tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37142409417862904342024-03-13T17:35:21.263-03:00The Elizabeth Bishop BlogUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger926125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-70110704738857426782024-03-03T07:36:00.001-04:002024-03-05T07:40:43.784-04:00“My Permanent Home Some Day”: Elizabeth Bishop in Key West by Brian Bartlett<p style="text-align: justify;">The kind of travel called <i>literary pilgrimage</i> has been around for a long time. We perform it
to honour beloved writers, get closer to their experienced worlds, or sharpen our
feelings for specifics of particular poems or novels. Many have travelled from
afar and watched plays in the Globe Theatre, stood (or knelt) by Baudelaire’s
grave in the Montparnasse Cemetery, or toured Katherine Mansfield’s childhood
house in New Zealand. To cite personal examples, I’ve visited Willa Cather’s
house in Red Cloud, Nebraska, Jack London’s forest retreat north of San Francisco,
Hawthorne’s seven-gabled house in Salem, Marianne Moore’s address in New York, Wordsworth’s
Dove Cottage, the homes of Keats and Dickens in London, John Muir’s origins in
Scotland, multiple statues of Dante in Italy, and Pessoa’s house and favourite
bar in Lisbon. Some day I’d like to breathe the air of the one house Emily
Dickinson knew intimately, and follow routes Basho and Issa took through Japan. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It would be easy to mock literary pilgrimages, and to consider
them superficial, tempting travellers into boastfulness of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I-was-there-where-they-walked</i> sort, with
no bearing on the real substance of reading and re-reading. Yet I’ve found that
spending even an hour in the wind and dampness on the Haworth moors impressionistically
enhanced my next reading of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wuthering
Heights</i>; and having a meal in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Johnson’s favourite
pub—despite many changes since the eighteenth century—helped evoke the
atmospheres of his many lively conservations there, including ones put on paper
by Boswell. Still, because I’ve often felt an inward need to defend
writer-based tourism, it seems clear that I also wonder if it’s self-indulgent
and sentimental. Lived experience, however, and a desire not to belittle the
pleasures of other travellers, help me take a more tolerant view. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">*<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When Elizabeth Bishop first visited Key West in December
1936 shortly before her twenty-sixth birthday, she and Louise Crane made the
trip by charter boat. Bridges and motorways didn’t connect all the hundred-mile
length of the Florida keys curving south-westward into the Gulf of Mexico. A
year earlier the Flagler Railroad’s bridge had begun providing chances to reach
the final, most southern of the keys by train, but late in 1935 a severe hurricane
walloped Key West and dismantled the bridge. When I travelled to Key West for
the first time in early 2024, at the age of seventy, it was along a highway
overseen by seabirds such as Magnificent Frigatebirds silhouetted high in the sky
and—closer to the cars, trailers and RVs—Brown Pelicans (“whose delight it is
to clown,” Bishop wrote in her poem “Florida”). If she’d lived long enough to
see Key West in the twenty-first century, Bishop would’ve recognized many of
the area’s creatures, architectural beauties and prismatic water-and-light
colours, yet the city’s growth might’ve estranged her. In an interview she recalled
of the Key West she first observed: “The town was absolutely broke then.
Everybody lived on W.P.A.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
inexpensiveness of living there was part of is appeal; her first rent room cost
only $4.00 a week. Now Key West is so expensive that my wife, a friend of ours and
I stayed for two nights a few islands away on Sugarloaf Key, and drove a half
hour to the much more famous key during the day.<o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHFouHfxmPxu9OYjYRJwzNGTd-8lVNQtbsAt2_4o6X-wmgEQQNFPUj0YPZM9LyfD9kd4tEI-Sd00voDv7tq5c05PNQ4s_JZYUkN85b_uo7gSLJGDTaMdN5-GSBqum7gtiA0O5X1g6eI_gHb_yY05QomVt5bkviExroUI3UPaaa2B4DJbTNvMuDNl-cOA8/s2975/Brown%20Pelican.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2485" data-original-width="2975" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHFouHfxmPxu9OYjYRJwzNGTd-8lVNQtbsAt2_4o6X-wmgEQQNFPUj0YPZM9LyfD9kd4tEI-Sd00voDv7tq5c05PNQ4s_JZYUkN85b_uo7gSLJGDTaMdN5-GSBqum7gtiA0O5X1g6eI_gHb_yY05QomVt5bkviExroUI3UPaaa2B4DJbTNvMuDNl-cOA8/s320/Brown%20Pelican.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>(BROWN PELICAN)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Bishop lived in Key West much of the time between 1938 and
1949—before, during and after World War II, and especially in winter. Those
years helped develop her fondness for tropical climates and locations away from
unrestful cultural mainstreams; Thomas Travisano has suggested a link between
Bishop’s cherished, much smaller childhood community in Nova Scotia and the
Florida city, “a warmer and more bohemian Great Village.” Attracted to maps and
considerations of longitudes and latitudes (see her early poem “The Map” and
the introductory quotation beginning <i>Geography
III</i>), Bishop might’ve found it apt to choose the extreme southern tip of
the continental United States as a place for exploration, relaxation,
friendship and writing. She also valued southern Florida for the abundant opportunities
to fish and swim, and for the relief she felt from her chronic asthma—but also
for its death-haunted, unfamiliar phenomena, such as dozens of vultures
circling “like stirred-up flakes of sediment / sinking through water” and dead
mangrove roots that “strew white swamps with skeletons” (images from “Florida”).
Though Bishop was far from the most gregarious of people, Key West also served
as a writer-friendly place to her, since Hemingway and John Dos Passos were well-known
residents, and in the winter of 1935 both Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens had
begun spending winters there. Stevens had written one of his greatest poems, “The
Idea of Order at Key West,” in the same year Bishop first set foot on the key. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Over seventy years after Bishop’s Key West era ended, I
spent a mid-January afternoon tracking down the locations of her residences
there, with the brochure <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Key West Homes
of Elizabeth Bishop</i> (text by Kay Bierwiler) in hand. The addresses were within
walking distance of each other in that comfortably walkable city. The first
stop on the route was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">529 Whitehead
Street</b>, where Bishop roomed during her first Key West winter, in early 1938.
