The Elizabeth Bishop Bulletin

Volume 3, Number 2 Winter 1993

Bishop on the Air

Two significant and overlapping public events, one schol• Afterward by Bannie Costello arly,one popular/c ommercial, have latel y marked thereconsid• (University of Massachusetts eration of Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop On September 20-22 an Press), and the other a critical study, Susan McCabe's Elizabeth Elizabeth Bishop Symposium was held at Vassar College. Bishop: Her Poetics of Loss (penn State Press). Another critical Organized by Barbara Page, Symposium Director and Thomas study is due in early 1995: Marilyn May Lombardi's The Body Travisano, Program Co-ordinator, this event brought together and the Song:Elizabeth Bishop's Poetics. Look for a review of many of Bishop's oldest friends and associates as well as many these three books in the next issue of the Bulletin. of the most familiar names inBishop studies. On November 20 Society members may want to keep an eye out later this CBS Sunday Morning.in response to the ever increasing aware• year for two essays that reconsider the way Bishop has been ness of Bishop's emergence asmajor figure in twentieth century placed by earlier literary historians: Betsy Erkkila's "Elizabeth American poetry, aired an eight-and-a-half minute profile on Bishop's Politics," to be published byAmerican Literary His• i \. Bishop. a program produced by Howard Weinberg and hosted tory and Bulletin editor Thomas Travisano's "The Elizabeth i by Charles Osgood. The program drew heavily on sequences Bishop Phenonmenon," to be published by New Literary . filmed at the Bishop Symposium, including excerpts from the History in July of 1995. These two essays will also be included I public events honoring Bishop. including excepts from read• in Gendered Modernisms: American Women Poets and Their I ings by Nancy Williard. Robert Pinsky and Elizabeth Spires, Readers. a collection of essays co-edited by Travisano and I and clips of such Bishop friends as Frani Blough Muser, Margaret Dickie that reconsiders Bishop and seven oilier mod• Cynthia Krupat, and Loren Mel ver. It also featured interviews em women poets in relation to literary history. This collection II with Barbara Page,Robert Giroux and our Nova Scotia corre• is scheduled for publication by the University ofPennyslvania spondent,Sandra Barry. Press in December of 1995. This issue is largely devoted to achronicalling ofthese two . Also due late in 1995 is a special issue of the Wallace events. It features a piece titled "CBS, In the Village" by Barry. Stevens Journal, guest-edited by Jacqueline Vaught Brogan, along with a sampling of events at the Bishop Symposium. that will explore Bishop's artistic relationship with Stevens. Look also for information on Bishop at the upcoming MLA Conferencin San Francisco. including a party sponsoredby the Society on Wednesday, Decem ber 28 and a special session led The Elizabeth Bishop Bulletin, edited by Thomas Travisano, by JosefRaabdevoted to and the art ofTranslation. (The editor is a semi-annual publication of the Elizabeth Bishop Society. apologizes for the lateness. due to illness, of the Bulletin in Advisory Board: Jacqueline Vaught Brogan (Internet: relation to :MLA.) Jacqueline. [email protected]) It's also time to renew your membership in the Society. If Dept of English, Notre Dame University you didn't sign up for a multi-year membership last time around. South Bend,IN 56556 (219) 233-7958 look also for a membership renewal fonn in this envelope. This Margaret Dickie (1nterneL:@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU:M.'v1DICKlE@ Department of English, t:GA.CC.UGA.EDU) time you have the option of signing up for two years for nine University of Georgia,Athens, GA 30606 (706) 548-8969 dollars, or one year for five (Students: $5 for one year or $3 for Marilyn May Lombardi two. Foreign members please pay in US Funds by postal money Dept. of English,University of North Carolina-Greensboro order. Thanks. Greensboro,NC 27412 (919) 334-5384 Barbara Page (Internet: "[email protected]") Dept. of English,Vassar College New and Forthcoming on Bishop Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 (914) 437-5950 Two important recent books have been published on Thomas Travisano (Internet: "[email protected]") Bishop. one a biography. Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau's Department of English, Hartwick College Oneonta. NY 13820 (607) 431-4907 Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral Biography. with an The Elizabeth Bishop Bulletin Volume 3Number 2 Winter 1994

