Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast – An Intimate Biography of the Revered Poet's Life, Secret Love, and Art

by Megan Marshall

“A shapely experiment, mixing memoir with biography . . . [ Elizabeth Bishop ] fuses sympathy with intelligence, sending us back to Bishop’s marvelous poems.” — Wall Street Journal
 
Since her death in 1979, Elizabeth Bishop, who published only one hundred poems in her lifetime, has become one of America’s most revered poets. And yet she has never been fully understood as a woman and artist. Megan Marshall makes incisive and moving use of a newly discovered cache of Bishop’s letters to reveal a much darker childhood than has been known, a secret affair, and the last chapter of her passionate romance with Brazilian modernist designer Lota de Macedo Soares.
     By alternating the narrative line of biography with brief passages of memoir, Megan Marshall, who studied with Bishop in her storied 1970s poetry workshop at Harvard, offers the reader an original and compelling glimpse of the ways poetry and biography, subject and biographer, are entwined.
 
“Marshall is a skilled reader who points out the telling echoes between Bishop’s published and private writing. Her account is enriched by a cache of revelatory, recently discovered documents . . . Marshall’s narrative is smooth and an impressive feat.” — New York Times Book Review

Genres: Biography, Poetry, Nonfiction, Memoir, Queer, Womens, History

384 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 2017

About the author

Megan Marshall is the author of The Peabody Sisters, which won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography and memoir. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, and Slate. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEH fellowships, Marshall teaches narrative nonfiction and the art of archival research in the MFA program at Emerson College.

Her biography of Margaret Fuller is the winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Reviews

[Sarah Schulman]

Although the story of Elisabeth Bishop is a tragic one on many levels, this is a fun read because of the detail of her emotional and sexual relationships with women- something we rarely have a chance to read about. Despite drinking away much of her life, she was repeatedly able to find women lovers to take care of her: rich when necessary, and young when she had enough money- devoted enough to organize their lives around her, and to self-destruct in reaction to her.

The author cites very little of her work, but the samples are used intriguingly and sometimes the way she coded and shorthanded sounds and ideas in early drafts, only to have them appear years later- is fascinating, and also inspiring.

What I hated about the author's POV was that tired old argument that the closet somehow created better writing because writers had to come up with codes, and that this labor provoked formal invention. The implication- of course- is that straight writers can be brilliant no matter what they do, but gay writers have to have closeted content in order to be important. Obviously, with a better life Bishop would have written differently, and probably more, but the talent is in the writer and is filtered through the experiences of her life. So whatever she would have created, if she hadn't been drinking herself to death from pain, I maintain, would have had value.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Megan Marshall's biography of Bishop is wonderful. Marshall fits in an enormous amount of detail concerning Bishops private and professional life yet the text flows without feeling rushed. She's deft at fitting key key snippets of each poem seldom including the entire work but enough to illustrate the point she's highlighting. I did feel drawn to consulting my ecopy of Bishop's Poems in but only for the pleasure of reading more rather than there not being enough included in this biography.

Bishop's upbringing was lonely but not joyless and the same could be said of her adult experiences however Marshall never makes the events seem maudlin...just real. Marshall was actually a student of Bishop's and interspersed are chapters about Marshall's college life, her own childhood with its family woes as well as her striving to write poetry. These personal insights and syncronicities were never self-Indulgent and drove the Bishop narrative. They were also interesting. Altogether Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast is one of the best literary bios I've read.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Megan Marshall has written a beautiful combination of personal memoir and biography of Elizabeth Bishop. She was a student of Bishop's during the time of her lecturing at Harvard and also studied under Bishop's close friend Robert Lowell as well as Robert Fitzgerald, lovingly recollected here. She was unsuccessful in Bishop's course and turned away from poetry to eventually become an accomplished biographer, evidenced by her earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and this, her fascinating brew of memoir in the shadow of Bishop and exhaustive biography of her.

The title informs her structure. It comes from a sestina Bishop wrote in the mid-1930s, a form of 6 stanzas and 39 lines re-using the end words in the place of rhyme. A final 3-line stanza uses 2 of the end words in each line. Her biography of Bishop is in 6 chapters titled after the end words of the poem "A Miracle for Breakfast" followed by an envoy, or afterword. The spaces between the chapters is filled with her memories of how she connected with the poet over the years of study, trying to become a poet and writer in her own right.

