized, missing the freighter for the Amazon River. During her convalescence, she fell in love with her friend and nurse, Lota de Macedo Soares. After a brief visit to the States to clean up her affairs, she moved to Brazil in June 1952. Bishop’s stay in Brazil with Soares was probably the happiest time in her life. She wrote to Robert Lowell that she was “extremely happy for the first time in [her] life.” In 1955, Bishop published her second book, A Cold Spring, in a volume that included works from her first entitled Poems: North and South – A Cold Spring. The next three years Bishop spent translating the Diary of Helena Morely, a popular Brazilian work.

Bishop’s third book, Questions of Travel, was published in 1965 and is divided into two sections: Brazil, and Elsewhere. Again geography and nature themes are extensive, as well as themes of exploration and excitement. Reflective of the intimacy of Bishop’s relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares, the poems in this collection allow more intimacy between the reader and the poet. Even so, poems in her Elsewhere section that reflect on Bishop’s childhood return to the sense of loneliness and detachment that pervaded her earlier works.

The mid-1960s were a difficult time for Bishop and Soares in Brazil. Increasing political turmoil made Bishop feel more and more uncomfortable in her adopted Brazilian home, and Soares’s involvement in the public parks project was stressful for both women. Both Bishop and Soares suffered from physical and psychological distress and had to be hospitalized. When they recovered, the women left for New York, but Soares committed suicide shortly after her arrival in September 1967. The loss devastated Bishop, but she continued to publish and write, releasing her Complete Poems in 1969. The book contained all of her previous works as well as several new pieces.

In 1970 Bishop moved back to the United States to teach at Harvard. Her last collection of poetry, Geography III, was published in 1976. The themes of loneliness, pain, and loss are reflected throughout the volume, possibly because Bishop never recovered from the loss of Soares from her life. Two of Bishop’s most famous poems of loss, “One Art” and “In the Waiting Room,” are from Geography III.

While teaching on and off at Harvard until 1977, Bishop met Alice Methfessel, who would be Bishop’s closest companion for the rest of her life. When her tenure at Harvard was done, she taught for one year at New York University.

Elizabeth Bishop died in 1979 at Lewis Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts. She was buried at Hope Cemetery in Worcester. Currently her poetry continues to gain recognition and study. Bishop’s poetic wit and humor made her poems likeable and accessible to the public. Though balanced by wit and humor, the poems speak eloquently of pain and loss, leaving plenty of room for re-readings to sift through the many layers of her work.