I couldn’t tell whether the building where she roomed had been torn down and replaced,
or radically renovated. The address now is for IVs [I.V.s] in the Keys:
Essential Hydration Therapy (which specializes in intravenous treatments injecting
liquids containing minerals, nutrients and antioxidants). Across the street
from Bishop’s room was a courthouse and a jail. Her first Key West residence
and its surroundings fuelled her writing: “I am doing absolutely nothing but
work,” she wrote to Marianne Moore, “scarcely even read.” She wrote her first
Key West poem, “Late Air” (“the radio-singers / distribute all their love songs
/ over the dew-wet lawns”) and encountered her second landlady’s memorable
bossy servant, Cootchie (inspiration for a 1941 Bishop poem named after her; Key
West initiated Bishop’s interactions with racially mixed communities). A block
away stands the Green Parrot Bar, inviting with its colourful exterior
paintings of its namesake. With origins as far back as 1890, the bar began as a
grocery store and continued so until nearly mid-century; Bishop must’ve shopped
at it for local food such as grapefruit, lemons and oranges.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0uz6zQlLJslaO3Evl_xBHpjCfFaz08aBsQhXPAEIPC1MSiiOC6sZj6nYMi5C-GAWkRPMHDV46ck8PJkio3KXO_Kf2n4hkowdl4umWynzMZ02eiR8Tk2XGhluK-_hBIbKhjSozEt7NU-IJDabY4jZBKsqyWsIjd_fdr7TyeV3JVsPo6KuHGPvItJYVphg8/s1511/Green%20Parrot.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1511" data-original-width="1073" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0uz6zQlLJslaO3Evl_xBHpjCfFaz08aBsQhXPAEIPC1MSiiOC6sZj6nYMi5C-GAWkRPMHDV46ck8PJkio3KXO_Kf2n4hkowdl4umWynzMZ02eiR8Tk2XGhluK-_hBIbKhjSozEt7NU-IJDabY4jZBKsqyWsIjd_fdr7TyeV3JVsPo6KuHGPvItJYVphg8/s320/Green%20Parrot.jpg" width="227" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"> <b>(GREEN PARROT BAR)</b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">With my two travelling companions that morning I’d already
spent an hour a few blocks away on <b>Whitehead
St., </b>at <b>907</b>, the most famous
address in Key West. Its basic structure built in 1851, Hemingway House is an
example of French Colonial Architecture. In differing accounts, I’ve read that Pauline
Pfeiffer Hemingway, Ernest’s second of four wives, once a writer for <i>Vanity Fair</i> and <i>Vogue</i>, bought the house; or she persuaded her uncle to do so and
give it to her and Ernest as a wedding present. Husband and wife lived together
there between 1931 and 1939; by the time of their divorce in 1940, Ernest had moved
to Cuba, but Pauline remained in the house for eleven more years. Bishop’s time
in Key West was mostly a decade later than Hemingway’s. While 529 Whitehead was
her first address in the city, 907 was one of her last residences, for the
winter of 1947-48. She was friends with Pauline (“the wittiest person I’ve ever
known, man or woman”), but Pauline was away during Elizabeth’s stay. The poet enjoyed
many aspects of the property, including the unusually large, expensive swimming
pool, which featured underwater lights (as quoted in Bierwiler’s brochure,
Bishop wrote that friends in the pool “looked like luminous frogs”). Years
before her brief sojourn in the Hemingway House, in another Key West house Bishop
had written “The Fish,” a poem she was pleased Hemingway praised. Though Bishop
and Hemingway both honoured piscine strength and struggles, her descriptions of
an old fish are far more lavishly detailed than anything in adjective-avoiding Hemingway’s
later novella <i>The Old Man and the Sea</i>,
and her poem ends with an unHemingwayesque line: “and I let the fish go.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJRJHsJyfeUxj6f_hFHA8bNeYYoUjIvGADRARgUIUqdVL8FZxKPKBi-zGgGNlmUbxFDHdgkK204jMvELAPwfDdK1F3YQ14bQGCrWyro0YuioFe45ISpTwznINA4P4W9CcR_yTeveGYKH3cpYUwWFib6wSm1LRQEvjLDGcXR9AQjkb3KSQL9iVvkR39OTVE/s5184/Sloppy%20Joe's.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2898" data-original-width="5184" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJRJHsJyfeUxj6f_hFHA8bNeYYoUjIvGADRARgUIUqdVL8FZxKPKBi-zGgGNlmUbxFDHdgkK204jMvELAPwfDdK1F3YQ14bQGCrWyro0YuioFe45ISpTwznINA4P4W9CcR_yTeveGYKH3cpYUwWFib6wSm1LRQEvjLDGcXR9AQjkb3KSQL9iVvkR39OTVE/s320/Sloppy%20Joe's.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>(SLOPPY JOE’S BAR)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A now legendary Key West spot, Sloppy Joe’s Bar, opened in
1934 on the day Prohibition was repealed, then moved to its current location in
1937, less than a year before Bishop’s first Key West winter. The bar’s and
Hemingway’s names are forever linked, yet young Bishop also spent evenings with
friends there, chatting and drinking and dancing the rumba. We can choose to
accept or question James Merrill’s report or belief that the often subdued poet
would “jot a phrase or two inside the nightclub matchbook before returning to
the dance floor.” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Key West address most associated with Bishop is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">624 White Street</b>. In spring 1939 Bishop
and Crane bought the handsome nineteenth-century clapboard house there. Bishop
wrote to Moore: “…seems perfectly beautiful to me, inside and out.” Then the
house was isolated, with a yard enlivened by many kinds of trees—banana,
avocado, sour sop, lime and mango. Years later it would be recognized as one of
the three “loved houses” alluded to in Bishop’s villanelle, “One Art.” Its
initial calm helped Bishop concentrate to finish most of the manuscript of her
first collection, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">North & South, </i>by
the end of 1940 (though the book didn’t appear in print until 1946). In mid-century,
Key West was a quieter location than it is today, yet even by 1941, Bishop had
grown so annoyed by nearby construction and traffic noise that she moved away
and began renting the house; five years later she sold it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The White Street house is the one Key West Bishop location
explicitly identified as such for passers-by. A “Literary Library Register”
bronze plaque of Friends of Libraries USA spells out the historic significance
of the building, and quotes Bishop’s lines, “Should we have stayed at home, / wherever
that may be”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On a larger scale, a much
more complicated sign announces: “The non-profit Key West Seminar acquired the
property in 2019, and is now restoring the house to its historic condition,
drawing upon Bishop’s private papers and photographs.” For that reason, the
house is now closed to visitors. The sign also includes reproduced images of
the house: a photo of it from Bishop’s time, and a painting of it by local folk
artist Gregorio Valdes (1879-1939). Bishop commissioned Valdes to do the painting.