CBSI In the Village Bishop wrote, "I am superstitious about going 'back' to places, By Sandra Barry anyway: they have changed; you have changed; even the weather may have changed:" (CollectedProse, 109).And while Editor's Note: In September of 1994 Sandra Barry, a co• change has come to Great Village (most sadly and noticeably founder of theElizabeth Bishop SocietyofNova Scotia, served since Bishop's time in the loss of all the beautiful, but now as residentBishop expert and tour guidethrough Great Village "dismantled," elms), the spirit of the place remains willing and for Howard Weinberg, producer oj theBishopprofile for CBS strong. Sunday Morning.Before the show aired on November 20. J . O~e of Weinberg ,sobjectives was to link actual places and asked Sandra to write up her impressions of the experience. objects to Bishop's poetry and prose. We chose several sites at Many of these,including the glimpse ofsandpipers that accom• which Iread a passage from the oeuvre and discussed it a bit panied Sandra's reading of the poem oj that name, and the while our cameraman (anati veson, Fred MacDonald, afreelancer ~~nageof the Bulme~ family Bible that served as a sourcefor from Canning) captured the image. Tempting though it is to Over 2000 Illustrations and a CompleteConcordance,"actu• recount each mise en scene, I shall restrict myself to the one allyfound their way into the program. wherein Weinberg wanted to film the tide', "the creeping laven• der-red water," which has not changed for millennia. I therefore Since the early 1980s the residents of Great Village have suggested Spencers Point, just a few kilometres from the marked the appearance of pilgrims in their community insearch Village, a pJace which Bishop knew well and later wrote about of the sites/ sights and sounds which Elizabeth Bishop knew and in her letters. The tide had just crested and the "rich mud" was ex~erienced as a child. Iuse the word "pilgrim" advisedly, for lapped by "the bay coming in." The spot was tranquil, pungent while Great Village is not so isolated as Diamantia (a cornmu- . and quickened by the elements, "earth, air, fire. water" (mud. ni~yin the mountainous state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, to which wind, sun, tide). As we stood basking in the glorious morning, BIShop ?erself made a pilgrimage in the 1950s), traveling to suddenly we became aware of them-dozens, perhaps hun• Great Village (a community near the north shore of Cobequid dreds. of semipalmated sandpipers, Bay, the eastern extremity of Minas Basin) does require com• . "Sandpiper" is of course a quintessential Bishop poem mitment. It is rather off the beaten track. "Pilgrim" also con• (and my favourite). Though it evokes the "finical, awkward" notes these visitors' sense of the sacredness of the Nova Scotian bird running along an Atlantic shoreline, the pipers we watched landscape: inhabitants, buildings and memories which shaped on this muddy strand of Cobequid Bay seemed sent by some so much of Elizabeth Bishop's poetry and prose and which very old Baptist providence. After all, were we not there remain tangible today. "looking for something, something, something"-a motif which G~eat Villagers have watched the ever-increasing comings infuses and haunts Bishop's life and work?I therefore quietly and goings of these pilgrims (from far-flung places such as declaimed "Sandpiper" to this avian audience, feeling a "sweet England, Japan and the United States) with interest and / sensation of joy." bemusement. In the late 1980s a film crew from PBS appeared Later the crew filmed the Mahon cemetery, Great Village to shoot footage for a documentary about Bishop for the Voices River, the Presbyterian (now United) and Baptist churches, the and Visionsseries. Those "passengers (who] lie back ....Talking former Bulmerfamily home (now Bowers) and the school. Also the way they talked ..." on that ancient Acadian Lines bus for the filmed was the splendid old Bulmer family Bible-the genesis PBS program are Great Villagers themselves, participating in of "Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance." re-creating Bishop's 1946 experience from which she 'created Weinberg conversed with Bishop's cousin; Phyllis Sutherland the magni~cent genre poem, "The Moose," evoking the very (Grace Bulmer Bowers's daughter) and Logan Spencer, current place and Its embodied spirits. janitor of the school, who disputed Bishop's recollection in When I received a call from CBS "Sunday Morning" "Primer Class" of the location of the ou thouses. One could not producer Howard Weinberg, asking whether I would take him help being impressed by the sensitivity of Weinberg's effort 10 on a tour of Great Village. so that he could shoot footage for a image the 'voice and vision' of Elizabeth Bishop's Great ~eature. about Elizabeth Bishop, I was naturally excited. I Village. immediately telephoned the Great Village people, who re• I believe that those who seek to understand the well• sponded with that mixture of enthusiasm and composure which springs of Bishop's poetry and prose must pilgrimage to Great marks their pride in and assurance of the special ness of their Village. While her work speaks for itself (as she thought all home. I met Weinberg a few weeks later. at which time he told good poetry should). requires no external "signifiers" and is an me that the focus of the feature was the "increasing interest" in end-in-itself of the journey, traveling to and through those Bishop. Thus he wanted to know about the activities of the places she experienced and evokes so vividly is a means to newly-formed Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia and capture and emulate the process which finally remains "un• duly met and interviewed the Society's executive members. I rediscovered, un-renamable": "life and the memory of it." am not sure what Weinberg expected to find in Great Village, but whatever his prior expectations I think he would agree that Halifax, N.S. being."In the Village" remainsapalpableaestheticandspirimal expenence.ln the introduction to The Diary of 'Helena Morley ,

