Etizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia

Volume 7, lssue 1 NEWSLETTER Spring, 2000

Editorial Hqrbor (1989), Underwater Carpentry (1993), both published by Goose Lane Brunswick, and of Gratitude is the undercurrent of this Editions, Fredericton, New (1997, Editions. Ir{evvsletter. Without gratitude and its Granite Errqtics Ekstasis British Columbia), he is one of the companionate emotions of delight, admiration Victoria, most respected Canadian poets of his and what Hazlitt (and Marianne Moore) called generation. He is also a professor of English, gusto, writing about poetry is only a laying on teaching creative writing and literature at Saint of dead hands. The latter is always true when University in Halifax. His article was the writing is driven by opportunisms of a Mary's first presented in slightly different form at the social or political kind which invariably make Elizabeth Bishop Conference held in Ouro poetry secondary to dogma. Preto, Brazll, in spring, 1999. Like the poems is also an act of Poets are not immune to opportunism, it discusses, Brian's article gratitude. especially in modern times when a poem without some kind of discursive handle is Peter Sanger widely regarded as unpleasantly awkward to lift off the shelf. But in the long run, over several generations, the poets have the living News and lnformation hands; and it is they who accurately decide what poetry of the past survives changeful The Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia fashions of fame or neglect. Good poetry has held two meetings since the publication of on becomes its posterity. Bad poetry extinguishes the last Newsletter. The first was itselfby requiring compromises which become December ll., 1999: the second, on May 20, increasingly unlovable as time passes, mainly 2000. At the first meeting, concern was because they require readers to confirm the expressed about the number of lapsed or value of the poet's egotism without direct unpaid memberships. It was decided to experience of the transient ethos which made circulate strongly-worded reminders. At the that egotism appear laudable. second meeting, Anne Marie Duggan and Sandra Barry were pleased to report that the The main article in this ifewsletter, Brian current membership list is now up-to-date and Bartlett's " 'As IfYou Might Be Here': Poems continuing to increase in size. The Society is Addressing Elizabeth BishoP," finds several most grateful for the loyalty and continuing contemporary poets about their proper tangible support of its members. business of distinguishing Bishop's work as something extraordinarily lovable. For all that At both meetings there was considerable it is prose, Brian's article should also be read discussion of future Society projects. Among as part of that business. Author of Planet them is the publication of a new brochure Elizabeth of Nova Scotia concerni ngF-lizabeth Bishop and Great Village Theatre Company in Parrsboro, Cumberland which will contain a more :ccurate and County, Nova Scotia (not far from Amherst. extensively annotated map inan the one Nova Scotia, close to the New Brunswick previously circulated by the Society. The text border). Readers of the Newsletter may recall ofthe new brochure will also combine, correct a review of Donna's play, Running to and extend the texts of several earlier Society Paradise, in the last issue. The new version is publications. The Society also discussed the entitled Sole Survivor. It is in two acts, with possibility of inviting another Bishop scholar, nine characters. The play will occupy to deliver a Bishop Memorial lecture in June, approximately two hours. Among the 200L Many Society members will recall that actresses and actors are Martha lrving, playing Thomas Travisano delivered the first Memorial Bishop; Sherry Lee Hunter; Elizabeth Lecture in Great Village in June. 1995. Richardson; Jarrod Maclean; and Joseph Wynne. Martha Irving is familiar to many In the May meeting, Peter Sanger and Sandra because of her recent performance in The Barry reported on the progress of the Memory of Water in Halifax and from episodes publication of the Acadia University Bishop of the television series Black Harbour and Pit Symposium Proceedings. They have been Pony