Everyone around Bishop during her life receives attention, one of the facets of the book making it such an engaging read. Bishop had close relationships with not only Lowell but Frank Bidart, Marianne Moore, James Merrill, and others. But the whole story's here, her alcoholism, the intervals of awkward teaching, the need for her analyst Anny Baumann, her years famously spent in Brazil with Lota de Macedo Soares, lesbianism and her attitudes toward the gay rights activism of her later years. In fact, Marshall spends a lot of time chronicling Bishop's love life in greater detail than I've encountered before. Of course the poetry is discussed, too, particularly in the ways it originated from the events of her life. If Marshall herself couldn't write poetry and even failed at a job as first reader of poetry submissions at the Atlantic, she seems to have understood Bishop's well.

I've read other available biographies of Bishop but think this may be an advance on them. Marshall claims to have had access to some papers locked away until after the death of Alice Methfessel, Bishop's last lover, in 2009. At least there is information and perspective here I was unaware of, and for that reason I'm tempted to say that in her quiet, admiring book Marshall has added to the scholarship on Bishop. She's given us a fine read about an interesting poet, and she's won my own quiet admiration, enough that I was inspired to dig out my unread copy of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and put it in a place of prominence, assured of another good read.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really absorbing account of Bishop's life, with effective, attentive references to her poems. I'm not completely convinced that the author's own biographical info all belongs here, and the title does not feel representative of the work, though I really admire the bio's overall sestina-structure--an elegant, innovative choice.

[CarolineFromConcord · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent biography about a difficult person who wrote deeply personal but simultaneously guarded poems that won her the Pulitzer and many other accolades.

I greatly admired biographer Megan Marshall's work here, but after her subject's second infidelity to her long-time partner, I realized I didn't like Elizabeth herself much. She seemed to me so selfish, and when I looked back in the book for instances of generosity, I couldn't find any. She was always looking for others to take care of her, and her alcoholism and infidelities were cruel to those who loved her and kept shoring her up.

Of course, her behavior was no wonder, as she had a miserable childhood -- parents who left her for months in her infancy, a father who died when she was a toddler, a mother who went "mad," and various relatives who resented the burden of minding her, including an uncle who abused her. The exception was her mother's family in Nova Scotia, where she spent relatively happy times. The thing is, although she had a great relationship with a psychoanalyst as a young adult, she quit the treatment after a short time. To me, that was an unfortunate choice as the rest of her life was one long cry for help.

I did find it intriguing to read how Elizabeth approached her art and how the details of her life appeared in it in her veiled way. She was closeted and stuck with that right through her last poem, at least according to biographer Marshall.

Perhaps the thing I liked best about the biography was the unconventional interpolation of the biographer's own story. At first that approach seems to have been chosen only because Marshall actually knew the poet and experienced her personality and writing ideas in her classes.

But what the biographer is actually doing is demonstrating transparently how the personal history of the biographer affects what he/she finds important or interesting in the subject's life. You the reader can make your own judgments about whether, say, the biographer's experience with a mentally ill, uninvolved father makes her emphasize with the effects on Elizabeth of a mentally ill and uninvolved mother too much -- or not enough. It's a question of allowing the reader into the biographer's process more than usual, and it's fascinating.

[Liz Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal biography of Elizabeth Bishop, written by one of the best biographers writing today. Margaret Marshall tells Bishop's story using a wealth of resources, including recently released letters from lovers and a psychiatrist, and interleaves her subject's story with her own growth as a woman and a scholar. The book uses the six words that end the lines of Bishop's sestina, "A Miracle for Breakfast," as its organizing principle, to marvelous effect. An absolutely fantastic book.

[Ann Cefola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every bio I've ever read about Bishop has left me angry...why didn't she "write more, drink less" as she promised so many intimate partners and friends? Upon finishing Miracle for Breakfast, I am satisfied Elizabeth Bishop produced as much as she was meant to--expertly exercising her craft with discretion and discernment. Megan Marshall has written a book that gives new emotional insights into the Bishop canon, linking it to the poet's painful childhood as an orphan and her adult search for enduring if at that time forbidden love. Ms. Marshall, a former poet herself, writes about Bishop's work in a way that is accessible and enlightening. She weaves her own story into the biography, leading up to a Harvard class with Bishop--for the reader, like watching two planes in sky converge--fascinating and rewarding at once. The vulnerable poet student with ardent dreams for her work meets the arrived poet teacher who is finally attracting top awards and grants, and what Bishop says to her about one poem will haunt her adult life. This is a great book about poetry and personal triumph as much as Elizabeth Bishop, her dear friend Robert Lowell, and their circle of illuminati.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting delve into the character that was Elizabeth Bishop. Quite lonely, quick to fall in love, rather peripatetic, a bit of an alcoholic and able to turn it all into some amazing writing.

