Elizabeth Bishop

[quasimodo1]

From Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

From Uncollected Poems

THREE VALENTINES

I. Love with his gilded bow and crystal arrow
has slain us all,
Has pierced the English sparrows
Who languish for each other in the dust,
While from their bosoms, puffed with hopeless lust,
The red drops fall.

The robins' wings fan fev'rish arcs and swirls
Attempting hugs,
While Venus pats her darling's curls
And just to polish off his aim, suggests
Some unrequited passions in the breasts
Of am'rous bugs.


....




http://projects.vassar.edu/bishop/
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/7
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=590
--

[quasimodo1]

From the Poetry Foundation's website

From archive

CRUSOE IN ENGLAND


A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was reading
where some ship saw an island being born:
at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;
and then a black fleck—basalt, probably—
rose in the mate’s binoculars
and caught on the horizon like a fly.
They named it. But my poor old island’s still
un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.
Well, I had fifty-two
miserable, small volcanoes I could climb
with a few slithery strides—
volcanoes dead as ash heaps.

....

[Dark Muse]

From The Waiting Room

The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
....

[quasimodo1]

From Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

From Unpublished Poems and Drafts

{untitled}

The past
At least
Is polite:
It keeps out of sight.

The present
Is more recent.
It makes a fuss
But is unselfconscious.

The future... {excerpt}

[Dark Muse]

From One Art

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

[JBI]

I've been carrying this sonnet in memory for a few years now:

Sonnet (1928) by Elizabeth Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

continued here: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/elizabeth_bishop/poems/926

[quasimodo1]

From Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

From North and South

FLORIDA

The state with the prettiest name,
The state that floats in brackish water,
Held together by mangrove roots
That bear while living oysters in clusters,
And when dead strew white swamps with skeletons,
Dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
Like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass.
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
And unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
Every time in a tantrum.
Tanagers embarrassed by their flashiness,
And pelicans whose delight it is to clown;
Who coast for fun on the strong tidal currents
In and out among the mangrove islands
And stand on the sand-bars drying their damp gold wings
On sun-lit evenings.

{excerpt}

[Dark Muse]

From Poem

It must be Nova Scotia; only there
does one see abled wooden houses
painted that awful shade of brown.
The other houses, the bits that show, are white.
Elm trees., low hills, a thin church steeple
-that gray-blue wisp-or is it? In the foreground
a water meadow with some tiny cows,
two brushstrokes each, but confidently cows;
two minuscule white geese in the blue water,
back-to-back,, feeding, and a slanting stick.
Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,
fresh-squiggled from the tube.
The air is fresh and cold; cold early spring
clear as gray glass; a half inch of blue sky
below the steel-gray storm clouds.
(They were the artist's specialty.)
A specklike bird is flying to the left.
Or is it a flyspeck looking like a bird?

[quasimodo1]

From Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

From Unpublished Poems and Drafts

EDGAR ALLEN POE & THE JUKE-BOX
Neddy & bone-key

Easily through the darkened room /blue as gas,
The juke-box burns; the music falls. /blue as the pupil
Starlight, La Conga, all the dance-halls /of a blind man's eye
in the block of honkey-tonks,
cavities in our waning moon,
strung with bottles and blue lights
and silvered coconuts and conches.

As easily as the music falls,
the nickels fall into the slots,
the drinks like lonely water-falls
in night descend the separate throats,
and the hands fall on one another
[down] darker darkness under
tablecloths and all descends,
descends, falls, --much as we envision
the helpless earthward fall of love
descending from the head and eye
down to the hands, and heart, and down.
The music pretends to laugh and weep
while it descends to drink and murder.
The burning box can keep the measure
strict, always, and the down-beat.

{excerpt}


(late 1930s- early 1940s)

[Dark Muse]

From Roosters

The crown of red
set on your little head
is charged with all your fighting blood

Yes, that excrescence
makes a most virile presence,
plus all that vulgar beauty of iridescence

Now in mid-air
by two they fight each other.
Down comes a first flame-feather,

and one is flying,
....

[quasimodo1]

That's a disturbing poem, Muse. Bishop's poetry goes everywhere. You might want to try her memoirs...they're great...especially on Marianne Moore.

[Dark Muse]

I love Roosters. It is one of my favorite pomes by her

[AuntShecky]

This poet was a good choice for a spotlight. In reading an
online biography about Elizabeth Bishop, I found that she
had quite a tragic childhood, which isn't necessarily a prerequisite for poetic success. (Her background was, however, wealthy enough, that she was able to attend Vassar College.) More importantly, despite the early emotional hardships that Elizabeth Bishop had to endure
she managed to develop the kind of rarified sense of humor found in good poets-- "wit," especially evident in
her poem, "Moth-man."

