ipl-logo

Elizabeth Bishop Research Paper

1603 Words7 Pages

Throughout history, poets have shaped our culture and society. Using their talents they demonstrated and used their own struggles to produce work that people could easily relate to. Among these poets is Elizabeth Bishop, one of the best American poets of the 20th century. She is widely known for her poems and books. Elizabeth Bishop experienced many emotional and personal struggles throughout her life. Her personal relationships, depression, alcoholism, and world travels heavily impacted her poems. Bishop’s emotional and personal struggles, including the experience of losing her parents and partner Lota De Macedo Soares, is most evident in her most famous poem, “One Art”. Elizabeth Bishop’s upbringing was very difficult. She was born in …show more content…

In the fall of 1930, she enrolled in Vassar College. Elizabeth and her peers, Mary McCarthy, Muriel Rukeyser, and Eleanor Clark started their own campus newspaper against the “Vassar Review” publication, called “Con Spirito”. During this time Elizabeth was introduced to Marianne Moore, a poet and former editor. Moore began mentoring Bishop and included her poems in an anthology she edited titled, “Trial Balances”. After reading Bishop’s poems, Moore made suggestions, offered encouragement, and introduced her to other poets. Most importantly, Moore encouraged Bishop to choose poetry opposed to medicine as her life’s …show more content…

When she finally had a collection of poems, Marianne Moore encouraged her to apply for the Houghton Mifflin Prize. Out of the 800 submitted, her entry was chosen. Then, her book “North and South”, appeared in the 1946 favorable reviews and defined the themes of her future work. The main themes of her poems and stories became geography, the natural world, and human connections with it, and the attempt to see or to shape within disorder (Parrish). Her style was neither confessional nor deeply intimate, in which she preferred to write from a removed vantage point, often writing about everyday items, unusual locations, or issues facing humanity on a more general level (Issit). Elizabeth noted, “Writing poetry is a way of life, not a matter of testifying but of experiencing” (Bishop, Elizabeth, and George Monteiro

Open Document