[Larry Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Image of Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast
Author(s):
Megan Marshall
Release Date:
February 6, 2017
Publisher/Imprint:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pages:
384
Buy on Amazon

Reviewed by:
Larry Smith

“a delight as well as a revelation.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Consultant for Poetry for the Library of Congress (what became Poet Laureate) and other poetry honors, is presented here by one of her former students, author Megan Marshall, in this fresh and most full portrait of her as poet and woman. Thanks to the release of new letters and documents, Marshall is able to capture Bishop’s troubled life and thereby provide deep context for her poems.

Meghan Marshall, herself a Pulitzer prize-winning biographer of the transcendentalists women in her two books Margaret Fuller and The Peabody Sisters, weaves an engrossing story in a vivid and fresh style that makes this book a delight as well as a revelation.

What makes this new biography especially worthy is the personal revelations found in a recently disclosed file box of correspondence held in the Vassar archives and only opened on the death of Bishop’s last partner Alice Methfessel. In particular, it includes the late 1940s written correspondence between Bishop and her psychoanalyst Ruth Foster, a woman whom she came to love. Also detailed from previous publications is the hospital report on her mother’s 30 years in a mental institution.

Though one might question the exposure of such personal material, Marshall explains it this way: “I don’t view any of this as prying—would anyone say it was prying or invasive to read and write about the love letters of Yeats or Joyce or any other major poet or writer? Elizabeth is in that league, and her writing, often autobiographical, though rarely explicitly so, begs to be understood through the life.” She does a fine job of connecting the poems with the many loves of Bishop’s life, including: places, nature, many women, and a love-hate relationship with alcohol.

Though her poems are all finely tuned, one could say perfect, Bishop lamented her life output of 100 poems, knowing that the cloud of alcohol was her enemy here, as was her perfectionism. One analyst goes so far as to suggest that alcohol was the dark liquid of mother’s milk she longed for. Bishop had gone to analysis in part to cure her of alcoholism, and admits its failure.

Another uniqueness of this biography is that our author and Bishop crossed paths in the special Robert Lowell poetry workshop at Harvard in 1975, in which Bishop took over for an ailing Lowell. This allows for a few brief accounts of Marshall’s own life, “On an April afternoon I entered the classroom to find a small older woman with short, stiff white hair, clad in an elegant light-wool suit and carrying a thin black binder, taking a sear across the conference table from mine. Professor Lowell introduced his friend Elizabeth Bishop—‘Miss Bishop’ he purred in this southern-tinged Brahmin drawl. Now it was our guest’s turn to read.” As others have commented on Marshall’s writing, she creates drama and moves her books with a novelistic intensity.

These personal interludes are rightly kept brief as Marshall’s real task is revealing the character of a most shy person and artist. To help visualize Elizabeth Bishop, one might watch the 2014 film of her life, Reaching for the Moon, directed by Bruto Barreto, and yet the focus on the 1950s decade of her passionate and tragic love affair with Brazillian architect Lota de Macedo Soares yield little in terms of true understanding of the poet. Better to view the excellent documentary from the Modern American Poetry: Their Voices and Visions series.

Marshall goes to the very beginnings of Bishop’s life born in Worcester, Massachusetts, into the death of her father three months later and at five, the life-long commitment of her mother to a mental institution. Bishop was cared for by her grandparents in Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, and ultimately bounced around from aunts and uncles, none of whom seemed able to care for her well. He childhood in rustic Nova Scotia remained strongest for her and appears in such poems as in the beautiful “In the Waiting Room” where she first awakens to herself as a being:

I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.