The play will run from August 4 assured by Professor Gwen Davies (whc is August 27 inclusive. Booking may be made by shortly to leave Acadia to take up the position phoning 1-800-565-SHOW (toll free). Further of Dean of Graduate Studies at the University information appears in an advertisement of New Brunswick) that proofs of all the printed at the end of this.A/ewsletter. Symposium papers will be sent to their writers in June-July, 2000. The Proceedirlgs will very "As lf You Might Be Here": definitely appear in the early spring of 2001 Poems Addressing Elizabeth Bishop At the May meeting Angus Chisholm and by Brian Robinson agreed to serve on a Brian Bartlett Nominating Committee which will propose at officers for the Socierv tr Annual General A. "Please Cable a Verb" Meeting to be ' 1000. Angus Chisholm also 1,i..,..v k^^ .^-wrlrl&l Treasurer's During the months before the Elizabeth Bishop report. The Society's bank balance stands at conference and celebraEdo in Ouro Preto, $3,567.56. Brazrl, in May 1999 where writers, readers, critics, and translators- addressed one another Among coming events the Society looks in many ways I became intrigued by one forward to is the presentation of an illustrated aspect of responses- to Bishop. Alongside the account of their visit to Ouro Preto in May, poetry written by her, a body of poems 1999, to be given by Ann Marie Duggan, addressed to her has been growing. These Brian Robinson and Sandra Barry following poems' testaments to friendship, their the Society's Annual General Meeting. We gratitude for poetic excellence, and their are also delighted to report that a new, allusions to Bishop's lines and images are extended version ofDonna Smyth's play about striking; and the sheer number of them is Bishop will be presented by The. Ship's getting to be remarkable My summary of Elizabeth Bishop Societv of Nova Scotia 3 Spring., . 2000 these poems was written in my house in Nova invitation. Playfulness is also found in an Scotia and presented in Brazil, so it now seems incomplete poem written from Petropolis fitting, in the way things circle back home, that around 1960 and now housed in the Vassar I report back to the Elizabeth Bishop Society College Library archives. "A Letter to Two of Nova Scotia on the observations presented Friends," addressed to both Lowell and so far south of here. For the lrlewsletter,I've Moore, part good-natured is in a grouse - chosen to present my research and thoughts as about the weather, a soon-to-expire visa, a an informal annotated bibliography. troublesome car, and, above all, difficulty in getting poems done. Brett Millier includes Do some bodies of poetry more than others some of this draft in her biography of Bishop, have the effect of encouraging addresses? Do but leaves out lines where Bishop suggests Bishop's suspicion of the grandiose, her artful that someone throw Sammy, her toucan, a casualness, and her use of conversational self- piece of meat. Bishop continues after these intemrptions make talking to her more likely lines., as quoted by Millier: "Marianne, loan me than talking to, say, Yeats or Rilke or Plath? a noun! I Cal, please cable a verbl I Or simply Despite her famous humility and reticence, we propulse through the ether / some more shouldn't oversimplify Bishop, or speak as if power ful meter. " The leap from the toucan she only had only one outlook on her readers. needing a snack to the poet needing a noun Gradations ofwelcoming, and ofthe humbling and a verb is the poem's comic highlight, a of grand aspirations, vary in her writing. But deflation of a writer's complaint. Here we have it's safe to guess that her suspicion of high no on-bended-knee call to the Muse, instead, talk, and her poems'blending of reticence and an unusually direct, nuts-and-bolts call to openness, poise and spontaneity, pained friends for poetic help. There's irony in honesty and hard-won cheer, have helped Bishop's modesty: while she asks Cal (Lowell) evoke the many poems that are, in reality, for a verb, her choices ofthe verbs "cable" and broadcast to an immeasurable public, yet "propulse", and of the oFrhyme between create the illusion of speaking one-on-one to "ether" and "meter," hardly suggest she needs her. anyone else's words.