Soon after his unexpected death in the next year, she wrote an affectionate essay
about him and his art (found in both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected
Prose</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prose</i>.) The sign in
front of the house is misleading in one respect: it speaks of Bishop “living in
this house between 1938 and 1946,” but she lived elsewhere between 1941 and 1946.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwGjsHGKcyMSAW1hTtO_Vqx3VUnlAXj-HxPIyTdU6-Vt66340zusie5fF9pY1QWYvTHLeqPnZNzB3aupSh9JX_RpxF1iuCTKhy5TbRHC4MsFNoiEcLTM77eOvdjblb3aFKGZmhQ3H58MmQKclTUgstUd8Pjym8XtZ8DFHvVPhIeDyMcK8o4CeZQVuRkjzX/s5184/White%20Street%20sign.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="5184" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwGjsHGKcyMSAW1hTtO_Vqx3VUnlAXj-HxPIyTdU6-Vt66340zusie5fF9pY1QWYvTHLeqPnZNzB3aupSh9JX_RpxF1iuCTKhy5TbRHC4MsFNoiEcLTM77eOvdjblb3aFKGZmhQ3H58MmQKclTUgstUd8Pjym8XtZ8DFHvVPhIeDyMcK8o4CeZQVuRkjzX/s320/White%20Street%20sign.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>(WHITE STREET SIGN)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">After her time with Crane on White Street and months of
living in New York, in spring 1941 Bishop met Marjorie Stevens, into whose
apartment at <b>623 Margaret Street</b> she
soon moved. Bishop’s alcoholic lapses had intensified; she spoke of “New York
troubles,” and wrote that she was “very glad to be back” in Key West. She and
Stevens lived on Margaret Street all that summer, and for much of the next
three years. Between March and September of 1942, partly due to their growing
disenchantment with the mounting military presence in Key West, they travelled
around Mexico. In the following summer, sounding bored and guilty over her
inactivity, Bishop got a job grinding binoculars for a U.S. Navy optical shop,
but eyestrain “made me sea-sick, & the acids used for cleaning started to
bring back eczema,” so the job ended after five days. The Margaret Street house
was very close to the city’s spacious, tree-shaded cemetery (which I walked
through after finding the street). Much later Bishop wrote affectionately of
the Great Village cemetery of her childhood; first, while living in Florida,
she painted at least three watercolours of spots in the Key West Cemetery
(reproductions of them are in the book of her art edited by William Benton, <i>Exchanging Hats: Paintings</i>). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As for 623 Margaret, no such address appears to exist
anymore. All I could find was a large tree against a background of exuberantly
sprawling greenery. But I paused at its former location, moved to remember that
it was where Bishop likely wrote her posthumously published, warm-hearted and
richly atmospheric love poem (likely for Marjorie), “It is marvellous to wake
up together.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0H2LZpl7sTa6GXJdm-lffY2zsBZx7a-pWoHqJwTh48QvyKyZfkX-DCUpPWKEzmY1tgfPVLeKvH6sb2BG3LBU0iJbuwTY1w3Yz_o_E2P37jbD2AJ76AFSaH1mPyuYXuZIam7pk2JSSL-kGhn7-lYb7wHwyghQIb9Hsc_5cLyILtZIdp11WWVSYxMsOadb/s5184/630%20Dey%20Street.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3025" data-original-width="5184" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0H2LZpl7sTa6GXJdm-lffY2zsBZx7a-pWoHqJwTh48QvyKyZfkX-DCUpPWKEzmY1tgfPVLeKvH6sb2BG3LBU0iJbuwTY1w3Yz_o_E2P37jbD2AJ76AFSaH1mPyuYXuZIam7pk2JSSL-kGhn7-lYb7wHwyghQIb9Hsc_5cLyILtZIdp11WWVSYxMsOadb/s320/630%20Dey%20Street.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p><b>(630 DEY STREET)</b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A beautiful house still stands at <b>630 Dey Street</b>. Now lemon-coloured, white-posted-and-fenced and
sky-blue-shuttered, this was Bishop’s home base for a short while in 1948. It belonged
to her older friend the philosopher John Dewey, a man she felt such deep
affection for that she compared him in letters to other loved persons in her
life, grandfather Bulmer and Marianne Moore. (Earlier, in the summer of 1946
during a few weeks in Canada, Bishop had visited Dewey for a day at his summer
house in Hubbards, Nova Scotia. For her poetry those weeks were crucial,
providing material for two of her masterpieces, “At the Fishhouses” and “The
Moose.”). I’m unsure whether it was Dewey or his physicist daughter, Jane, also
a friend of Bishop’s, who invited her to stay in the Dey Street house It was under its roof that she wrote her key
poem (no pun intended) “The Bight.” </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Another white house still stands at <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">611 Frances Street</b>; the address is by a door far back from the
sidewalk. Bishop rented an apartment there in the winter of 1948-1949 and seemed
pleased by its “screened porch up in a tree, & a view of endless waves of
tin roofs and palm trees.” One thing had come full circle: Mrs. Pindar, the
initial landlord of Bishop’s first Whitehead Street residence over a decade
earlier, also owned the Frances Street house.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf4v_w0nEX8ccMSKmn-Uf6X47ZoxXCrQTtapo5tw2iQDCGEfJ47VPU-3PzxBLE-PDMSGXPCWpWMbz9D4uTYuucwTgTfOq_SMC3-cxmbJammFuXIIGDpN4Osn2fp6sWJXysGJ-oHA3x4exrIbHn4avToT5sPp2JBs0KWNgfUNGL2l_K8XlFDlOG_vuW56TL/s5184/611%20Frances%20St.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="5184" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf4v_w0nEX8ccMSKmn-Uf6X47ZoxXCrQTtapo5tw2iQDCGEfJ47VPU-3PzxBLE-PDMSGXPCWpWMbz9D4uTYuucwTgTfOq_SMC3-cxmbJammFuXIIGDpN4Osn2fp6sWJXysGJ-oHA3x4exrIbHn4avToT5sPp2JBs0KWNgfUNGL2l_K8XlFDlOG_vuW56TL/s320/611%20Frances%20St.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p><b>(611 FRANCES STREET)</b></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>A day after my self-directed walking tour, my wife and I
visited the Key West bight, the inspiration for “The Bight.” That poem is of
special significance in that it concludes with the lines later carved into its
author’s gravestone: “All the untidy activity continues, / awful but cheerful.”
