Elizabeth Bishop, 1911-1979

I love Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry. To me, it contains some of the most beautiful feelings of love and appreciation. My initial statement in this post was that she was a “US Poet Laureate.” But it looks like I misspoke. She was a poetry consultant to the US Congress, her official title being “Appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.” The one poem of hers that I’ve enjoyed over and over is her poem “The Fish,” published in 1946. I made the argument, erroneous it turns out, that Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish” was addressing confessional poets who bared the rawness of their soul in print. I was wrong. The Confessional Poets came after Elizabeth Bishop in the 1950s and 1960s.

A shortlist of Bishop poems:
“Filling Station,” 1965. This is the best commentary of her poem that I’ve found online. You might like it too. The article states that “Filling Station” was published in Elizabeth Bishop’s third volume, Questions of Travel, (1965), most of which was written in Brazil. The book is divided into two parts: “Brazil” and “Elsewhere.” “Filling Station” and the poems in “Elsewhere” evoke the geographies, both physical and emotional, of Bishop’s childhood.”

“One Art.”
“The Man-Moth.”

An explanation of Bishop’s “The Fish.”