Elizabeth Bishop: Poet on an Unknown Sea

Elizabeth Bishop wrote poetry grounded in a compelling integrity for precision of description, language and meter, and with an almost indolent allowance for bringing a poem, however long it took, to its proper finish.  She wrote alone.  She wrote with an unconfident sense of the value and substance of her own poetics—often uncertain if she was writing ‘real’ or ‘serious’ poetry.  Her poetic philosophy was open and courageous as written in a later letter to the poet, and her seminal friend, Robert Lowell: “Since we do float on an unknown sea, I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way carefully; who knows what might depend on it”.  (Toibin, 1). Read More