During our stroll around the site, boats of many kinds rested in the water, including
one emblazoned with the name FURY; palm trees shook in the wind; a gathering of
uniformed police bought ice-cream cones and stared at them while talking; and a
wall was plastered with hundreds of small informational items, advertisements,
announcements and political pronouncements (recall Bishop’s line “The bight is
littered with old correspondences”). I imagined that the kind of day Bishop
described in her poem was more commercially and visually hectic than our
introduction to the bight.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUghIsgAD3WP-jspJUlwbz2NWgGI8thyeHyH_HBTpV2hum1GcuF2liUzwLmX1d19Bl4KuJrbaZQDqqJkAtyqnsAgGUHJND0SY2VOwi-aLT82u_ozZDI_MxxN4L9_ekaJrpZC6TTCzOP0mZWMowx-KSq6QBFg_nU5oXq_CSc6tdgKr9ZWS6QHKnTLZREtU/s5184/Bight.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="5184" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUghIsgAD3WP-jspJUlwbz2NWgGI8thyeHyH_HBTpV2hum1GcuF2liUzwLmX1d19Bl4KuJrbaZQDqqJkAtyqnsAgGUHJND0SY2VOwi-aLT82u_ozZDI_MxxN4L9_ekaJrpZC6TTCzOP0mZWMowx-KSq6QBFg_nU5oXq_CSc6tdgKr9ZWS6QHKnTLZREtU/s320/Bight.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>(THE BIGHT)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Many roosters roam the streets of Key West. We heard that the
city appears to have something of a love-hate relationship with the birds. A special bonus on my solo touring of the
city with Bishop in mind was an encounter with an extraordinary rooster. Its feathers
ranged from white to yellow and gold, from rust to red, from navy blue to paler
blue inflected with purple. It was an entertaining fantasy to imagine Bishop
encountering such a rooster in 1941 on that very street before writing
“Roosters,” her biting satire of militarism and macho pride.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8McNrmpIRC7ylk-iTtuLJXjXQNKYSf9kEqRvEvk88gdgt1jM1MsxgyVBZTnpht8JbvXYOUypcNp2qEPADUFBPn6j7R1DiW4ClHYYmTspqvf77S-AqpLmkCLVuXUAVz-n1sNmLGZx1b9nIoeho6x_pICd5wGpwh_A8B0QvaVTGiiHalyck2rtcs_8HDyGQ/s3973/Rooster.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3973" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8McNrmpIRC7ylk-iTtuLJXjXQNKYSf9kEqRvEvk88gdgt1jM1MsxgyVBZTnpht8JbvXYOUypcNp2qEPADUFBPn6j7R1DiW4ClHYYmTspqvf77S-AqpLmkCLVuXUAVz-n1sNmLGZx1b9nIoeho6x_pICd5wGpwh_A8B0QvaVTGiiHalyck2rtcs_8HDyGQ/s320/Rooster.jpg" width="278" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>(ROOSTER)</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In the honeymoon phase of Bishop’s attachment to Key West,
she suggested in a letter that she hoped it “will be my permanent home some
day.” Her search for suitable places for her writing to thrive, her
restlessness and curiosity, her economic needs, health troubles and complicated
relationships prevented her from ever finding a place to settle into for
decades. After Key West, she spent periods of widely varied durations in New
York, Maine, Rio de Janeiro, Samambaia, Ouro Preto, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston.
Even spending a few hours in Key West, however, can give a heightened sense of
why she might’ve dreamt of the island as a place to stay. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In the context of literary pilgrimages, I didn’t travel to
southern Florida primarily to visit a poet’s houses. Above all, the journey was
a chance to visit a friend, explore the Everglades and the area around Vero
Beach, and see first-hand the breathtaking biodiversity of southern Florida,
despite great diminishments in its natural environments over the past century.
