Elizabeth Bishop

INTRODUCED BY DIANA ATHILLAn enchanting Brazilian classic. 'No wonder Bishop fell in love with this book . . . No adult writer, however skilful . . . could write with the nonchalant vivacity and ease that she unwittingly commanded' DIANA ATHILL, GUARDIAN 'A delightful, funny and revealing memoir, a little bit of Austen in the Americas' SPECTATOR'When we read her, we enter the classical serenity of a new country' ROBERT LOWELL From Elizabeth Bishop's introduction: 'When I first came to Brazil, in 1952, I asked my Brazilian friends which Brazilian books I should begin reading . . . They frequently recommended this little book, "Minha Vida de Menina" . . . In English the title means "My Life as a Little Girl" or "Young Girl", and that is exactly what the book is about, but it is not reminiscences; it is a diary, the diary actually kept by a little girl between the ages of 12 and 15, in the far-off town of Diamantina, in 1893-1895 . . . The more I read the book the better I liked it. The scenes and events it described were odd, remote, and long ago, and yet fresh, sad, funny and eternally true. The longer I stayed on in Brazil the more Brazilian the book seemed, yet much of it could have happened in any small provincial town or village, and at almost any period of history - at least before the arrival of the automobile and the moving-picture theatre.'

Whether writing about waiting as a child in a dentist's office, viewing a city from a plane high above, or losing items ranging from door keys to one's lover in the masterfully restrained "One Art," Elizabeth Bishop somehow conveyed both large and small emotional truths in language of stunning exactitude and even more astonishing resonance. As John Ashbery has written, "The private self . . . melts imperceptibly into the large utterance, the grandeur of poetry, which, because it remains rooted in everyday particulars, never sounds 'grand, ' but is as quietly convincing as everyday speech."

A collection of previously unpublished drafts and partial works by Elizabeth Bishop includes pieces that were started in her early adulthood about her love for Elizabethan verse and surrealist technique, dream fragments from the 1940s, and poems about her Canadian childhood. Reprint.

Matkakysymyksiä sisältää Bishopin viimeisen kokoelman Geography III kokonaan ja lisäksi valikoiman runoja useista kokoelmista 1940-luvulta 70-luvun loppuun. Kun sadassa sivussa käydään läpi näin pitkä jakso, tulos muodostuu pomppelehtivaksi. Matkakysymyksiä lukiessa olo on samanlainen kuin jotain greatest hits -albumia kuunnellessa. Kehityskaaret jäävät ohuiksi, luuranko pistää ikävästi esiin, kun liha luiden ympäriltä puuttuu.

A collection of 500 letters written over a 50-year period offers an intimate look at the poet's life

In 1952, soon after her arrival in Brazil, Elizabeth Bishop asked her new Brazilian friends which of their country's books she should read. They recommended Minha Vida de Menina - a diary kept by a young girl who lived in a mining town at the end of the nineteenth century. As a labor of love, Elizabeth Bishop devoted three years to translating the diary, a delightful account of a young girl's life in Brazil.