Monday, September 5, 2016

Elizabeth Bishop ( 1911 – 1979) ... American Poet: Highly Detailed and Objective Point of View

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

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Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Awardwinner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.

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The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly-
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little
, but not
to return my stare. - It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
- if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels- until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Elizabeth Bishop

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During her time in Brazil Elizabeth Bishop became increasingly interested in the languages and literatures of Latin America.She was influenced by South and Central American poets, including the Mexican poet Octavio Paz and the Brazilian poets João Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and translated their work into English.

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The writer Mary McCarthy stated, "Certainly between Bishop and Marianne Moore there are resemblances: the sort of close microscopic inspection of certain parts of experience. [However,] I think there is something a bit too demure about Marianne Moore, and there's nothing demure about Elizabeth Bishop."

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James Merrill: a reading for Elizabeth Bishop....by Arlo Haskell (2012)....James Merrill (1926-1995) was among the most celebrated poets of the second half of the 20th century....Merrill lived in Key West for many years, and was particularly involved in the 1993 seminar, which was devoted to the work and life of his fellow poet and longtime friend Elizabeth Bishop. In this recording from the 1993 seminar, Merrill delivers a reading in tribute to Bishop, presenting a careful selection of Bishop’s work and his own and, in between the readings, discussing the lines of friendship and poetic influence that connect the poems. There are three poems by Bishop, including “Exchanging Hats,” “The Shampoo,” and “One Art”; and four poems by Merrill, including “The Kimono” (inspired by Bishop’s “The Shampoo”), “Investiture at Cecconi’s” (dedicated to Bishop’s and Merrill’s mutual friend David Kalstone), and “Victor Dog” and “Overdue Pilgrimage to Nova Scotia” (both dedicated to Bishop). Merrill’s perfectly modulated performance and commentary reveals not only his significant gifts as a reader and interpreter of Bishop’s work, but also suggests the depths of the influence he felt from the poet who he said “set standards for me as no other contemporary did.”

James Merrill Elizabeth Bishop 1993....Podcast: Download (Duration: 21:24 — 12.3MB)

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Email....wijijiarts@gmail.com

Northern New Mexico

September 2016

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