Our excitements included hours in the presence of palms and mangroves (multiple
species of both), herons and egrets and ibises (multiple species), spoonbills
and cranes, vultures and anhingas, manatees and alligators. Back home in Nova
Scotia before the end of January, I found new resonances in Bishop’s
“Seascape,” with its “white herons got up as angels, / flying as high as they
want and as far as they want sideways,” and “the suggestively Gothic arches of
the mangrove roots.” It’s easy to imagine that Bishop, so drawn to Florida’s natural
spaces, would’ve been pleased that a reader of her poetry spent much more time
gazing at unfamiliar flora and fauna than standing on sidewalks outside her Key
West residences. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">_______________________________________<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Biographical details in this essay derive from Elizabeth Bishop,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One Art: Letters</i>, ed. Robert Giroux
(Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994); Brent C. Millier, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It</i> (U of California P,
1993); Thomas Travisano, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Unknown:
The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop</i> (Viking, 2019). <o:p></o:p></p>
(Ed.'s Note: A heartfelt thank you to Brian for this fascinating look at Key West. He will be giving a talk about this place and his visit during the EBSNS 30th anniversary celebration in Great Village in June 2024. You can click onto the images to enlarge.)Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-64894636561693654022024-02-08T07:28:00.001-04:002024-02-08T07:28:55.031-04:00Interest in Elizabeth Bishop stronger than ever -- and HAPPY BIRTHDAY EB!<p style="text-align: justify;">On this day
113 years ago, Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, MA. Her stature as one
of the most important American poets of the 20<sup>th</sup> century remains
solid. Last fall, Vassar College mounted an exhibit, <a href="https://library.vassar.edu/blog/Elizabeth-Bishops-Postcards-An-Exhibition">“Elizabeth Bishop’s Postcards,”</a> that received <a href="https://www.ronslate.com/i-see-a-postman-everywhere-elizabeth-bishops-postcards/">glowing reviews in major literary journals</a>. We
understand that a number of venues have expressed interest in hosting this
exhibit in the future. A full-dress biography is in the works by the American
Merrill biographer <a href="https://english.yale.edu/people/tenured-and-tenure-track-faculty-professors/langdon-hammer">Langdon Hammer</a>. The <i><a href="https://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_BLS.html">Bishop-Lowell Studies</a></i>, an
academic journal dedicated to fostering scholarship about Bishop and Robert Lowell
has been publishing for several years. And the <a href="https://elizabethbishopsociety.org/">Elizabeth Bishop Society</a> in the
U.S. continues to connect Bishop scholars around the world. The <a href="https://www.kwls.org/bishop/">Elizabeth Bishop House in Key West</a> is being restored and will be come the headquarters of
the Key West Literary Seminar. This June will see a <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/elizabeth-bishop-in-glasgow-a-symposium-tickets-772839723417?aff=oddtdtcreator">symposium about her taking place in Glasgow, Scotland</a>. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">On a more
local level, the <a href="https://elizabethbishopns.org/">Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia</a> turns 30 this year and
there will be activities marking this milestone in Great Village in June. And
the Elizabeth Bishop House in the village continues to welcome writers and
artists as a place of retreat and a venue for readings and workshops.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As
information about the EBSNS events unfold, we will post them here and on our
other social media.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span>HAPPY
BIRTHDAY ELIZABETH BISHOP!</i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJTB4FAAIuX40rIMmAtR5TyeVfxyx3VIsNmHZMXptd1L4lNd3Y3t6-jBxmeGLgS6_R2QSFbr-ZNZYkMhZATYOe55QRghgORem1xvZEqsjVGY7EE3m6H8w86GvkP4yufOPuZnXyj3z19h-4hWQDK-gJVOlKurWK6GV4SeoznWfm_VZhohYyybeh8IUqN2wA/s1966/EB%201916%20--%20Sponagle%20portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1966" data-original-width="1484" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJTB4FAAIuX40rIMmAtR5TyeVfxyx3VIsNmHZMXptd1L4lNd3Y3t6-jBxmeGLgS6_R2QSFbr-ZNZYkMhZATYOe55QRghgORem1xvZEqsjVGY7EE3m6H8w86GvkP4yufOPuZnXyj3z19h-4hWQDK-gJVOlKurWK6GV4SeoznWfm_VZhohYyybeh8IUqN2wA/s320/EB%201916%20--%20Sponagle%20portrait.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Elizabeth Bishop circa 1916. Photograph by <a href="https://elizabethbishopcentenary.blogspot.com/2010/09/nova-scotia-connections-picture-worth.html">J.E. Sponagle</a>.)</b></div><p></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-31783438373217163392023-11-28T07:59:00.001-04:002023-11-28T07:59:57.409-04:00Elizabeth Bishop in Glasgow: A Symposium (26th to 28th June 2024) Early Announcement and Call for Papers<p style="text-align: justify;">The University of Glasgow, <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/arts/">College of Arts & Humanities</a>,
is delighted to welcome the 2024 Elizabeth Bishop Symposium to our beautiful, historic
and friendly city. Following on from similar events in Oxford, Paris and
Sheffield, Elizabeth Bishop in Glasgow provides an opportunity both to hear
about recent and emerging work in Bishop Studies, and to consider Bishop’s
writing in a Scottish Atlantic context – a legacy that helped to shape the
history and culture of Great Village, Nova Scotia, Bishop’s maternal family
home and her imaginative lodestone. Bishop was familiar from childhood with the
poetry of Robert Burns (and had editions of his work in her adult library); our
Symposium will consider the influence of Burns – and of other Scottish writers
and artists – on Bishop’s writing. And it will ask, in turn, about Bishop’s
influence on her successors in Scotland up to the present day. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Confirmed speakers include Professor Langdon Hammer (Yale
University) and Victoria Fox (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Elizabeth Bishop in Glasgow is open to anyone with an
interest in Bishop’s life, work and reception; in modern poetry; in Scottish
and American literature and culture, in the Scottish Atlantic and in related
fields. We welcome proposals for short papers (c. 20 minutes) or other forms of
participation on these and related themes. Other areas of focus might include
(but are not limited to): </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Boundaries</p><p class="MsoNormal">Travel and walking</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The North<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Mystery<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bishop’s correspondence<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Religion, Protestantism, the Bible<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Language: Gaelic and Scots<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Music, Scottish Song, hymns<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Diaspora<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Atlantic<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Trade<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Scottish Atlantic slavery<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Publishing history<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Visual culture<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bishop’s contemporaries<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bishop’s influence<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bishop in / and translation<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Gender and sexuality<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Robert Burns, Alexander Selkirk, Thomas and Jane Carlyle </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Please send brief proposals for papers, panels (3
contributors) or other forms of participation to: <a href="mailto:vp-arts@glasgow.ac.uk">vp-arts@glasgow.ac.uk</a> by MONDAY 15th