Before listing the poems addressed to Bishop, B. Addresses from Bishop's Friends I should mention the poems she herself addressed to other poets. They include her late Before exaggerating elements in Bishop's elegy for Robert Lowell, "North Haven", poetry that might encourage address, we which sounds more like him than her poems should note that for some poets the desire to usually do, and her early "Invitation to Miss address her in poems is rooted in the extensive Marianne Moore, " the most high-spirited piece correspondence they rnaintained with her. in her second collection. With its dozen uses of Such, indeed, is the case with the first three the phrase "please come flying," its Chagall- poets I will consider. Long before writing their esque extravagance and whimsy, and its poems addressed to her, Bishop's friends charactenzing of Miss Moore as good witch, Lowell, May Swenson, and James Merrill were musician, mild censor, natural hero, acute all used to exchanging letters with Bishop. listener, and exquisite grammarian, that poem is an invigorating example of address as Elizabeth of Nova Scotia

Robert Lowell. "Water." LW Studies and poems for Bishop in History is very much an For the (Jnion Dead. New York: Farrar, address about Bishop's writing. In asking her 1964.3-4. if she has "seen an inchworrn crawl on a leaf. / clinging to the very end, revolve rn a.r. I ---."For Elizabeth Bishop (twenty-five years) I. feeling for something to reach to something?" Water"; "For Elizabeth Bishop. 2. Castine Lowell chooses a small creature reminiscent of Maine"; "For Elizabeth Bishop 3. Letter with those that populate her poems snail, toad, Poems for Letter with Poems"l "For Elizabeth sandpiper (yes, I've conveniently- left out the Bishop 4." History. New York: Farrar, 1973. moose). Unlike new painters with their 196-98. "rushed brushstrokes," Bishop is a model of meticulousness and patience. "Do / you still. " Lowell's many attempts, false starts, and Lowell asks. "hang your words in air, ten years and frequent rethinkings of how to talk to / unfinished, glued to your notice board, / with (outlined in David about Bishop in his poetry gaps or empties for the unimaginable phrase he didn't Kalstone's Becoming a Poet) suggest unerring Muse who makes the casual find it easy to know how to deal with Bishop perfect?" The praise tips over into hyperbole poem \n in his work. "Water, " the opening For I'snssing...perfesfrr unusual even in the The (hion Dead, nowhere identifies Bishop as -context of tributes to- fellow poets. (A its addressee, yet in light of the two poets' characteristic Bishop mention of perfection, from our biographies it's hard to omit Bishop from "The End of March," is "perfect! But minds, especially since a letter by Bishop impossible".) Also unusual is Lowell's- provided "Water" with the detail of her identification of Bishop with the capitahzed clinging a dreaming about "a mermaid to "Muse, " which she may have found troubling, wharfpile, " and since Lowell used the new title both because that can misleadingly fix her (twenty-five years) I. "For Elizabeth Bishop identity as inspiration to others more than as quatrains Water" when the chiselled of creator and because the grandness of "Muse" sonnet-like "Water" were stretched into the sounds contrary to her aesthetic. structures of History. While addresses in in poems are hardly the same as addresses May Swenson. Four Poems and a Letter to lines begin to spontaneous prose letters, the Elizabeth Bishop. n.p.: Bear River Press, poems such as Lowell's blur when we consider 1997. N. pag. and Swenson's, which quote from or adapt Lowell's poems their own letters. Obviously, Three years &go, the literary estate of May prose, but aren't the same as his "private" Swenson allowed the printing of this small ofhis friendship ignoring the historical records chapbook. An afterword says that between not impossible once with Bishop is difficult if 1950 and 1979, the two women exchanged letter known. (An in-depth exploration of over 260 letters. One of the two poems reiationship to "real letters," poems and their addressed to Bishop, "In the Bodies of yet written, could so far as I know to be Words," from the week after Bishop's death in poems by Lowell.) explore these and other October 1979, may be unique as the only published address poem to Bishop written in poem ambiguous While "Water" is a of the immediate aftershock oflearning about her that hardly acknowledges'the two friendship death. It would be wrong to insist that all friends as poets, the fourth offour consecutive Elizabeth Bi.hop So.i.tv of Nouu S addresses to Bishop should show signs of her you confess, I 'I have already two unwed style, but Swenson's poem is jarring in the female wild I cananes, for which I must find wide gap between much of it and Bishop's husbands / in order to have a little song around poetry. The melodrama and the whiff of here."' fn quoting that final passage, Swenson cliChes "Qpsns. . . / DistOrtions," "SmaSh may be joking, unearthing a perhaps unwitting of heav-v- waves. Wind rips / the corners of my implication in Bishop's words: if the two poets eyes" seem oddly inappropriate in an elegy are seen as "unwed female wild canaries," the for Bishop.