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
self soul elements
Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.
art filled hard intent losing loss lost seem
The art of losing isn't hard to masters; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
home stayed strangers strangest travel-and-tourism watching
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres?
be-good
Something needn't be large to be good.
book sleep heart
Close, close all night the lovers keep. They turn together in their sleep, Close as two pages in a book that read each other in the dark. Each knows all the other knows, learned by heart from head to toes.
home thinking long
Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed home and thought of here? Where should we be today?
body way sun
What childishness is it that while there's breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around?
people democracy world
Democracy in the contemporary world demands, among other things, an educated and informed people.
children grandmother house
Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
writing doe written
I've never written the things I'd like to write that I've admired all my life. Maybe one never does.
dream baby islands
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food and love, but they were pleasant rather than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat. I'd have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands, like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography.
book pages fingertips
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
sorry writing people
I am sorry for people who can't write letters. But I suspect also that you and I ... love to write them because it's kind of like working without really doing it.
god one-love
Someone loves us all.