One of her most famous pieces, excerpted by a previous poster, is "One Art," often -- and justifiably -- offered as
a prime example of a difficult poetic form, the villanelle.

[Dark Muse]

This poet was a good choice for a spotlight. In reading an
online biography about Elizabeth Bishop, I found that she
had quite a tragic childhood, which isn't necessarily a prerequisite for poetic success.

That reminds me of the course I took in contemparary poetry. Like the first 3 or 4 poets we dicussed all either killed themselves, or were depressed and had unhappy backgrounds. So we were all joking around about that, and the teachers, was like, really, you don't have to be suicidal or depressed to be a poet, I promoise we will talk about some that aren't.

[quasimodo1]

From Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

From Questions of Travel: Elsewhere

FILLING STATION

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
Oil-soaked, oil-permeated
To a disturbing, over-all
Black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
Oil soaked monkey suit
That cuts him under the arms,
And several quick and saucy
And greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
All quite thoroughly dirty.


{excerpt}

[Dark Muse]

From The Fish

I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from A Cold Spring

A SUMMER'S DREAM

To the sagging wharf
few ships could come.
The population numbered
two giants, an idiot, a dwarf,

a gentle storekeeper
asleep behind his counter,
and our kind landlady--
the dwarf was her dressmaker.


{excerpt}

[Dark Muse]

I always thought this one was a little wierd, but there was something about it I always liked

From The Monument

A sea of narrow, horizontal boards
lies out behind our lonely monument,
its long grains alternating right and left
like floor-boards--spotted, swarming-still,
and motionless. A sky runs parallel,
and it is palings, coarser than the sea's:
splintery sunlight and long-fibred clouds.
"Why does the strange sea make no sound?
Is it because we're far away?
Where are we? Are we in Asia Minor,
or in Mongolia?"

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from A Cold Spring

FAUSTINA, OR ROCK ROSES

Tended by Faustina
yes in a crazy house
upon a crazy bed,
frail, of chipped enamel,
blooming above her head
into four vaguely roselike
flower-formations,


[excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from Geography III

OBJECTS & APPARITIONS
for Joseph Cornell

Hexahedrons of wood and glass,
scarcely bigger than a shoebox,
with room in tem for night and all its lights.

Monuments to every moment,
refuse of every moment, used:
cages for infinity. ...


{Translated from the Spanish of Octavio Paz}
[excerpt]

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from Uncollected Poems

FOR C.W.B.

I. Let us live in a lull of the long winter-winds
Where the shy, silver-antlered reindeer go
On dainty hoofs with their white rabbit friends
Amidst the delicate flowering snow.



{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from North & South

ANAPHORA
in memory of Marjorie Carr Stevens

Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory:
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
"Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed?" Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
instantly, instantly falls
victim of long intrigue,
assuming memory and mortal
mortal fatigue.
{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from Unpublished Poems and Drafts

CURRENT DREAMS

I. From all confusions come
different dreams for each:
on a long wild beach
with breakers rolling in
on a sullen ledge of rock
as dull & smooth as flint,
there has been a bombardment
and where the shells have fallen
the flint has turned red-hot
in irregular patches under
an inch of clear black water,
beautiful stains, like Chartres;
and at the edge of the waves
where the stains burn ragged red
and the water hisses, a crowd
of hesitant little children
pick their way along
in fastidious concern
in order not to burn
cold, wet, white feet.

{excerpt, dated 1941}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from North & South

THE UNBELIEVER
[He sleeps on the top of a mast. --Bunyan]

He sleeps on the top of a mast
with his eyes fast closed.
The sails fall away below him
like the sheets of his bed,
leaving out in the air of the night the sleeper's head.

Asleep he was transported there,
asleep he curled
in a gilded ball on the mast's top,
or climbed inside
a gilded bird, or blindly seated himself astride.



{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from Late Poems

PINK DOG
[Rio de Janerio]

The sun is blazing and the sky is blue.
Umbrellas clothe the beach in every hue.
Naked, you trot across the avenue.

Oh, never have I seen a dog so bare!
Naked and pink, without a single hair…...
Startled, the passerby draw back and stare.


