The Dynamic Letters of Elizabeth Bishop

For the NYR Daily, Langdon Hammer looks at the importance of letters for Elizabeth Bishop, with a nod to several collections of her correspondence. "Editions of Bishop’s correspondences with Marianne Moore and with May Swenson are in preparation," writes Hammer. "Moreover, a great many Bishop letters have not been published, and new letters continue to come to light."

There is a purposefully sketchy, offhand quality to Bishop’s thinking in letters, as in her definition of the letter itself as “an art form or something.” We might see the style as imprecise, and find it curious in a poet particularly noted for her precision of observation. But imprecision of this sort in her letters appealed to Bishop because it prevented her ideas from becoming prematurely or permanently fixed, as they would be in print. Letters allowed her to speculate, muse, joke, hesitate, qualify, and change her mind, all in the course of a letter, or sometimes in the course of a sentence. In letters, Bishop could try out sharp, avowedly partial opinions, rather than patiently build up arguments and take reasoned positions for which she would be held publicly accountable, as demanded by the book reviews she struggled to complete. Letters allowed her to mix subjects in meandering association, or with less connection than that, shaped only by the flow of thought and the chance nature of experience.

Each of Bishop’s important correspondences has its own character and dynamics. But the series of letters she wrote to her psychoanalyst, Dr. Ruth Foster, over a few days following her thirty-sixth birthday in February 1947, is unique in its intensity... 

Continue reading "Letters: Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Art Form or Something’" at NYR Daily.