Comments on: rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

By: Don Share

Don Share — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:48:04 +0000

I think Alicia’s exactly right (and only wish Quinn’s had been a proper critical edition, though you can see why nobody’d think it “marketable.”) It’ll be extremely interesting to see how people respond to the forthcoming Library of America Bishop volume, which may well go a long way to restore some context for the unfinished work, letters, incidental pieces, and so on. Even the wonderful collected poems we’ve had all these years has the liability of omitting the prose pieces that were woven together in the inexplicably out-of-print Questions of Travel. For too long it has been almost impossible for the casual reader to discover what Bishop’s own books were like!

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:23:31 +0000

I suppose we DO have a Bishop in fragments! I did buy the Quinn book, despite sharing some of Rigoberto’s unease about it. Actually, I felt more uneasy about the drafts that were published in The New Yorker as if they were finished poems–that, I think, was misleading, and I cannot imagine Bishop being pleased about it. But Edgar Allen Poe & The Juke Box itself is a fascinating book and a must-have now for Bishop fans. The context of the book (and occasional facsimiles of the notebook pages in it) makes their unfinished nature very clear–even if it is impossible to read a draft printed on a page the way you would read it scrawled in a notebook. Well, I am grateful for the book and would recommend it.

By: Rigoberto

Rigoberto — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:46:07 +0000

Ah, yes, that project of Ms. Quinn’s…people (and critics) had mixed reactions to this “recovery” project. I myself have to admit I didn’t buy it or read it because I’ve been waiting for a convincing argument to delve into the unfinished writings of Elizabeth Bishop…perhaps as archival curiosity, maybe that’s the best lens. I don’t know.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:41:52 +0000

Well, we do have a Bishop in fragments, thanks to Alice Quinn’s collection of her unfinished and unpublished work!

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:05:47 +0000

What a great story! I can’t tell you how often I’ve been reading a poem in a magazine, and thought, yes, that is a nice ending, only to turn the page! Imagine if we only had Bishop in fragments, a la Sappho, we might think that was the end of the poem.

By: Robert Vasquez

Robert Vasquez — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:08:36 +0000

Rigoberto,
Thank you for your insightful comments about one of my favorite poets. Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry resonates with such wonderful imagery and music, and “The Fish” is just one of many memorable works. For someone who only published approximately a hundred poems in her lifetime, Bishop has had a tremendous, well-deserved impact on many poets, especially when one considers her contemporaries (Lowell, Schwartz, Berryman, Jarrell).
Other poems of hers that are equally exquisite include “Filling Station,” “At the Fishhouses,” “First Death in Nova Scotia,” “The Riverman,” “Large Bad Picture,” “Insomnia,” “Robinson Crusoe in England,” “One Art,” “Sestina,” “The Moose,” “The Man-Moth”–I’m sure others could list more titles of their favorite Bishop poems.
All the best,
–Robert