{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from A Cold Spring

THE BIGHT
On my birthday

At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
Rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters
from Questions of Travel: Brazil

TWELTH MORNING; OR WHAT YOU WILL

Like a first coat of whitewash when it's wet,
the thin gray mist lets everything show through:
the black boy Balthazar, fence, a horse,
a foundered house,

--cement and rafters sticking from a dune,
(The Company passes off these white but shopworn
dunes as lawns,) "Shipwreck," we say; perhaps
this is a housewreck.

The sea's off somewhere, doing nothing. Listen.
An expelled breath. And faint, faint, faint
(or are you hearing things), the sandpipers'
heart-broken cries.

The fence, three-strand, barbed-wire, all pure rust,
three dotted lines, comes forward hopefully
across the lots; thinks better of it; turns
a sort of corner . . .
{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from Questions of Travel: Brazil

QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.
{12 lines from a poem of two pages}

[firefangled]

This poet was a good choice for a spotlight. In reading an
online biography about Elizabeth Bishop, I found that she
had quite a tragic childhood, which isn't necessarily a prerequisite for poetic success. (Her background was, however, wealthy enough, that she was able to attend Vassar College.) More importantly, despite the early emotional hardships that Elizabeth Bishop had to endure
she managed to develop the kind of rarified sense of humor found in good poets-- "wit," especially evident in
her poem, "Moth-man."

One of her most famous pieces, excerpted by a previous poster, is "One Art," often -- and justifiably -- offered as
a prime example of a difficult poetic form, the villanelle.

Elizabeth Bishop shared her pain with James Merrill. Merrill wrote of her Complete Poems: "Of all the splendid and curious works belonging to my time, these are the poems that I love best and tire of the least. And there will be no others."

She is indeed an excellent choice for highlighting. Her childhood poems and occasional poems are delightful.

[Currer Bell]

From The Gentleman Of Shalott

Which eye's his eye?
Which limb lies
next the mirror?
For neither is clearer
nor a different color
than the other,
nor meets a stranger
in this arrangement
of leg and leg and
arm and so on.
To his mind
it's the indication
of a mirrored reflection
somewhere along the line
of what we call the spine.

He felt in modesty
his person was
half looking-glass,
for why should he
be doubled?
The glass must stretch
down his middle,
or rather down the edge.
But he's in doubt
as to which side's in or out
of the mirror.
There's little margin for error,
but there's no proof, either.
And if half his head's reflected,
thought, he thinks, might be affected.

I found this poem very amusing when I first read it....

[quasimodo1]

The Moose


For Grace Bulmer Bowers


From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,


where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;


where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats’
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;


on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,


through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;


down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.


Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.


Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens’ feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;


the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.


One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies—
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.


A pale flickering. Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn’t give way.

{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters
from A Cold Spring

VARICK STREET

At night the factories
struggle awake,
wretched uneasy buildings
veined with pipes
attempt their work.
Trying to breathe,
the elongated nostrils
haired with spikes
give off such stenches, too.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

On certain floors
certain wonders.
Pale dirty light,
some captured iceberg
being prevented from melting.
See the mechanical moons,
sick, being made
to wax and wane
at somebody's instigation.
And I shall sell you sell you
sell you of course, my dear, and you'll sell me.

{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters
from A Cold Spring

THE MOUNTAIN

At evening, something behind me.
I start for a second, I blench,
or staggeringly halt and burn.
I do not know my age.

In the morning it is different.
An open book confronts me,
too close to read in comfort.
Tell me how old I am.

...........

The deepest demarcations
can slowly spread and fade
like any blue tattoo.
I do not know my age.

Shadows fall down, lights climb.
Clambering lights, oh, children!
you never stay long enough.
Tell me how old I am.

Stone wings have sifted here,
with feather hardening feather.
The claws are lost somewhere.
I do not know my age.

I am growing deaf. The birdcalls
dwindle. The waterfalls
go unwiped. What is my age?
Tell me how oldd I am.

