American poet (1911-1979)
It's past midnight and very silent and I'm probably keeping the night doorman awake as well as Lota, and a mystery man across the garden who sits up all night with three bright lights on, as if giving himself a 3rd degree--only he always does seem to be awake & alone. Tonight he did something very strange for a while--and finally we saw that he was (silently) playing a cello.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
letter, September 29, 1957
I never wanted to teach in my life.... I don't believe in teaching poetry at all, but that's what they want one to do. You see so many poems every week, you just lose all sense of judgment.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
The Paris Review, summer 1981
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Exchanging Hats"
When you write my epitaph, you must say I was the loneliest person who ever lived.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
One Art: Letters
Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Questions of Travel
I'd like to be a painter most, I think. I never really sat down and said to myself, I'm going to be a poet. Never in my life. I'm still surprised that people think I am.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
The Paris Review, summer 1981
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"The Armadillo"
Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Questions of Travel
But he sleeps on the top of his mast with his eyes closed tight. The gull inquired into his dream, which was, "I must not fall. The spangled sea below wants me to fall. It is hard as diamonds; it wants to destroy us all."
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Arrival at Santos"
Love with his gilded bow and crystal arrows
Has slain us all,
Has pierced the English sparrows
Who languish for each other in the dust,
While from their bosoms, puffed with hopeless lust,
The red drops fall.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Three Valentines"
It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, seabirds in ones or twos. The rackety, icy, offshore wind numbed our faces on one side; disrupted the formation of a lone flight of Canada geese; and blew back the low, inaudible rollers in upright, steely mist.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Poems, Prose, and Letters
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
North & South
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps or soap,
but they seldom seem to care what impressions they make.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Questions of Travel