- Swenson also uses the word analogy hilariously breaks down, for while "vision" six times in the poem, in passages like male birds may be the primary singers the two "But vision lives!", "Your vision lives," and women aren't the least reliant on male "Vision, potent, regenerative"; a reader may company to create their songs, their poems. resist such ovemse of that word, which Bishop (In 1962, when Lowell was planning to visit had explicitly rejected in "Poem": "'visions' is Bishop in Brazil, she wrote to him about a / too serious a word our looks. two looks. " popular impression in Braztl that female poets - were primarily male poets' mistresses The fifty-four lines of Swenson's earlier, more [Kalstone. 200].) successful "Dear Elizabeth" are almost equally divided between alternating quotations from a James Merrill. "Overdue Pilgrimage to Bishop letter to Swenson (about small Nova Scotia." A Scattering of Salts. New Brazilian birds called Bicos de Lacre) and York: Knopf, 1995. 87-89. Swenson's responses to those quotations. For e-mail users in the year 2000, reading this James Merrill, in his final collection, published poem can be uncannily like reading an e-mail what must be the most multi-toned, message in which the respondent highlights entertaining, and supply allusive of all tribute- passages from the other's message and addresses to Bishop. Structured like five comments on them one by one. Several times consecutive sonnets, "Overdue Pilgrimage to in the poem, similarities between Bishop and Nova Scotia" narrates details of a trip Merrill Swenson surface. Swenson's lines about made to Great Village years after Bishop's having to watch cats' ears to note the birds' death. Pilgrimage poems about visits to sites voices complement Bishop's lines about associated with beloved writers form a needing reading glasses to appreciate the birds' longstanding subgenre. (Earlier examples feathers. When Swenson writes, "ft rarely include Keats's "On Visiting the Tomb of hatches in captivity, you mean / but we Burns" and Rossetti's sonnet inspired by the could hope!" her oFthe-cuff"you- mean" and room in which Blake died.) Merrill's poem her exclamation are reminiscent of Bishop. overflows with enough wit and observational From urban North America, Swenson's vow richness to warrant a whole essay. For now, I'll that "here, I'd / build them a little Brazil" is only mention a few of its features: its passage rather like Bishop's saying that she was "re- about a well-mannered, soft - sp oken tour-guide creating a sort of de luxe Nova Scotia" for who'd never heard ofBishop but "knows these herself in Brazil (quoted in Millier, 428). things you would have known by heart / And Swenson finishes the poem with three lines we, by knowing you by heart, foreknew"; its quoted from Bishop. Yes, says Swenson, send allusion to "At the Fishhouses" and to Bishop's a par of the birds, "especially as in'your P.S. mother with its images of a wharfside shack Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia Spring, 2000 whose shingles are "Silver-stitched to a and 632). In the spring after her death Heaney visionary grain / As by a tireless, deeply published in the T. L. S. "A Hank of Wool," troubled inmate, / Were Nature not by with the note "i..m Elizabeth Bishop." This definition sane" ; its discussion ofhow Bishop's poem by no means represents Heaney at his art "Refused to tip the scale of being human / strongest; a much more substantial tribute is By adding unearned weight," then this self- his Oxford lecture about Bishop, later revised deflation' " but there, I've done it, / Added and reprinted rn The Redress of Poetry. Still, the weight";- and the decorum and retreat from the poem is noteworthy for being a tribute to "heaviness" in its final couplet: "We're off- Bishop hinting at links between her childhood Excuse our dust! With warrn regards, I and the addressing poet's; and, like Lowell's Gathering phrases for tomorrow's cards. " and Swenson's poems, it is also noteworthy for quoting Bishop herself in this case In "Overdue Pilgrimage," Merrill adopts (according to a recent letter from Heaney to several devices familiar to readers of Bishop. Nova Scotian Brian Robinson) from the one She seems to be looking over his shoulder as letter Heaney received from her. The first lines a guiding spirit as he exclaims, "Look, those of Heaney's poem go: "'Hank?' I hear you say, were elms!", or when he leaves a sentence I all tact and masquerade. / 'Sounds like a incomplete ("Or that car - 'r), or when he name for a cowboy.' / But didn't you hold the uses italics and parenthesis together: (of the wool / shop wool, ticketed bought wool ESSO man in Great Village) "(can he have until -your shoulders ached?" The quotation- read /'Filling Station'?)