Let the moon go hang,
the stars go fly their kites.
I want to know my age.
Tell me how old I am.
{excerpt}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters
from Unpublished Poems and Drafts

THE WATERFALL

She comes down her dark stair
threading the stone
threading the air
doomed in her distantness,
doomed again
in deafness;
colorless fact on fact
colorless limb
on limb, on rock
where a dark veining appears
suitably delicate,
but not her
whose cool long arteries
conduct to crystal
capillaries
to flesh, fabric, an unfounded
water-body
water-bounded.
Oh fear her fearful thoughts
that falling follows,
where you can not;
itself and selves again

a muffled cry of loss
in cold mist
{excerpt}

{1940s}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters
from Questions of Travel

Part II. ELSEWHERE

In The Village

A scream, the echo of a scream, hangs over that Nova Scotian village. No one hears it; it hangs there forever, a slight stain in those pure blue skies, skies that travellers compare to those of Switzerland, too dark, soo blue, so that they seem to keep on darkening a little more around the horizon-- or is it around the rims of the eyes? --the color of the cloud of bloom on the elm trees, the violet on the fields of oats; something darkening over the woods and waters as well as the sky. The scream hangs like that, unheard, in memory-- in the past, in the present, and those years between. It was not even loud to begin with, perhaps. It just came there to live, forever-- not loud, just alive forever. Its pitch would be the pitch of my village. Flick the lightning rod on top of the church steeple with your fingernail and you will hear it. …..

{first paragraph of the story}

[quasimodo1]

from Poems, Prose, and Letters
from Unpublished Poems and Drafts

FULL MOON, KEY WEST

The town is paper-white:
the moonlight is so bright.
Flake on flake
of wood and paint
the buildings faint.
The tin roofs break
into a sweat
of heavy dew
dripping steadily
down the gutters
click click.
Listen!
All over town
from black gaps
in bedroom gables
from little tables
behind the shutters
big alarm clocks
tick tick.
A spider's web
Glints blue, glints red,
the mirrors glisten
and the knobs on the bed.

The island starts to hum
like music in a dream. ... {excerpt}


{c. 1943}

[Scheherazade]

I love this one:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

...


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

TO CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE

Antonio Vieira 5, apt. 1101
Leme
June 27th, 1963

Dear Dr. Carlos:
Here is a translation of one of your poems, and I hope you will have time to look at it. I began with this one because it seems to go into English fairly easily-- I hope you'll take my word for it that it makes a very moving poem in English as well as in Portuguese. The translation is quite literal-- except for very small liberties with punctuation, omitting "ands" etc.-- to keep the meter right. I've written in the margin some second choices, or spots where I may be wrong-- but please tell me anything you don't like-- or if you don't like any of it!
I've been asked by a magazine (USA) for translations of Brazilian poetry-- a small, reputable, old magazine, POETRY (Chicago)*--perhaps you know it? I'd like to send them a group of your poems as soon as I can, but with your approval. I am working on A MESA now-- it's much more difficult, naturally, but it's one of those I like best. I've also tried some of the shorter rhymed ones-- they're almost impossible, of course, because of the rhymes-- but I'd like to give the US reader an impression of the range of your poetry, if possible--and I'll write a note explaining the shortcomings of the translations. …{excerpt}

Cordially yours,
Elizabeth Bishop.
{Scher: you might enjoy this more personal side of Bishop and the deference she pays to Andrade}

[quasimodo1]

from Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters

from Unfinished Poems and Drafts

KEY WEST

They have set up the carnival, the carnival,
In the back-lot of the burnt-out cigar factory,
And the high-diver, before he leaps to his canvas pool
From the ladder festooned with colored lights, can see
Down into the ruins, and then all over the town,
Over the tin roofs to the blacked-out ocean,
The surrounding water, like sheets of carbon paper,
Used and re-used. With display of mock emotion
He sets a match to himself: flaming, he falls
Like a wagon of war past the gutted stucco walls.

Where six hundred men used to work at rolling cigars
To fill the boxes with the ornate lids
That showed a woman with roses in her hair
And tulle-draped bust-- a woman like her bids
The citizens to come and see her dancers,
Guaranteed to wear nothing but feather fans and jewels,
And a man with the face of an educated ape
Lures them to see the educated mules.{excerpt}

{late 1930s-early 1940s}

[quasimodo1]