Marshall proves an excellent guide to sensing the fuller context of this poem and others in Bishop’s life and so opening them to fuller revelation of the interrelationship of poem and person. She does this well for many Bishop’s seminal poems such as “Miracle for Breakfast,” “At the Fishhouses,” “The Fish,” “One Art,” and others. Her touch, like Bishop’s, is open yet close. On “Miracle for Breakfast” we learn of an incident where Elizabeth near poverty in Greenwich Village was magically given a sample of three slices of bread, Marshall tells us, “The poem nearly ends with this deliverance:

. . . Everyday, in the sun

at breakfast time I sit on my balcony

with my feet up, and drink gallons of coffee.

“But it was not to be. In the sestina’s concluding three-line envoy, the world returns to its proper dimensions, ‘I’ shrinks back into anonymity, and the poem finishes on a note of longing:

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.

A window across the river caught the sun

as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.”

Marshall expertly fills in the background by reminding us of the larger context of Bishop’s love and longing, here for her rich friend Louise Crane.

As we follow Bishop’s life and her many moves including places at Vassar, in Greenwich Village, Key West, Brazil, we watch her suffer from her shyness, her lost sense of parents, her alcoholism, her repressed and later suppressed homosexual longing for women. While working for the Library of Congress in 1946–1950 the U.S. experienced a period of gay life exposure and persecution. Had she made it known, she like thousands of others would have lost their jobs.

The author’s developed fondness is contagious and revealed in her own poetic conclusion imagining herself on Bishop’s balcony, “. . . brushing crumbs from a tablecloth on which coffee cups sat half full next to a plate of croissants or homemade corn bread, taking in the view of brick and stone dormitories . . . or gazing further north in the bright morning sun toward the conflux of two great rivers, the Mystic and the Charles, and witnessing the daily miracle. ‘If you squint a little,’ Elizabeth would turn and say, ‘it looks like the Grand Canal in Venice—really.’”

Meghan Marshall has found her subject, and her subject has found her in this fine biography.

Larry Smith is the author of Lake Winds: Poems (2014), Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet in America (Bottom Dog Press, reprinted 2012), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large (Southern Illinois University Press, 1982). He is also the publisher at Bottom Dog Press.




http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-...

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in mid-July 2022 when staying for a writer's retreat at the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, Nova Scotia The house has a wonderful library. It's an excellent bio. I didn't know a lot about her adult life and its fascinating.

[Patti K · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 2017 fascinating biography of the great poet Bishop written by
a former college student who attended her writing course at Harvard.
A lot of the information has already been covered, but this account
was a very intimate view of the poet's adventurous life and career.
I was enchanted by her reserve as well as her passions. Recommend.

[george (taylor’s version) · Rating 4 out of 5]

this took me forever between life, uni, exams, travel but i love this woman

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't want this biography to end. Such a compelling and endearingly flawed poet is Miss Bishop. While the story of the author's relationship with her teacher seemed tangential, by the end she brings the two parts to an interesting resolution.

I wanted to have the books of poems to
refer to while reading this, and my next order is to have them.

Miss Bishop's life is a life of art, of love, and of loss, and it's at the intersection of these gifts that creates the poetry.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Bishop's first great local-descriptive interrogation of sight, written when she was 37 years old, is called "The Bight," and sounds, re-reading it, like the kind of thing done in the notebook, then returned to later, when a less-lit reading could inform the poet that, damned if she didn't get it mostly right on the first try. Megan Marshall informs us it was written at Garrison Bight, at KeyWest, probably on February 8, 1948. Marshall has two surmises, neat formulations on which this short critical biography of Bishop turns: 1.) this interrogation, this defensive prosecution of the natural world, like so many Bishop poems, is double-paneled. Propositionally, it argues two cases, as against each other, and these two cases are indeed evident from the first poem, in the first of her (four) books, "The Map," and its first quatrain: "Land lies in water; it is shadowed green. | Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges | showing the line of the long sea-weeded ledges | where weeds hang to the simple blue from the green." The second of "The Map"'s quatrains performs an act of grace that makes this dialectic bearable: "Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under, | drawing it unperturbed around itself? | Along the fine tan sandy shelf | is the land tugging at the sea from under?" The rhymes are full against repetitive, and make one kind of case. The act of grace is the one wherein the writing of the poem forgives the poet her reckless life. Bishop returns to this exposure in the opening line of 2.) "The Bight": "At low tide like this how sheer the water is."

