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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780374524456
ISBN: 0374524459
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 668
Publication Date: 1995-09-30
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

One Art is the best biography we have of the elusive Elizabeth Bishop. Robert Giroux, her editor and friend, has chosen well--and discreetly--from among the poet's several thousand letters. The collection begins with correspondence she wrote while still at Vassar in the '30s and ends with a letter written on the day she died, October 6, 1979. ("Well, I could go on--but I won't!" Bishop writes.) Still, we now have more than 600 pages of witty, well-mannered missives that often shade into deep emotion. Seemingly casual observation is a staple of Bishop's art and a delight in the letters: writing to Marianne Moore in 1938, she asserts that an unappealing stray she is nonetheless feeding looks just like Picasso's Absinthe Drinker. Nor is she any less irreverent when it comes to the lifestyles of the poetic and famous. In 1950, she tells Robert Lowell that she's reading Yeats's A Vision--"or trying to. Have you? Sometimes it's Jungian. The picture of Yeats going 'Woof! Woof!' in a lower berth, in the dark, in California, in order to wake up his wife, who was dreaming she was a cat, is very pleasing, I think."

Bishop often hid her sadness behind charm, but she could also be astonishingly frank. In addition to the personal revelations, there are discussions of poems' origins. "Quite a few lines of 'At the Fishhouses' came to me in a dream," she tells U. T. and Joseph Summers. "And the scene--which was real enough, I'd recently been there--but the old man and the conversation, etc., were all in a later dream." One caveat: Robert Giroux has kept commentary and notes to a minimum, so it's worth reading his introduction for deep background before you begin.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: This collection changed my life
Review: I was a junior in college when I first read this book and subsequently viewed some of Elizabeth Bishop's handwritten poems/manuscripts/letters, etc. at the New York Public Library's Hand of the Poet exhibit. I was in love, enthralled, forever changed by this amazing woman's poems and her voice. These letters are an intimate look into the life of one of the most talented and elusive poets of the 20th Century. What a life of heartbreak and obstacle and yet she remained keenly interested in the human challenge--and amazingly connected to those she knew. In this age where the art of communication has been nearly wholly lost, to read this collection of letters is like stepping back in time. Bishop reminds us that the most important connections are those we make with others--and that taking the time to put pen to paper and to fully observe our world is the most priceless gift. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough. Buy one for yourself and one for any young person you know. Inspire yourself to write letters and learn from a true master. Bishop's voice and the intricacies of her personality shine through in this collection. A rare find from a rare and truly incredible poet.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I Fell In Love With Elizabeth Bishop All Over Again!
Review: In this amazing collection of Elizabeth Bishop's selected letters, all of the various nuances of her most personal voice --warm, intimate, keenly observant, whimsical and humorous, generous, shy, gutwrenchingly honest, decorous and demure -- come through with astonishing human clarity. Bishop's engaging and elegant epistolary style makes reading One Art almost like reading an epistolary novel. The collection certainly functions as a fascinatingly candid biography of the somewhat shy and elusive Bishop, and also provides marvelous glimpses of both her writing processes, and the contextual background against which many of her poems emerged. Mostly, though, I found myself liking Elizabeth Bishop to excess . . . her humor, her eye for detail, her weirdly shy and modest charisma, even her flaws . . . and wishing that I could have been one of her inner circle of friends receiving these wonderful letters.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Revelations of the Artist
Review: These letters provide a fascinating insight into the poet, who was as compelling in prose as in poetry. I love Bishop's work, and I am enjoying this book!

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