JANUARY 2024. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Location: Elizabeth Bishop in Glasgow will take place in the
James McCune Smith Building on the University of Glasgow’s main (Gilmorehill)
campus in the lively West End of Glasgow and will open on the morning of Weds
26th June and close after lunch on Fri 28th . The booking page will open
shortly. There will be time in the programme to visit the Hunterian Art
Gallery, the Hunterian Museum or the Charles Rennie Mackintosh House. The
campus is easily accessible by bus or subway from the city centre and there are
hotels, guesthouses and restaurants close by.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>For further information about the campus, visitor
attractions, accessibility information and transport links see: University of
Glasgow - Explore. For details about the city of Glasgow, including
accommodation, things to see and do, and where to eat, see: <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/explore/">Visit Glasgow</a> -
hotels and accommodation - <a href="https://peoplemakeglasgow.com/good-to-know/hotels-and-accommodation">People Make Glasgow</a> and for information about the
rest of Scotland, see: Accommodation in Scotland - Plan Your Stay |
<a href="https://www.visitscotland.com/accommodation">VisitScotland</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Organisers and Steering Group: Jo Gill (University of
Glasgow); Jonathan Ellis (University of Sheffield); Angus Cleghorn (Seneca
College); Bethany Hicok (Williams College); Tom Travisano (Hartwick College).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-11277083832864757582023-11-08T09:47:00.001-04:002023-11-28T08:00:37.454-04:00Kafka, Bishop and Literary Pilgrimage: A response to Elana Wolff’s Faithfully Seeking Franz<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSPC4QT2H5Q2oMdXmYFg76ebYsuPz4_UAOERxncfLvzL-NEAuLGTzsJR7qTj56RRMVD6C_h6ZR70zgChmT2vold4rSwNj15vn4Q8hT0hqWlw-Y11uBhVAAO0ZFk5K18jOZhIBO991dsHeJvFoKLmN_TaVLxdHIERlTtT1jl6TiTyTOT81SEb_6Cjon6Y6I/s900/Cover%20jpg.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSPC4QT2H5Q2oMdXmYFg76ebYsuPz4_UAOERxncfLvzL-NEAuLGTzsJR7qTj56RRMVD6C_h6ZR70zgChmT2vold4rSwNj15vn4Q8hT0hqWlw-Y11uBhVAAO0ZFk5K18jOZhIBO991dsHeJvFoKLmN_TaVLxdHIERlTtT1jl6TiTyTOT81SEb_6Cjon6Y6I/s320/Cover%20jpg.webp" width="213" /></a></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“Should we
have stayed at home and thought of here? / </span><span lang="EN-US">Where
should we be today?” </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> Elizabeth Bishop, “Questions of
Travel”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">Sometime in
the late 1990s, I was sitting in Trident café in downtown Halifax with the
writer and broadcaster Jane Kansas and a young friend of hers, whose name I
forget. Jane and I were having a lively conversation about our literary
passions </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> hers: the American writer Harper
Lee; mine: Elizabeth Bishop (“3/4ths Nova Scotian and 1/4th New Englander,” or
a “herring-choker Bluenoser,” as Bishop described herself to Anne Stevenson).
As I remember the conversation, it was animated, with a lot of talk about
original sources, such as letters; and also about going to places that were
important to these writers. The young friend sat quietly listening to us until
at one point she blurted out, in a rather disgusted tone, “You are literary
stalkers.” We paused and looked at her. I was surprised by this
characterization, but as I thought about it, I couldn’t discount the
assessment. I had already made several Bishop pilgrimages (Great Village,
Vassar College, Worcester) and was mining her letters and archival documents
for information about her life. Jane and I argued that what we were doing
wasn’t intrusive, rather an honouring </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> not an invasion of privacy </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> but of course on some level it was. Harper Lee (still alive then) was a
known recluse. Bishop, long dead, was regarded as a very private person, having
once declared to a friend she perferred “closets, closets and more closets.” (OB
327) I have never forgotten that conversation and have endeavoured ever since
to conduct my research and writing about Bishop in the most respectful manner.
Not sure that made what I did any less objectionable, but I took solace in
knowing that Bishop herself was keenly interested in the lives of the writers
she read.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span lang="EN-US">In a 1964
letter to Anne Stevenson, Bishop wrote: “I went to see O Processo </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> “The Trial” </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> which is absolutely <i>dreadful</i>.
Have you seen it? I haven’t read the book for ages </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> but in spite
of the morbidity of Kafka, etc. I like to remember that when he read his
stories out loud to his friends he used to have to stop because he got to
laughing so. All the way through the film I kept thinking that any of Buster
Keaton’s films give one the sense of tragedy of the human situation, the
weirdness of it all, the pathos of man’s trying to do the right thing </span><span lang="EN-US">—</span><span lang="EN-US"> all in a twinkling, besides being <i>fun</i> </span><span lang="EN-US">— all the very things poor Orson Welles was trying desperately to
illustrate by laying it on with a trowel.” (PPL 864)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">While Bishop said she
wasn’t a fan of “German art,” its “heaviness,” she had been a reader of Kafka
since her adolescence. In a 1949 letter to Robert Lowell, she noted: “I’m glad
you like ‘In Prison.’ I had only read The Castle of Kafka when I wrote it, and
that long before, so I don’t know where it [her story] came from.” (OA 182) And
in a 1958 letter again to Lowell, writing about her response to some “short
instrumental pieces” by Webern she had just heard, she noted how much she liked
them, “That strange kind of modesty that I think one feels in almost everything
contemporary one really likes — Kafka, say, or Marianne [Moore], or even Eliot,
and Klee and Kokoschka and Schwitters … Modesty, care, <i>space</i>, a sort of
helplessness but determination at the same time.” (WIA 250)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As noted above, Bishop
was interested in the lives of the artists she admired, so I can’t help but
think she would find the new book by Toronto writer Elana Wolff, <a href="https://guernicaeditions.com/products/faithfully-seeking-franz"><i>Faithfully
Seeking Franz</i>, intriguing. Just published by Guernica Editions</a>, Wolff’s
book is a collection of poems and prose pieces about her search for Kafka in
the places that were significant to him. I can certainly appreciate such a
compulsion. So when this book came to hand, I was keen to read it. I have
enjoyed every page. Each journey, encounter and account conveys not mere
“compulsion” but deep, abiding and respectful dedication, devotion even, to
understanding the meaning of Kafka’s work, Kafka’s life in his work, Kafka’s
impact on posterity, especially on the young woman who read first <i>The Castle</i>
and took its impact with her for the rest of her life, following in the
footsteps of a compelling mystery: </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Yet having taken steps the author took; steps his ciphers, stand-ins,
and characters also took; in seeing and feeling convergences of life and art on
location, in company with M., in triangulation with ‘atemporal-aspatial’ Kafka,
through signs, signals, messages, indications and ‘visitations’ — through
these, the experience of reading has become heightened and deepened, ‘lived
into’. Questing has whetted the appetite for more. I’ve become compulsively recursive
in my search. I can’t settle. (263)</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As a fellow pilgrim, I
could identify with every word of this passage. The identifier in Bishop’s work
would be from “Sandpiper”: “poor bird, he is obsessed.” But I prefer to call it
passionate, and Elana Wolff’s passion unfolds in the most delightful, insightful,
unexpected ways. We follow her footsteps and in so doing, not only learn about
Kafka, but also begin to understand what the power of art really is.