Everything about this 36-line poem strikes me as brave. It is precisely as undefended and "humorous" as those pelicans that crash into the shoreline fishing (unsuccessfully) for their meal. It's as if she's gotten the whole argument with herself into that immortal proverb: "All the untidy activity continues | awful but cheerful."

A case for the life that cannot be disentangled from the order's "One Art" is thereby made. And to be clear, this order suggests that life will only be bearable in the poem --

And so it's worth asking how poets of different temperament -- Bishop's peers -- let's say Duncan and Oppen -- would find their place in Bishop's order. (And so I remind myself that Duncan and Bishop were friends in San Francisco in 1968-1969, when Bishop was carrying on her affair with the pregnant and married Roxanne Cummings. Too bad Marshall leaves this friendship out of her narrative.)

As to the awful orders of that imagination, "we'd rather have the iceberg than the ship, though it meant the end of travel."

In that spirit I recommend Marshall's short biography. Bishop is a tricky character, not at all but for her poems heroic. Yet once you've committed to the poems, however, without which I find living intolerable, then the life becomes moving in the most dramatic way, culturally fascinating, and Bishop's achievement a big yacht behind which a lot of tugboats cruise along most tidily. Marshall herself was a Bishop student, and while I like very much the narrative disjunction she introduces into her research, I find tedious beyond measure an author telling me about the grades they received in college. The reading here, of several Bishop poems, is suggestive while remaining rather safe.

[Leah Braswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hit all the right notes for me. I was completely absorbed. Marshall is an adept biographer. I was as amazed with her writing and depth of research as I was with Elizabeth's rich ljfe.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t particularly interested in 20th century poetry before I picked this up, but I was fascinated and even deeply moved by Marshall’s two earlier biographies of 19th century women involved in New England’s Transcendentalist movement, so I hoped I would enjoy this one too. I did. I found Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast just as compelling as Marshall’s books on Margaret Fuller and the Peabody sisters, and as an added bonus it’s given me an unexpected newfound love of poetry.

The poem referenced in the subtitle, A Miracle for Breakfast, is reprinted in the early pages of this book. Its unusual (to me) sestina form works well with Bishop’s self reflective poetry, and the poem intrigued and charmed me. I flipped back to it many times as I was reading. Using a poetic touch herself, Marshall has titled each chapter on Bishop with one of the six words that end the lines of each stanza of the poem.

Elizabeth Bishop lost her parents early and loved women rather than men in a time that frowned on that, so she had her share of difficulties, but from a young age she was drawn to poetry. She became well connected in the literary world, knowing Mary McCarthy, Robert Lowell, Robert Fitzgerald and many other authors of her era, which broadens the scope and adds to the interest of this book. Bishop lived in a variety of environments, beginning her life in a small village in Canada then becoming established in the United States. But I especially enjoyed reading about her life in Brazil, in part because Bishop was more adventuresome than I expected.

Marshall was a student of Elizabeth Bishop in the 1970’s, and while this book is mostly a biography, at the end of each Bishop chapter there is a brief but just as engrossing memoir chapter recounting Marshall’s life as a somewhat troubled but earnest college student and budding poet. The well balanced blend of biography and memoir is somewhat reminiscent of My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead, another wonderful book.

I read an advanced review copy of this book supplied at no cost by the publisher. There was no review requirement and opinions are mine.

[Queridobartleby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Megan Marshall fue alumna de Elizabeth Bishop en Harvard, donde la poeta enseñaba literatura creativa. Actualmente, es profesora de literatura y escritora, colaborando ocasionalmente con publicaciones como The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review o The London Review of Books. Su trabajo se enfoca en el ensayo biográfico, y algunos se centran en la vida de mujeres notables que han sido olvidadas, tales como las hermanas Peabody, la periodista Margaret Fuller, con el que ganó el Premio Pulitzer de biografía en 2014 o la propia Elizabeth Bishop, a quien tuvo la oportunidad de conocer en sus últimos años, aunque como ella misma admite, de manera superficial. La conmemoración en 2011 de los cien años del nacimiento de la poeta, la rescató nuevamente, pero fue tres años más tarde, en 2014, cuando Millie Nash, una profesora jubilada de literatura y exalumna también de Bishop, se reunió con Megan para compartir sus apuntes y documentos de aquella época. Megan quedó impresionada por la exhaustiva información que Millie había conservado, incluyendo un diario donde registraba en detalle las clases y encuentros con la poeta. Millie había disfrutado de las biografías escritas por Megan y la animó a escribir sobre Elizabeth Bishop, constituyéndose sus documentos un valioso punto de partida. En 1981, Vassar College adquirió los archivos de Bishop a su albacea, Alice Methfessel. Megan se dirigió allí y descubrió una gran cantidad de documentos y cartas que le revelaron aspectos desconocidos de la poeta. También entrevistó a testigos que conocieron a Elizabeth en vida. Este trabajo culminó cuatro años después, siendo publicado en 2017. Se trata de una biografía esencial y, casi se podría decir, definitiva, ya que Megan incluye fragmentos de textos de diversas fuentes examinadas: cartas, diarios, entrevistas, poemas, prosas y otras biografías o estudios sobre la autora. Es de agradecer que Vaso Roto haya rescatado y traducido esta obra para el público hispanohablante.