." The phrase "knowing sparks with personality, through its play with you by heart" in the first stanza implies words, its bemused humour, and its something beyond memorizing. Merrill's poem "masquerade" that Bishop didn't know very demonstrates how Bishop's poems have well about hanks of wool. Heaney goes on to become so rooted in his consciousness and his say that in childhood he "used to sit like a "heart" that, while honouring her and speaking hermit / with my two arms held out / to stretch to her years after her death, he can echo her the hank between them. " The bond between almost as naturally as breathing. The poem's her childhood and Heaney's grows from the first line, "Your village touched us by not help with knitting they both gave to women of knowing how," might be expanded to imply an earlier generation. The second section of that Bishop herself "touched" fellow poets by the poem begins as an invitation "To not knowing how - that is, by unknowingly unwind it,Elizabeth, lcome back in a cardigan serving as a mentor who was neither / knitted grey or brown. " While on the poem's doctrinaire nor dominee.ing, yet deeply literal surface Heaney is asking the recently influential. deceased poet to return and help "unwind" the hank that was once stretched between his Heaney, Seamus. "A Hank ofWool." Times arrns, the deeper desire is for her to share "our Literary Supplement March 7 1980: 261. tranquil recollections I of those supple mysteries, I knit one, drop one, slip one." Like Seamus Heaney taught at Harvard during the its beginning, the poem's ending cites final year of Bishop's life, as we know from memorable commentary by Bishop herself, two references to him in One Art ("nrce and ending, like Swenson's "Dear Elizabeth," with very lrish"; "I like his poetry a lot", pp. 630 Bishop's words rather than the addressing Elizabeth Bishop Socief of Nova Scotia Spring, 2000 shaped her own perceptions and language. poet's. Heaney tells her to "say goodbye" to a Those first lines and the ones following "I number of things,, including "the doll's afghan always felt she could possess it, / The- pink I rn different coloured squares / your countries and the mauve / And the ocean grandmother who 'knitted things for soldiers'/ which got to keep its blue" bring to mind taught you to do, with little serrnons. " Then Bishop's "The Map" and the- quotations from Heaney concludes with this Bishop quotation: "First Lessons in Geography" at the start of "But I resented this. / So then I would unravel Geography III. McPherson's poem itemizes lots of rows and I've never knitted since. " objects "black madonna" Bishop brought - In Bishop's memory as recorded by Heaney, from Brazil, a "small flipbook I Or partners she resisted her grandmother's didacticism dancing" and the "ring / With a secret whistle" ("little sermons"), and her childhood she later gave to McPherson's daughter; then resentment pro duced a stubb orn it shifts into the elegiac tone of "All are I "unravelfling]" at the time and a failure to knit Broken now like her globe. " That transition ever since. If the knitting is connected to that can bring to mind Bishop's villanelle "One of the classic Fates, then Bishop, like anyone Art," with its recitation ofthings cherished and else. finally failed in trying to unravel what lost. In the poem's final three lines "{6tr1 They had knit smaller admirer offto school, / I take -the globe and roll it away. where I Onit now is someone McPherson, Sandra. " For Elizabeth like you?" McPherson implies that Bishop Bishop." The Spaces Between Birds. was inimitable- and irreplaceable. It's as if Hanover, NH: Wesleyan UP I UP of New McPherson becomes her own daughter, England, 1996. 23. learning the hard lesson that she could not "possess" the globe. Bishop remains As records of her later life make clear, Bishop transformed in memory to be addressed in a felt uneasy and awkward as a poetry- poem, but she's no longer found on the familiar workshop instructor in Seattle and Cambridge. earth. No doubt she alienated some students with her deep-seated dedication to craft and her Spivak, Kathleen. "Ping Pong Sestina: For resistance to many ofthe day's poetic fashions, Elizabeth Bishop. " 1980. The Worcester and it would be wrong to suggest she couldn't Review 18 (%) (1997)z 133-34. be vehement in her dislikes and likes. Yet she was a vital teacher and long-lasting presence When Kathleen Spivak wrote this poem in for others, who later honoured her through 1980, a few months after Bishop's death, her their own poems. Sandra McPherson, a choice of the sestina form was especially student from Bishop's first teaching experience appropriate, acknowledging Bishop's brilliant at the University ofWashington, has published two-time accomplishment with that form. a short, moving poem simply called "For . Spivak's poem celebrates her mentor's Elizabeth Bishop," which begins: "The child I achievement while depicting her as a cheerful left your class to have I Later had a habit of loser at ping-pong, a "wheezing," "aching," sleeping / With her arms around a globe / and "aging" woman, and the grown-up version She'd unscrewed, dropped, and dented. " of a child who "sensed [she] had something McPherson, like Merrill, shows how Bishop's dark ,to play / out, a despairing intelligence poems infused her consciousness and helped behind that winning lllittle person." Together Elizabeth Bishop Soci of Nova Scotia Spring, 2000 with the poem, The Worcester Review printed "shallow I river," and "white caps of ice," a memoir by Spivak about her friendship with Sanger's is the most northern and wintry ofthe Bishop. addresses to Bishop, one in which she seems to have merged with her poems but also with C. Addre.s.se.t by Other Poets one of her earliest favoured landscapes.