Connection, coincidence, conundrum: all are experiences along the way; and
accompanying it all: questions, surprising revelations, satisfying and
disappointing conclusions. Such is life itself.</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In a world filled with
chaos and violence and uncertainty, art matters. How so is such a complex and
mysterious condition that it cannot be distilled or confined. Wolff never tries
to delimit this mystery, even as she charts borders and boundaries (geographical, physiological, aesthetic, existential). One of the many things I admire about <i>Faithfully
Seeking Franz</i> is its “Un-endness” (261):</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Invisible and thin and
free,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">as baffling as Kafka —<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">whose rendering of
difficult things<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">was easier for him, it
seems to me,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">than birthing breath.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Will teachers of any persuasion
contravene me? (285)</p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-7295311987336334282023-09-20T09:43:00.000-03:002023-09-20T09:43:23.151-03:00Key West Sketches now available<p><span style="font-size: medium;">The folks of the Key West Literary Seminar have some news to share:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUy2npswDdtBFbUGpMgHQTHNRl960dhLSEmQcfDm_MBXK-OTlGwrMpJr11tXswZC0MYDQ915O-eLMyiXvAosczgYDdUDqII6tbEvGKEr9XrGZ1A4xWru0Sv7nb6y5h6seytlKbZ_BZAga3LK0Rm5XMTVW6uVR0XucQL5M_AePeLwZEFqzR5YWjFSjvp3i/s800/Key%20West%20collection%20September%202023.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUy2npswDdtBFbUGpMgHQTHNRl960dhLSEmQcfDm_MBXK-OTlGwrMpJr11tXswZC0MYDQ915O-eLMyiXvAosczgYDdUDqII6tbEvGKEr9XrGZ1A4xWru0Sv7nb6y5h6seytlKbZ_BZAga3LK0Rm5XMTVW6uVR0XucQL5M_AePeLwZEFqzR5YWjFSjvp3i/s320/Key%20West%20collection%20September%202023.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: rgb(248, 248, 241); color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;">We are thrilled to announce the publication of </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><a href="https://kwls.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=679e3544090644e82d709ebf2&id=17fe5bb10b&e=0bf9c955f0" target="_blank" title="https://kwls.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=679e3544090644e82d709ebf2&id=17fe5bb10b&e=0bf9c955f0"><em><span style="background: rgb(248, 248, 241); border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #37b2a3; font-family: Georgia, serif; padding: 0cm;">Key West
Sketches: Writers at Mile Zero</span></em></a></span><span style="background: rgb(248, 248, 241); color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;">, a new anthology out today
from Blair. Edited by <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Carey
Winfrey</span></strong>, the former editor-in-chief of <em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Smithsonian</span></em> magazine
and longtime KWLS board member, the 250-page volume tracks Key West's
extraordinary and eclectic literary history. The book's many treasures
include <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Thomas McGuane's</span></strong> account
of a long-ago dinner with <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Tennessee
Williams</span></strong>; <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Elizabeth
Bishop's</span></strong> description of Key West folk painter <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Gregorio Valdes</span></strong>; <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Joy Williams</span></strong> on <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Ernest Hemingway</span></strong> in Key
West; and <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Judy Blume's</span></strong> real-life
story of becoming a bookstore owner-operator at the end of the road. There are
poems by <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Billy Collins</span></strong> and <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">James Merrill</span></strong>; heart-rending
recollections of <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Harry
Mathews</span></strong> by <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Ann
Beattie</span></strong>; <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Richard
Wilbur</span></strong> by <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Phyllis
Rose</span></strong>; and <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">David
Wolkowsky</span></strong> by <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">William
Wright</span></strong>. And so much more, with contributions from <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Pico Iyer,</span></strong> <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Philip Caputo</span></strong>, <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Daniel Menaker</span></strong>, <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Brian Antoni</span></strong>, <strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Alison Lurie</span></strong>, and many others.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Not since the beloved </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">Key West Reader</span></em><span style="color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;">, published by the late </span><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">George
Murphy</span></strong><span style="color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;"> more than 30 years ago (and long out of print), has a
book so deftly captured and conveyed the literary culture of our
island city. This book has enough genius and wit to fill a volume ten
times its size. Carey Winfrey has made an enormous contribution to Key West's
rich life of letters.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background: rgb(248, 248, 241); color: #002020; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">If that weren't enough reason to go out and buy
this wonderful book, Winfrey has generously donated 100% of his royalties to
support the Elizabeth Bishop House. Click on any of the images or links
below to</span><a href="https://kwls.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=679e3544090644e82d709ebf2&id=d169aa5c72&e=0bf9c955f0" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #37b2a3; padding: 0cm;"> buy
your copies of </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #37b2a3; padding: 0cm; text-decoration-line: none;">Key West Sketches</span></em><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #37b2a3; padding: 0cm;"> from
Books & Books</span></a><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">.</span></div></span><o:p></o:p><p></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-65095422418921682732023-09-08T11:00:00.004-03:002023-09-08T11:00:42.308-03:00A stay in the Elizabeth Bishop House<p style="text-align: justify;">My sister
and I were fortunate to spend a week at the EB House from 21 to 26 August. What
a privilege it was to be back in the village for a sojourn that included lots
of company and visiting with friends, who we see seldomly these days, and to
sit for long stretches on the verandah and watch the big sky, the lush green meadow.