https://queridobartleby.es/tag/elizab...

[anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bishop's remarkable life is a fascinating and frequently sad tale. The telling here is punctuated with frequent quotes from letters, making Bishop more present.

I find the inclusion of brief autobiographical chapters by the author disappointing and distracting. By bringing in her own brief connection to Bishop, the author adds a tone to the biography that is gossipy and/or self indulgent.

[Carola · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author is highly acclaimed, but upon finishing the book, my reaction was, "Meh." I think Marshall tried to achieve too many goals, and the result was muddled.

I really enjoyed the biography at the beginning. Elizabeth Bishop had a traumatic childhood; I thought Marshall did a good job of providing all the information the reader needed to understand how that trauma played out in the remainder of her life without getting bogged down in details. But in the recounting of Bishop's adult life, Marshall loses this focus. I felt that the reader is taken down a number of paths that, in retrospect, were dead ends that did not add to an understanding of the poet. The author can be praised for trying to let the poet's own words speak for herself, but often the bits of quotes from Bishop's personal writings impeded the flow of the prose. At times, Marshall seemed to stray too far into the mode of an English professor, providing interpretations of poems that also detracted from the book as a biography.

My most significant criticism is over the author interspersing bits of her own memoir throughout the book. Although Marshall's personal interactions were undoubtedly key to choosing Bishop as a subject for her writing, the portions about Marshall come across as self-aggrandizing. I thought they interrupted the flow of the biography and I found them irritating.

I knew little/nothing about Elizabeth Bishop before reading this. I tend to give a great deal of latitude to people who suffered childhood trauma and serious mental illness (especially given the limited treatments available for depression during Bishop's lifetime). And I won't discount the difficulty that Bishop must have faced as a lesbian during a time when this was considered a pathology. As Marshall presents her, though, Bishop is not a character for whom I developed any sympathy. Her obliviousness to the needs of others and to boundaries extends to the moment of her death, making her a woman for whom I have no admiration.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Megan Marshall’s biography of American poet Elizabeth Bishop is the first since the early 1990s. Marshall thought it particularly opportune that a new biography be written now, when a new trove of Bishop’s letters had come to light, including a detailed sexual history provided to her therapist in the 1940s.

In fact, Marshall goes heavy on Bishop’s relationships with various women over her life, to the exclusion of so much else in the poet’s life. For example, reader will get a very detailed history of the rise and fall of Bishop’s relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares and their living together in Brazil. Yet Bishop’s entire stint at the Library of Congress in 1949–50, of such enormous interest both for her own creative life and for mid-20th-century American literary society in general, gets but a mere page or so.

The most objectionable thing about this biography is that Marshall writes herself into it. Marshall had briefly been one of Bishop’s students at Harvard in the 1970s. Nothing suggests any close relationship between student and teacher, and Marshall’s attempt to depict her turning in an assignment incorrectly as a great and tragic "falling out" between the two is hyperbole. Then, Marshall goes on to provide a wider context for this brief period as Bishop’s student by describing her own entire academic career to date, romantic entanglements, etc. Not only is this irrelevant – people want to read about Bishop’s life in a biography of Bishop, not Marshall’s – but it feels like padding, as without it this biography would feel rather slight.

Consequently, committed fans of the poet may find this biography worthwhile, but it is flawed indeed. As I look at the profusion of enthusiastic five-star ratings here, I can’t help but wonder if some of them are mere shill reviews.