2 The Elizabeth Bishop Bulletin Volume 3,Number 2 Winter 1994 Panel IV: TRADITIONS (I) Elizabeth Bishop Symposium Chair: Willard Spiegelman, Southern Methodist University The Vassar Symposium was agalaeventin Elizabeth Bishop 1. "Heightening Depression: A Wordsworth for the studies. Graced by the presence of keynote speaker Robert ~d-Twentieth Century,"Steven Meyer, Washington Univer- Giroux, Bishop's loyal publisher, it also featured old friends mty . like Loren McIver, Frani Blough Muser, Cynthia (Muser) 2. "Bishop and Auden," Bonnie Costello,Boston University Krupat, and Ilse Barker, as well as poet-admirers like Robert 3. '.'Bishop's 'Second Selves," Willard Spiegeltnan, SMU Pinsky, Nancy Willard, Elizabeth Spires, Eamon Grennan, Friday, September 23, Evening and Jane Shore. Something like working quorum of au• a ELIZABETH BISHOP AMONG THE POETS: thors of critical and biographical books on Bishop was on han~: a group including Bonnie Costello, Gary Fountain, A CONVERSATION AND READING Lome Goldenshon, Victoria Harrison, Marilyn May Lom• Chair: Lorrie Goldensohn,Vassar College bardi, Brett Millier, and Thomas Travisano, along with Robert Pinsky- many other long time and some new students of Bishop's Jane Shore work. Despite the absence of a few notable figures in Bishop Elizabeth Spires studies, it seems safe to say that no equivlent body of Eamon Grennan knowledge and expertise on Elizabeth Bishop has ever Nancy Willard before been assembled. Symposium Director BarabaraPage, whose presentation of Bishop archival material on computer S;lt~rday,Sep.tembe,r24, AM ' was one of the occasion's many highlights, is putting to• Business Meeting, Elizabeth Bishop Society gether an electronic version of the symposium papers to be posted on Internet. Panel V: TRADITIONS (II) Thursday, September 22, Evening Chair: Marilyn May Lombardi, University of North Carolina• Welcome and Introduction: Barbara Page Greensboro Keynote Address: Robert Giroux 1. ':Reading Bishop as a Religious Poet,"Cheryl Walker, Scnpps College "The Genius of Elizabeth Bishop" 2. "Elizabeth Bishop and Jorie Graham: 'Suffering the Limits Description,'" Thomas Gardner,Virginia Polytechnic Insti• Friday, September 23, AM of tute Introduction to the Panels: Thomas Travisano, 3. "Colonialism, Gender and Lyric Identity in the Panel I: INVENTING A VOICE Chair: Margaret Dickie, University of Georgia Reconfigurations of Crusoe in Elizabeth Bishop and Derek Walcott," James McCorkle, Hobart and William Smith College I. "An Artist in the House," Sandra Barry, Halifax, Nova Scotia Panel VI: ELIZABETH BISHOP IN THE POSTMODERN 2. "Elizabeth Bishop's Qualifying Syntax," ·ERA Carol Frost, Hartwick College Chair: Thomas Travisano, Hartwick College 3."'Home-made!Butaren '1we all? 'Crusoe in the Nursery" l. "Life as Art: Constructing Elizabeth Bishop," Celeste Richard Flynn, Georgia Southern .Goodridge,Bowdoin College Panelli. QUESTIONS OFBIOGRAPHY Chair: Brett Millier, Middlebury College 2. "Re-Reading Confessional Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop and the 1. "The Search for the Earthly Paradise," lise Barker, . Confessional Moment in American Poetry," Susankosenhaum Midhurst, West Sussex, England University of Michigan . ' 2. "'No Sense of Shame'? Character and Judgment inan Oral 3. "Elizabeth Bishop as Delicate Ethnographer," Biography ofElizabeth Bishop," GaryFountain,MissPorter's Ann Shifrer,Utah State University School 3. "The Prodigal," Brett Millier, Middlebury College Saturday, September 24, PM Panel VII: THE BISHOP PAPERS: TEX11JAL ISSUES Friday, September 23, PM Chair: Barbara Page, Vassar College . Panel III: ETHICS, POLITICS AND BISHOP Bonnie Costello, Boston University Chair: Cheryl Walker, Scripps College Lorrie Goldensohn, Vassar College 1. "The Political Dimension of Elizabeth Bishop," Josef Victoria Harrison, University of California at Santa Barbara Raab, Catholic University of Eichstatt, Germany Marilyn May Lombardi, University of North Carolina-Greensboro . 2."Elizabeth Bishop Is FeministPoetic Travel from' Sonnet' (1928) to 'Sonnet' (1979),"Gillian Huang-Tiller, Notre Brett MiIlier, Middlebury College Dame Thomas Travisano, Hartwick College 3."Monster Radishes and Weekly Wonders:Toward an Panel VIII: READING ELIZABETH BISHOP: THE NEXT Economy of Elizabeth Bishop's Brazilian Poems," Molly GENERATION Weigel, Princeton University Concluding plenary discussion.

