If an unknown poet were to be offered a sort of cosmic bargain where he or she would live the life Elizabeth Bishop lived in return for the poems she wrote, I doubt there would be many takers. From infancy on, Bishop suffered some of the worst losses imaginable. Her father, a prosperous builder from a wealthy New England family, died in 1911 when she was eight months old. Her Canadian mother then suffered a series of nervous breakdowns that led to her permanent institutionalization in an asylum in Halifax when Elizabeth was five; Bishop never saw her again. Cared for first by her maternal grandparents in Great Village, Nova Scotia, a relatively secure and happy time, she lived briefly and quite unhappily with her paternal grandparents in Worcester, Massachusetts, and then with a favorite aunt until she was old enough to go away to boarding school. From childhood on, she suffered from terrible asthma and allergies; in her twenties and thirties, after repeated devastating episodes of uncontrollable “binge” drinking, she began to realize that her system was intolerant of alcohol. It was a problem she struggled with, with varying degrees of success, her entire life. Out of these early losses, crises, and dislocations, she, miraculously, formed herself into a poet.
A magnificent volume of Bishop’s letters, edited by her longtime editor and friend Robert Giroux, has now been published.
A magnificent volume of Bishop’s letters, edited by her longtime editor and friend Robert Giroux, has now