[Menno Beek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite interesting life, and very interesting poems. I'm not sure she was easy to live with or around, but when she wrote a villanelle, say 'One art' she took things very serious: in a book by Edward Hirsh I read told me there are 19 versions of this villanelle in some library or another.

Marshall makes this book very personal by interweaving her own encounters with Bishop, as a student, with the biography. Works very well. Lifts the book to something better then the narrative of the life of a poet, it comes with context and with feeling.



DE KUNST


Verliezen is heel makkelijk te leren, want
in heel veel dingen lijkt de neiging al aanwezig
om kwijt te raken, dus is het geen ramp

als elke dag weer iets verdwijnt: dat kan
je sleutel zijn, een paar uur van je middag -
verliezen is heel makkelijk te leren, want

je zal het langzaam groter aan gaan pakken,
namen en plaatsen kwijtraken, de richting
die je ooit op wilde, dat is nog steeds geen ramp.

Moeders horloge ben ik kwijt! Ik kwam
al drie keer voor het laatst daar waar mijn hart ligt:
verliezen leer je makkelijk, want ik verloor een land,

twee steden, een rivier, ik stond met lege handen,
een koninkrijk, een continent, allemaal prachtig –
ik mis ze wel en het was toch geen ramp.

Zelfs jou verliezen (hoe je lacht, je zachte kant
die mij zo lief is): ik hou vol, ik mag niet liegen,
verliezen is iets dat iedereen leren kan –
al lijkt het ook (schrijf op!) al lijkt het ook een ramp.



ELIZABETH BISHOP

“One Art” from The Complete Poems 1926-1979.
first published in the New Yorker, 1976

vertaling Menno van der Beek, November 2024

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marshall's work of creative non-fiction takes the readers on the significance of American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop's life is not only reflected in her poetry, as Marshall establishes, but also in her life through her relationships with the artistic, literary, and social community. I read this book as one of the 2017 new releases for my library's summer reading incentive program. This book was an enticing read. As an undergraduate, I read Bishop's poetry, especially "The Moose," which was the central subject of a literary analysis on the concept of travel in contemporary American life through literature. My professor commented on my paper to consider the moose being female and I thought this was rather quite silly and I still laugh about this today. However, upon reading Marshall's book I now feel like there was more significance to this analogy as Bishop's writings were ways of communicating with her past and her feelings. The book conveys Bishop's complexities and scandals and is a great read. Highly recommend if you've read any of Bishop's works as the literary analysis is rich and appreciated!

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed this biography of a poet I love so much. How did I not know she was gay? Enjoyed the author's story, even as I wasn't sure it worked in overlay with Bishop's, despite the connections. Loved this coterie of brilliant, crazed women of the twentieth century--how did they drink so much? Helped me understand Bishop's poetry a bit more--it has always drawn me without being able to understand why. Left the book with so many questions despite enjoying it: How did she write her poetry (we learn more how she didn't,) what did she do when not writing, why did she appeal so to women--what explains her lovely claim of being able to "make" any woman. How did she come to travel in such elite circles (in this the author has her own Harvard blinders on); perhaps better, what defined these rarified circles, particularly for women (which the author does take on,) but how do they relate to the rest of the world (if at all!); where are her drawings?; and how did this extraordinary group of lesbians live their lives...if not self-consciously lesbian, nonetheless, how to navigate society's strictures. We do learn this with Bishop, and yet I feel there may be more to the story.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took this book out of the library thinking it was a collection of Bishop's poetry. Realizing my mistake, I was about to return it. At the last minute, I thought better of it and I'm glad I did. Bishop had a full array of medical, physical, metaphysical and psychological "maladies", some of them crippling. Her life story, though, at least in Marshall's hands, is not the stuff of cinema or soap opera. If you like poetry, like Bishop and/or have a curiosity about the nature of creativity in general, this book is worth reading. Marshall is a tireless researcher and does is an excellent job sifting and sorting the flotsam and jetsam of Bishop's life -- her various homes, love affairs, crises and friends -- into an intelligible narrative. As a student at Harvard, Marshall took a class with Bishop that did not turn out as she had hoped. The fact that she includes herself in the biography and admits to her failure as a poet makes the story more credible and engaging. I know there are some who feel that an artist's life should be kept separate from her or his work. This biography is a strong argument against that view.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more we get to know Elizabeth Bishop through this empathetic and carefully edited biography, the more human she becomes. Her best poems (which are the majority of them) needed the perspective of age, loss, and repeated heartbreak. If you're looking for a wholly sympathetic protagonist, you'll find her elsewhere. Bishop was busy losing continents, cheating on lovers, and falling down drunk. The newer conventional wisdom is that the genius creates despite hardships rather than because of them. These days we ask how much more an artist might have produced with the right support and treatment. We want to have it both ways, but the fact is, if her heart hadn't somehow hurled itself repeatedly into a rocky cliff-face, if failed relationships and the judgment of society hadn't taken their toll, Bishop's poems wouldn't have had such vulnerable interjections breaking through the clear-headed observations. They would not have stood the test of time. Megan Marshall knows this and does a brilliant job. We fall in love with Bishop, flaws and all, and return to her poetry with an even deeper understanding of just what was at stake.