ELIZABETH BISHOP: from ESSAYS, REMINISCENCES, AND REPORTING_____________________Gregorio Valdes, 1879-1939 … The first painting I saw by Gregorio Valdes was in the window of a barber-shop on Duval Street, the main street of Key West. The shop is in a block of cheap liquor stores, shoe-shine parlors and pool-rooms, all under a long wooden awning shading the sidewalk. The picture leaned against a cardboard advertisement for Eagle Whiskey, among other window decorations of red and green crepe-paper rosettes and streamers left over from Christmas and the announcement of an operetta at the Cuban school, --all covered with dust and fly-spots and littered with termites’ wings. It was a view, a real View, of a straight road diminishing to a point through green fields, and a row of straight Royal Palms on either side, so carefully painted that one could count seven trees in each row. In the middle of the road was the tiny figure of a man on a donkey, and far away on the right the white speck of a thatched Cuban cabin that seemed to have the same mysterious properties of perspective as the little dog in Rousseau’s THE CARIOLE OF M. JUNIOT. The sky was blue at the top, then white, then beautiful blush pink, the pink of a hot, mosquito-filled tropical evening. As I went back and forth in front of the barber-shop on my way to the restaurant, this picture charmed me, and at last I went in and bought it for three dollars. My landlady had been trained to do “oils” at the Convent. --The house was filled with copies of THE ROMAN GIRL AT THE WELL, HORSES IN A THUNDERSTORM, etc. She was disgusted and said she would painnt the same picture for me, “for thirteen cents.” …{excerpt}

[Virgil]

You're into a lot of essays lately Quasi. :wink5:

[quasimodo1]

From BISHOP, POEMS, PROSE, AND LETTERS: …from Selected Letters________________________ TO MARIANNE MOORE, Samambaia, Petropolis, March 3, 1952. Dear Marianne: So that’s where my stamps went to…I looked and looked for them, not that it really made much difference anyway, because as you may have noticed, they come almost without glue on them. The mail boxes are never collected so one has to go to the Post Office; and there (there) are glue machines which are frequently incapacitated by their own glue so that one gives up and goes to the woman who runs a stamping-machine, even if the stamps are much nicer… I don’t believe I’ve made that at all clear, but you’ll be able to gather that mailing a letter here is quite an undertaking and actually what I do most of the time is hand my letters over once a week here to a friend going to Rio to mail for me. The mail from Petropolis to Rio -- 30 or 40 miles -- often takes two weeks-- I used the above address because I thin it is so pretty-- it means “Fern” -- but it is not really usable. The same friend brings my mail up from Rio every week-end. I don’t mean to complain about the mails-- they are part of the really lofty vagueness of Brazil, where no one seems to know quite what season it is, or what day or the week, or anyone’s real name, --& where a cloud is coming in my bedroom window right thi8s minute. You say you kept one stamp-- it is a memorial to Santos-Dumont, “Conquista a Dirigibilidade Aerea” --and I had such a funny time when I went to the museum in Sao Paulo. (--I spent two rather awful days there, in terrible rains, and afraid of the traffic which is worse than Washington, and naturally unable to say a word.) The museum was closed but in one of those fits of aggressiveness that come over one in foreign countries I got in somehow and a young man, whether janitor or head curator I have no idea, showed me around. There was wonderful Indian stuff but apparently he didn’t think much of it, and every time I relaxed my attention to him a second I found myself back in the rooms dedicated to the memory of Santos-Dumont, and staring at his personal parachute, his little tiny panama hat, or his little yellow boots… Since the museum was closed all this took place in a deep twilight, and I was half-hysterical as to whether I should tip the unknown young man or not. You have no idea what a relief it is to me that you are so nice about my failure as a reviewer and how much happier I am about it now-- I am really glad it has worked out this way. The “poem” I’m working on is turning out to be quite long and now that it isn’t a review any more I have hopes of its really turning into something better; I also have hopes of getting it done soon enough to go into the book. And now I can just leave out all the necessary mechanical parts, explanations, etc., that would have had to have gone into a review. I hope you’ll like it. A friend wrote me about how nice it was about your receiving “all those awards” and I am curious to know what other ones there were besides the National Book Award. I’m so sorry to hear you’ve been sick; and of course I wish you’d make use of Dr. Baumann’s gifts personally instead of just sending others to her. During most of the daytime now I don’t believe I’ve felt better in years, but I am still having asthma at nights so I have to get up and take 2 or 3 shots every night-- it shows how tough I am that I feel no ill effects from this except that I sleep more than usual. The intimacy with clouds may not be too good, either, but I like it so much I don’t want to move. … {excerpt}http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/elizabeth-bishop.jpg

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/books/review/Logan-t.html?ref=books ---

Elizabeth Bishop -- ELIZABETH BISHOP AND THE NEW YORKER

The Complete Correspondence

Edited by Joelle Biele

Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 421 pp. $35.
PROSE

By Elizabeth Bishop

Edited by Lloyd Schwartz

Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 507 pp. Paper, $20.
POEMS

By Elizabeth Bishop Farrar, Straus & Giroux 352 pp. Paper, $16