Sanger, Peter. "A Sensible Horizon: For Reibetanz, John. "Touching in Detail: A E.8." Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Glosa for Elizabeth Bishop." Mining for Scotia Newsletter 22 (1995). N. pag. Sun- London: Brick Booksr 2000 (originally in the same issue of EB,SN as the Sanger Not every poet addressing Bishop knew her or poem). corresponded with her. The Canadian poet Peter Sanger has lived for several decades less In his poetic address another Canadian poet, than a half-hour drive from Great Village, so John Reibetanz, uses the glosa. a medieval it's appropriate that his address to Bishop Spanish form that has become surprisingly should talk about her mother's family, her split popular in Canada in the past half a decade, between North and South, and an abandoned largely through readings of Holograffi, d 1994 graveyard "one watershed away from Great collection of glosas written by one of the Village, " where Bishop once said she should've country's supreme senior poets, P. K. Page. been buried. Sanger's poem begins. "Your The glosa inherently involves tribute, in that friend rang up from Florida / as ifyou might be it's structured around four consecutive lines here, / escaping the death which fetches us / quoted from another poet, each of those lines together by flying back I to late imperial concluding a ten-line stanza in the new poem. Canada. " While the poem asserts connections at several points ("Your friend rang uP...," Reibetanz's address to Bishop, which chooses "Like you I trust...," "I've also watched..."), it four lines from "Poem, " starts with a few lines acknowledges the distance between the two in imagining a hypothetical link to Bishop. Once time and space, best indicated in the double again, as in Merrill's poem, the combination of distancing of "ot rf you migfu be here" (not parenthesis, italics, and casual idioms are even "as if you were here"). Though much of reminiscent of some Bishop poems, such as Sanger's style is distinct from Bishop"s "Poem" itself: "I never knew you, never even (multisyllabic-word combinations more met you / (although - who knows frequent than in most of her poems: "accurate rnight have shared the same / subway car once tautology, " "consummate reflection, " in Brooklyn, strangers: you / paying a visit to "continuing insistently," "recollection, Miss Moore, and me / a kid riding home from expulsing"), his poem echoes several moments a visit to the zoo.)" That first sentence concludes. I think of you, the sight of in Bishop's poetry - "The Weed," "Cape "when Breton, " North & South. By the poem's end, him, / comes to mind." Then, curiously, for Bishop has become not just memorialist and much ofthe poem the main figure becomes not insistent artist but also like the river near the Bishop but an old man, a stranger or perhaps graveyard, "resolved...to one uncertain a family member, whom the poet met 'Just element, / chillingly dark, anciently unfree. " once" but feels a connection to, because both With its images of "rooted heart," "frost," were fond of a country place with an old Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia Spring, 2000 orchard and a springwater-fed well. We're left Great Village with "ear to the sky." While in suspense for many lines about the addressing Bishop, Haysom seems uncertain of connection between Bishop and the old man. any lingering presence: "Dear Elizabeth, / do Unlike most address poems to Bishop, you...hang above / this village?" The poem Reibetanz's doesn't so much talk to her about concludes, rather than begins: "I have come herself as share with her something of other for the child. / a lost Elizabeth. the one your lives. He describes picking a windfall apple off low tide / left behind. " the ground and hearing the old man say he'd probably "picked a great grandparent of that J. D. McClatchy. "Three Dreams About apple. " The link between finding that apple and Elizabeth Bishop." Ten Commandments. reading Bishop's poetry becomes clear in the New York:Knopf, 1998. 99-102. final lines of the poem (the last of which is the fourth line quoted from Bishop): ''And you? I The lucidly fantastic first part of McClatchy's see him when I think of you / because your art poem, published in his most recent collection, is also a pnzed windfall / you - dust now, is a semi-comical yet subtly moving narrative exotic touched me through, over / our in which Bishop lies at her long-postponed years apart.- How strange. And it's still loved." funeral "like Lenin / Under glass, powdered, in One of the most densely concentrated phrases power blue / But crestfallen," then opens her in those lines is "dust now, exotic," which eyes and now and then speaks up,, adding to combines the levelling effects of death along the mourners' conversation. Even in the casket with its capacity to render people distant, her passion for details survives: she points out foreign, exotic. Reibetanz may be pointing to "it was a blue, a mimeograph blue / Powder the mix of ordinariness and extraordinariness the Indians used, and stuck cedar pegs I in Bishop, a mix observed by her friends. Like Through their breasts in the ghost dance--. " Merrill's poem for Bishop, Reibetanz's (Unfortunately I haven't been able to celebrates the value of Bishop's work as a determine if McClatchy befriended Bishop; it treasured inheritance. and its ongoing affective could be this poem belongs in the earlier power to "touch" readers. Reibetanz's "touch section of this bibliography ) me through" parallels Merrill's "touched us by not knowing how, " but his wording makes its Robert A. Kelly. "From Purgatory Mary own suggestion of inwardness with the Flannery Tells Elizabeth Bishop." The preposition "through, " and it comments Antigonish Review L (1992):81-82. wonderingly "How strange" on the ability of art to cross the bridge of "years apart" Kelly's poem represents a special case of the between creator and appreciator. address poem: one imagined in the voice of another writer. In this poem, with both women Jenny Haysom. "Visit to Elizabeth." in an afterlife, Flannery O'Connor imagines Quorry Magazine 45.1 (1997): 60. Bishop having a child with Lowell, speaks of her own exile in Iowa writing letters home to This poem is written by the youngest poet of her mother, and builds up to the grisly image the Bishop-addressers I could discover. of using "an electric prod" to teach "a chicken Haysom, a British-born Nova Scotia poet I To walk backwards." "Now forward motion currrently living in Ottawa, speaks of visiting is impossible / Until they open the closets / In Elizabeth Bishop Societv of Nova Scotia ring, 2000