[Mary Warnement · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stopped reading this within the month of starting it at bedtime. On page 245. I just no longer cared. Marshall's personal memories of taking Bishop's poetry class interested me. But then didn't. It has sat in the piles of books on the table next to my bed for over a year, and this morning I decided to finish it. I first finished Marshall's personal bits. Her regret at disappointing her poetry teacher by turning in a piece she'd written for another class, Fitzgerald (who recommended her for a job at Atlantic Monthly reading poetry submissions--which got her fired because she didn't recognize important names worthy of proper rejection letters). She knew her teacher didn't disappoint her. She had tossed all her notes and poetry but reconnected with another student years later who had saved it all and had an anecdote to share, that Bishop felt guilty for giving Marshall a poor grade on a technicality. Perhaps I don't have the stamina for biography. That's not fair. I can read thousand page histories. I've just lost my taste for it lately.

[Caroline Gendelman]

I enjoyed this. It connects to my other reading lately about Robert Lowell. She was truly a fascination for him. He genuinely cared for her and wanted to marry her, except for her sexual preference. The book details her progression from a disjointed childhood with flecks of mental health issues in her family through her academic path and development as a poet.

It explores the awakening and acknowledgement of lesbian feelings and how it was lived at that time and in her world. This book drives home the point that poets are often tortured by their mind...perhaps because they feel and experience things differently and more deeply than the bulk of society.

From this book, I was propelled to read The Group by Mary McCarthy. Again, the insight into how women have lived and grown during other decades is quite an education.

[Marta E C R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book after watching a movie called "Reaching for the Moon" (which focused primarily on Bishop's relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares), and finding myself wanting to know more about the poet Elizabeth Bishop. I chose this particular biography because it was available through my library's system and sounded the most interesting of those that were. I am so glad I chose this one. Megan Marshall sifted through many primary source materials to write this book and give us readers a true flavor of Bishop's life. I was especially impressed with her technique of peppering this substantial biography with a bit of her own personal memoir at the end of each chapter, always involving her interactions with Bishop. This book gave me a true sense of Elizabeth Bishop as a person, and I appreciate that greatly.

[Nita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy reading biographies, and I enjoyed reading this one about Elizabeth Bishop. I've been a fan of hers for decades. I especially admire her powers of observation of the natural world and her ability to put this detail down onto paper in poetic forms. It was fascinating (but also, sometimes sad) to learn what was happening in her life as Bishop observed the world and wrote her poetry. In organizing the chapters of the book, the biographer, Megan Marshall, used elements of the sestina form; this was impressive. One negative: Marshall brought some undue attention to herself as she included quite a bit about herself in the book. I found myself skimming through the pieces about Marshall--which seemed awkwardly inserted into an otherwise excellent biography.

[Rita]

WRB good review "An Ear for Women. interview with Megan Marshall" Mar 2019 by Joanne Mulcahy
'Elizabeth Bishop' got Pulitzer Prize.

"In 'Elizabeth Bishop' she literally accompanies her subject, integrating her experience as Bishop's poetry student at Harvard in 1976.

In 'The Peabody Sisters: three women who ignited American romanticism' Marshall deftly blends the stories of the brilliant sisters who helped shape American education, the arts, and the Transcendentalist movement.'

"An earlier book, 'The cost of loving: women and the new fear of intimacy', investigated the challenges women faced in balancing family, work and independence.

"MM: I prefer to say that I write biography from a feminist perspective. [not feminist biography]"