Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishopwas 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 Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth8 February 1911
CityWorcester, MA
CountryUnited States of America
art self useless
What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.
world angle made
I was made at right angles to the world and I see it so. I can only see it so.
strong swimming heaven
Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare.
breakup art writing
Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
fighting filled-up oil
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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.
dream our-dreams
Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?
moving dark salt
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.
stories pages way
I HATED the Salinger story. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?
self soul elements
Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.
art doors keys
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master.
dream song fall
I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips, Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow. Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sung to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on my head, And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow! There is a magic made by melody: A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep To the subaqueous stillness of the sea, And floats forever in a moon-green pool, Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
world looks painting
If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.
cheerful awful
All the untidyactivity continues, awful but cheerful.
art cutting loss
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.