Andalusia and Great Village, / And let the past too early to say for sure. For all we know, maybe a couple of centuries from someone tumble 6gf - .'r will say in a poem the equivalent of "Bishop ! Peg Boyers. *Reading Elizabeth Bishop." though should'st be living at this hour. " Boston Phoenix, forthcoming. Thanks to several correspondents - Sandrcr In another poem imagined spoken by another Barry, Lloyd Sclrwartz., Jane Shore, and artist, Peg Boyers writes in the voice of the Thomas Travisano - for help in tracking painter Natalia Ginsburg, who disagrees with down some of the poems listed above. Some Bishop's curiosity about the exotic in quotations and facts in the survey come ,fro* "Questions of Travel" and, after speaking only Elizobeth Bishop, One Art: Lett ers, ed. Robert ofBishop, addresses her inthe poem's last nine Giroux (ltlew York: Farrar, I99a) ; Louise lines, protesting that "knowledge is a rock, / Glilck, Proofs & Theories. Essays on Poetry never flowing, never flown. " (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1994); DavidKalstone, Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with D. Marianne Moore and Robert LowelI (London: The variety of approaches among poetic The Hogarth Press, 1989); and Brett C. addresses to Bishop suggests the many- Millier, Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the sidedness of her own poetry, the power of her Memory of It (Berkeley: U of Calfornia P, work to generate personal rather than merely ree3). critical responses, and the degree to which she has been valued by a particular group of ******,k****(***{<* readers: other poets. Reading these poems, we're far from the kind of address Wordsworth Membership in the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova uses when, speaking across the centuries, he Scotia is available for $8 per year of $20 for three calls out: "Milton! thou should'st be living at yesrs (Canadian funds). Either membership entitles the holder to take full voting part in the Society's the Oedipal peacemaking of this hour"; from deliberations and to receive the Newsletter for free. Pound in "A Pact," where he tells Whitman: "I come to you as a grown child / Who has had a The EBSIIS Newsletter is published tw'ice yearly in the Spnng and:Fall. Publishing history: l(l), Fall 1994; pig-headed father; I I am old enough now to 2( 1 L Spnng 1 995; 2(2), F all 1 995; 3( l ) Spring 1 996: make friends"; and from the kind of address 3(2) Fall I996; a(l) Spnng 1997;a(2) Fall 1997; 5(1) Louise Gltick describes in considering a poem Spring 1998; 5(2) Fall 1998.; 6(1) Sprine 1999; 6(2) 1999; (1) Spring,2000. by Milosz addressed to Robinson Jeffers. "a fall particular species of reproach: giant to giant." $ubscription is by membership in the Society or $5 None of the poets I've looked at addresses Canadian per year, made payable to the Elizabeth Bishop as one who is needed, as the grand BiShop Society ofNova Scotia. bring representative of an earlier time, to Editor: Peler Sanger wisdom to a troubled world. Nor do any of Associate Co*ributing Editors: : them, struck down by anxieties of influence, Jeffery Donaldson, John Barnstead. ,E4itorial Assissnt: Sandra Murphy, Math, Physics & address her as a towering poetic ancestor they Humanities,Dept,, NSAC, Tnrro, NS B2N 583 needed to combat and contradict in their Phone: 1XZ7 tSS^AnS youth. Bishop may not be a poet who will ever Fax: (9O2\ 593-6230 receive those kinds of addresses, though it's Email: [email protected] Elizabeth Bishop Societv of Nova Scotia t1 Spring, 2000

