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Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780375409646
Format: Unabridged
ISBN: 0375409645
Label: Random House Audio
Manufacturer: Random House Audio
Number Of Items: 1
Publication Date: 2000-04-04
Publisher: Random House Audio
Product Release Date: 2000-04-04
Studio: Random House Audio

In her readings, Elizabeth Bishop extended what James Merrill termed her "instinctive, modest, life-long impersonation of an ordinary woman." Eschewing the grandiosity--the extended pauses for effect, the stately self-wonder--that could strike her contemporaries and seems epidemic among her descendants, she opted for a brisk clip. In fact, in "The Map," which opens The Voice of the Poet, she sounds as if she can't wait to escape New York's 92nd Street Y. The collection includes 23 poems from six different readings, the first taking place on October 17, 1947, and the last 30 years later, when she was clearly congested. It is also accompanied by a booklet containing a fine essay by J.D. McClatchy and the poems themselves.

Bishop offers few remarks, so each one, along with each slight alteration of text, is precious. For example, she brings "Large Bad Picture" to a sudden, marvelous halt with "And I must change that--he never was a schoolteacher. I think I liked the rhyme." She is in finest form at the Coolidge Auditorium in May 1969, and particularly loose with the magical "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore." Perhaps this has something to do with its vocative mode and its irresistible repetition of "please come flying": "We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping, / or play at a game of constantly being wrong / with a priceless set of vocabularies, / or we can bravely deplore, but please / please come flying."

Despite Bishop's attempts at invisibility, her art again and again makes itself felt. One is grateful that she was caught narrating such masterworks as "At the Fishhouses" and "The Moose" as well as the lovely "Poem" about a miniature painting, with its "tiny cows, / two brushstrokes each, but confidently cows" and celebrated riddle: "A specklike bird is flying to the left. / Or is it a flyspeck looking like a bird?" The tape also includes such lesser-known pieces as "Cirque d'Hiver." Only Bishop could instill a wind-up horse and rider with such desperate beauty, wit, and desire for connection:

His mane and tail are straight from Chirico
He has a formal, melancholy soul.
He feels her pink toes dangle toward his back
along the little pole
that pierces both her body and her soul

and goes through his, and reappears below,
under his belly, as a big tin key.

Bishop never once refers to her performances in her letters, and though she was to grow more comfortable with the requirements of her role, as late as 1976 an article on her was titled "Reading Scares Poet Bishop." She may not have been keen on the sound of her own voice, but those lucky enough to catch it now will savor each revelation of her formal, melancholy soul. --Kerry Fried

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a Treat!
Review: i bought this tape on a road trip and logged the miles spellbound by how Bishop's voice and inflection turned the poems I blew through in college into delightful, insightful stories. This tape, and i'll bet the others in this series, is an example of why poetry needs to be heard, rather than read. Send these tapes to schools everywhere!

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Essential Elizabeth Bishop, but not for the newcomer...
Review: Elizabeth Bishop disliked the sound of her own voice, and often refused to permit recordings (even private ones) of her readings. Bishop's executor, Alice Methfessel, respected the poet's keen protective instincts, and allowed no commercial issue in the two decades since Bishop's death. As a result, the speaking voice of this great poet has remained a mystery, even as Bishop's following and reputation has grown by bounds.

I still remember the shock of hearing Bishop's voice for the first time. Bishop's voice is so -- I don't know any other word for it -- so ordinary. This is as true on her early recordings (from the late 1940s) as on her mature readings (mid 1970s). At times, the listener is tempted to think she does not understand the meaning of what she is saying: she is so shy about drawing attention to her poetic craft, and so embarrassed about revealing any hidden emotional content, that she almost seems to be reading the work of another person. "Don't you realize," I want to shout, "that you are speaking some of the greatest lines in American poetry?" But we must remember that Bishop's self-effacements, however ineffective in a public reading, are part of the reason why her poems are so emotionally satisfying. Meaning and memory resonate in the most lightly observed surface details.

I would highly recommend this recording to anyone who already knows Elizabeth Bishop's work and biography -- it is an excellent reference, even if it is not the most entertaining recording. However, I would caution a newcomer to Bishop NOT to start here. It is far better to read the poems and the letters first so that you have a sense of the many masks this poet wears. Another good place to start is the hour-long documentary on Elizabeth Bishop in the "Voices and Visions" series, which appeared years ago on public television (available in many libraries). James Merrill and Mary McCarthy are interviewed about their friendship with Elizabeth Bishop and make many illuminating comments. Blythe Danner -- Gwyneth Paltrow's mom! -- reads the poems of Bishop, and frankly does a better job of it than Bishop does.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Bishop converses...
Review: The Bishop on this tape is a surprise. She reads easily, congenially, interrupts herself to comment on what she's doing. She's funny, and the humor that's under the surface of the poems gets to bubble up at odd moments. It's a great selection of poems, and it's fantastically handy to have the booklet of the texts of the poems (some of which are interestingly different from the versions Bishop reads) tucked into the pocket in the front of the elegant package. J.D. McClatchy's introduction to her work is, as always, illuminating.

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