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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.54
EAN num: 9781598530179
ISBN number: 1598530178
Label: Library of America
Manufacturer: Library of America
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 975
Printing Date: February 14, 2008
Publishing house: Library of America
Sale Popularity Level: 105058
Studio: Library of America
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz, editors
James Merrill described Elizabeth Bishop's poems as 'more wryly radiant, more touching, more unaffectedly intelligent than any written in our lifetime' and called her 'our greatest national treasure.' Robert Lowell said, 'I enjoy her poems more than anybody else's.' Long before a wider public was aware of Bishop's work, her fellow poets expressed astonished admiration of her formal rigor, fiercely observant eye, emotional intimacy, and sometimes eccentric flights of imagination. Today she is recognized as one of America's great poets of the 20th century. This unprecedented collection offers a full-scale presentation of a writer of startling originality, at once passionate and reticent, adventurous and perfectionist. It presents all the poetry that Bishop published in her lifetime, in such classic volumes as North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, and Geography III. In addition it contains an extensive selection of un_published poems and drafts of poems (several not previously collected), as well as all her published poetic translations, ranging from a chorus from Aristophanes' The Birds to versions of Brazilian sambas.
Poems, Prose, and Letters brings together as well most of her published prose writings, including stories; reminiscences; travel writing about the places (Nova Scotia, Florida, Brazil) that so profoundly marked her poetry; and literary essays and statements, including a number of pieces published here for the very first time. The book is rounded out with a selection of Bishop's irresistibly engaging and self-revelatory letters. Of the 53 letters included here, written between 1933 and 1979, a considerable number are printed for the very first time, and all are presented in their entirety. Their recipients include Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, Randall Jarrell, Anne Stevenson, May Swenson, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
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Rated by buyers 
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This carefully edited book collects much of Bishop's poetry and prose--fiction, memoir, reportage, reviews--between two covers for the very first time, and that is all for the good.
The best introduction to Bishop's work, however, is still "The Complete Poems, 1927 - 1979," supplemented by the best pieces in "The Collected Prose" (1984), edited by Robert Giroux, who is also co-editor of the present Library of America book and editor of "One Art" (1994), the mammoth selection of Bishop's letters. The earlier editions of her poems and prose were published in an era when editors still respected Bishop's excellent judgment about which of her poems and prose pieces should appear in print. Bishop was her own best editor, and I don't think the publication of so many of her abortive poems serves her particularly well.
My main criticism of this book has to do with the "Letters" section. As with the Library of America edition of Flannery O'Connor's writing, this selection offers letters not available in "One Art" (or in O'Connor's case, "The Habit of Being"); but the Library of America edition does not supersede "One Art" because it offers fewer letters in total. Both O'Connor and Bishop were epistolary geniuses on the level of Keats and Hopkins and we deserve editions of their letters that aspire to comprehensiveness. There is a new edition of Bishop's correspondence with Lowell on the way, but what about her letters to Marianne Moore, May Swenson, and other friends with whom she had significant correspondences?
I suppose ardent readers of Bishop's letters are supposed to photocopy the letters published in this Library of America edition and stick them in "One Art" in order to have all of the in-print Bishop letters (which are a fraction of the letters she actually wrote) in one place. I am happy to do this, but aren't Library of America editions supposed to collect ALL of a writer's most important work in one or more volumes? I would rather have Bishop's poems and non-epistolary prose in one Library of America volume, and a more complete edition of her letters in another, even if the letters book were longer in coming. The Library of America edition of Hart Crane, another epistolary genius, is comprised mostly of letters, in part (I suspect) because the editor had a new edition of Crane's letters to select from. (In fact the same person edited both Crane books).
Giroux refers to his "files of Elizabeth's vast correspondence" (p. 944). When will these files become available to the rest of us in the form of a "Collected Letters of Elizabeth Bishop," which would no doubt be a multi-volume work, or even an expanded edition of "One Art"? The latter book, as far as I can tell, is not mentioned at all in this Library of America edition--why not? Has Giroux decided to "disappear" his own wonderful edition of Bishop's letters?
I suspect this Library of America edition of Bishop was rushed to press in order to capitalize on all the recent attention paid to Alice Quinn's selection of Bishop's unpublished poems, and the attention that is about to be paid to the forthcoming Bishop/Lowell correspondence. Why not wait a few more years until the shape of the Bishop canon is a bit clearer to publish an apparently definitive volume such as the present Library of America book? Quinn is currently editing Bishop's notebooks and journals, which promise to be fascinating, but which this Library of America book does not excerpt at all.
Bishop herself was a voracious reader of other writer's letters and journals, and she even taught a course in epistolary writing at Harvard in the early 1970s. I wish editors and publishers would take a cue from Bishop's own interest in letter-writing and publish more of her letters. As anyone who has read "One Art" or the letters published in this Library of America edition knows, Bishop's letters are the ultimate pleasure reading. A bigger edition of her letters would probably not supplant the latest Dan Brown book on the best-seller lists, but there is a larger market for it than one might suppose.
Rated by buyers -
I got this book for my sister as a gift and she absolutely loves it. It is a nice compilation of Elizabeth Bishop's work put out as part of a series of great authors by the Library of America.
Rated by buyers -
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT OUR PAST INTELLECTUAL LIFE AND WISH YOU COULD BE PART OF IT NOW THEN ELIZABETH BISHOP IS A MUST
Rated by buyers -
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters is the Library of America's compilation of the works of twentieth century poet and author Elizabeth Bishop - including all her published poetic translations, an extensive selection of her unpublished poems and drafts of poems, several not previously collected, and of course, all the poetry published in her lifetime. Non-poetry writings range from her stories and reminiscences to travel writings, literary essays, and statements, even a number of pieces published for the very first time. The absolute definitive compilation of Elizabeth Bishop's works, highly recommended especially for public and college library collections.
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