Sole Survivors Two Copies Left! !

A PIay About Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop: An Archival Guide to Her life in Nova Scotia In Two Acts

by Sandra Barr".v by Donna Smvth Published by The Elizabeth Bishop Socie\v of ! l'[ova Scotia, ]996, 226 p, 525.00 (no GST), postage included. Presented by The EBSNS is proud to offer this description The Ship's Theatre Company and analysis of the Bishop and Bishop-related archival material which is held in institutions in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia Nova Scotia. August 4 - August27,2000 Send order with cheque or money order to: Tickets: $19.75 each Elizabeth Bishop Society in Nova Scotia Students & Seniors: $17.75 P.0. Box 138 Great Village, Nova Scotia Performances at 8:00 p.m. Tuesday to BOM ILO Sunday inclusive. Also Sunday matin6e at 2.30 p.m. Bookings by phoning toll-free,, 1- 800-565-SHOW or Box Office, l-902-254- Two Copies Left! ! 3000. Elizabeth Bisho of Nova Scotia

Runnifg to Paradise

: a, plaY,,labout

ffi],,;;-.$39.e5 thbkl ISBN l-8e4o3t-2l-o

Donna E, Smyth's one-woman play, Rurufng to Paradise, was staged in Wolfuille and Halifax in the fall of 1998 by The Studio Group.

Atout the Author Donna E. Smyth lives on an old farm in Hants County- NS As well as publishing numerous short stories, poems and non-fiction pieces. Donna E.

S myth,, has pu'blfuhed, thr,ee' noltel i:, Q: a it t and Si bv e rsiv e' Et e m en t s, and a youn g adntt novel, Layatist Patnaloaylwhich won the tggZ nartmouth Fiction Award. Her previous ptays include Giant Anna and an adaptatron of Alice Through the Looking Class

Gaspereau Press P.0. Box 143, Wolfi.ille, NS BOP lXO $nlrlv.gasDefeau..com Tel:902481-1551 Email: editortO easperau. com

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