3 'MLA Session: EB IS Translations Society Party at MLA, December 28 Elizabeth Bishop sessions at MLA are getting to be an The Elizabeth Bishop Society will sponsor a party at the annual affair. This year an international session on "Elizabeth Modern Language Association Conference in San Diego on Bishop's Translations" has been organized by Society member Wednesday, December 28, from 5:30-7:00 PM. Prof. Brett Josef'Raab. This will be session #772, on Friday, 30 December, Millier of Middlebury College has very kindly agreed to host 12:00 noon-I: 15 PM in room 10 of the San Diego Convention the party in her rooms at the Embassy Suites Hotel. Liquid Center. The session features a native of Brazil, Maria Lucia refreshments and munchies will be provided. Please come, if Milleo Martins, speaking on Bishop's translations of the Brazil• you are in town, [0 share the excitement and good fellowship of ian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, as well as talks by the Society, and to celebrate the ever-growing reputation of authors of the two most recent critical books on Bishop, Elizabeth Bishop. Marilyn May Lombardi and Susan McCabe. Session title: Elizabeth Bishop's Translations A Note from the Editor Organizer: Josef Raab, Catholic University of Eichstaett, This has beenanother remarkable six-months for Bishop Germany studies. And, as this issue makes clear, more writings about Papers: Bishop and more Bishop events are the works.For example, a 1. Susan McCabe (University of Arizona), Elizabeth conference on Bishop a couple of years hence in Worcester, Bishop: Translation and Autobiography." Massachusetts, Bishop's birthplace, is in the discussion stages, . 2 Maria Lucia Milleo Martins (Universidade Federal de an'd the members of the Bishop Society of Nova Scotia are busy Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil), "Carlos Drummondde .organzing what they hope will become an annual comrnemora• Andrade in Elizabeth Bishop's Voice:'A Lesson in Poetry. '" tiveeventforJuneof1995. The energy and devotion of Bishop's 3. Marilyn May Lombardi (University of North Caro• readers has always been intense; but now that readership is linaat Greensboro), "Cannibalism and Translation: 'Travelling much larger. I have enjoyed working with many of you to through the Flesh." advance Bishop studies and would welcome any comments you 4. Josef Raab (Catholic University of Eichstaett, Ger• might have to improve the Bulletin or to push forward Bishop many), Cultural Conflux(?): Octavio Paz and Elizabeth Bishop." research. And please let me know if you have any news or information that might be suitable for the Bulletin. And, unless your mailing label reads 1996 or Hon (honorary) in the upper right hand corner, don't forget to renew your membership.

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