Elizabeth Bishop: A Conversation about Her Poetry

The Helix Center for Interdisciplinary Investigation
of the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute

Elizabeth Bishop: A Conversation about Her Poetry
Saturday, March 16th
2:00 - 3:30PM

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is one of the great masters of American poetry of the 20th Century. Her remarkable gifts have been described in a variety of ways, but one gift repeatedly recognized by readers is her skill at recounting the results of her capacity for observation. As Randall Jarrell remarked in response to her very first book of poems, North & South: "All her poems have written underneath, 'I have seen it.'" Perhaps the following precise and general praise by Howard Moss successfully suggests her specialness: "What Elizabeth Bishop brings to poetry is a new imagination; because of that, she is revolutionary, not 'experimental.' ... Admired by critics, poets, and anyone genuinely interested in writing, her work is not easily labeled.... She is not academic, beat, cooked, raw, formal, informal, metrical, syllabic, or what have you. She is a poet pure and simple who has perfect pitch." Four lovers of the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop—Bonnie Costello, Alice Quinn, Lloyd Schwartz, and Jean Valentine—will discuss what they admire about her poems and read aloud from her work.