Bishop, Elizabeth

Bishop, Elizabeth (1911–79), poet, born in Worcester, Mass., was raised in her formative years chiefly in Nova Scotia by relatives after her father died and her mother institutionalized when the child was five. At about the time of graduation from Vassar, Bishop met Marianne Moore, who became mentor and friend. Her first poems in book form appeared in the anthology Trial Balances (1935), with an introduction by Moore. From 1939 to 1973 Bishop lived in Key West, then in Brazil; in 1974 she settled in Boston, teaching at Harvard until her death. Poems (1955) collects North and South (1946) and A Cold Spring (1955). It contains some of her most famous poems, such as The Fish, in which she catches and, after minutely described examination, releases a huge trout, whereat “Suddenly everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow.” Her move to Brazil illuminates Questions of Travel (1965). Recognition of Bishop as a major poet became widespread only at her death. Her best work, a series of meditations, is her last, Geography III (1976). Her poems build intricate details toward resolution, reminiscent of the work of Marianne Moore. She marries common experience to the strangeness of dreams. There are two posthumous books: The Complete Poems 1927–1979 (1983) and The Collected Prose (1984). A selection of her letters, One Art, edited by Robert Giroux, was published in 1994.