We saw lots of birds and deer. We are deeply grateful to Laurie Gunn and the
St. James Church of Great Village Preservation Society. They are looking after
the house so well and it is wonderful to know that writers and artists from all
over still get to stay there. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I will
admit that my heart aches whenever I drive into the village and see that the
piercing steeple of the church is gone. Well, it now sits quietly beside the
building which once it topped, anchored by concrete blocks, its beautiful lightning
rod so much closer to the ground. Life is change, but some changes are <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>harder to come to terms with than others. How
I wish that the funds could be found to replace and restore it, but that would
require a significant effort and expense, I am sure. I am glad to see that the
steeple is still appreciated, and occupying a prominent spot under a canopy of
trees.</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Here are a
few photos taken by my sister, Brenda Barry, during our visit.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXhcbJUsdIXfIu3ukqTnVq25y63-Kvtz8ric3JX3bR5RWSGOUQ6VRu7mwI9-LXYsukhqaqQnvzKYnxMPvmSmbOO577xSGm-eraWNFfWOVAH4ZxRZKG_NFxFB8RkMp0_zJOoaLHx7oLfYsbEEbn5taEP_xysP8tmzATNye9vbfOzDeQfDkhLgrLF6ValDEa/s4608/IMG_6569.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXhcbJUsdIXfIu3ukqTnVq25y63-Kvtz8ric3JX3bR5RWSGOUQ6VRu7mwI9-LXYsukhqaqQnvzKYnxMPvmSmbOO577xSGm-eraWNFfWOVAH4ZxRZKG_NFxFB8RkMp0_zJOoaLHx7oLfYsbEEbn5taEP_xysP8tmzATNye9vbfOzDeQfDkhLgrLF6ValDEa/s320/IMG_6569.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(View from the look off on Hustler Hill.)</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwLRlPge8unUgPnbRrtNa9IODGKo7IFOEn8-DtfN8n-a8gxIYnFioiYkKHVqcpWyNrf8a_HZqjiNtQFs0mV6dWmWY2mMURnlEVaO-GfaEe3NUf1VZSxYf751szVMtmBLLHc33WXqh7uOlKc3bdL756OZ4r4JjqXokQpoy_Xm-tp4P5kvfxWKnMFU2fB-Od/s4608/IMG_6501.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwLRlPge8unUgPnbRrtNa9IODGKo7IFOEn8-DtfN8n-a8gxIYnFioiYkKHVqcpWyNrf8a_HZqjiNtQFs0mV6dWmWY2mMURnlEVaO-GfaEe3NUf1VZSxYf751szVMtmBLLHc33WXqh7uOlKc3bdL756OZ4r4JjqXokQpoy_Xm-tp4P5kvfxWKnMFU2fB-Od/s320/IMG_6501.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><b>(The anchored steeple.)</b><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh13tLfWjYahAJ-IChXvgHOnm31YPVpn5OqGIUs8kCZQUdoDULDxCp0hWN5BYi9CTZxGM9n-AIxeRo5Q4suwvsJMzlIyuWMEtHtqDoM58AsCX968SNdDQ7YX2Dl3nu8H1dc06_s2DCl226DpSHrB3_dz1sy-uuvV2rbYwFOJsXZGkbEb129J_c1iff2Fdbt/s4608/IMG_6439.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh13tLfWjYahAJ-IChXvgHOnm31YPVpn5OqGIUs8kCZQUdoDULDxCp0hWN5BYi9CTZxGM9n-AIxeRo5Q4suwvsJMzlIyuWMEtHtqDoM58AsCX968SNdDQ7YX2Dl3nu8H1dc06_s2DCl226DpSHrB3_dz1sy-uuvV2rbYwFOJsXZGkbEb129J_c1iff2Fdbt/s320/IMG_6439.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><b>(An evening view from the verandah.)<br /></b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKkiXsCw_AXi2R85VLprQH6MrO0atLXJ0CQatDMeI1INC8kTnLDVoJ7uzF2_2JzvfybHEUHIsWXI5hXFvSMhvK_HeYbtEDRqygop3B8IWoNB9AsozvJQIWRUs2YIG3UPBC7skFfDU96gIPCUubpxqEBC7pKp5x6bK84Sv2brbEL5KgRGBPsNSlYfpLtydP/s4608/IMG_6507.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKkiXsCw_AXi2R85VLprQH6MrO0atLXJ0CQatDMeI1INC8kTnLDVoJ7uzF2_2JzvfybHEUHIsWXI5hXFvSMhvK_HeYbtEDRqygop3B8IWoNB9AsozvJQIWRUs2YIG3UPBC7skFfDU96gIPCUubpxqEBC7pKp5x6bK84Sv2brbEL5KgRGBPsNSlYfpLtydP/s320/IMG_6507.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Sitting on the verandah with a friend, Greg Riley.)</b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFh77djnUR8wiSj1k29NFWM4aPDFchPZXT0Y1qvdCaam4DFE18G9eFyCy1IaNbQzmufWBH8O2NEFrw52BNOr32iRfbGT6VZLiDlAaHiWoEIauLYCD5h8Xw4tBi5MgAZocjUumTMWrY1X4XNtXz4H7W5-NYXv5MZv-h7nUMppgeVBkGKAJ5bDtZszyek6Pq/s4608/IMG_6545.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFh77djnUR8wiSj1k29NFWM4aPDFchPZXT0Y1qvdCaam4DFE18G9eFyCy1IaNbQzmufWBH8O2NEFrw52BNOr32iRfbGT6VZLiDlAaHiWoEIauLYCD5h8Xw4tBi5MgAZocjUumTMWrY1X4XNtXz4H7W5-NYXv5MZv-h7nUMppgeVBkGKAJ5bDtZszyek6Pq/s320/IMG_6545.JPG" width="320" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>(Canada Geese in the evening sky.)</b></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Gw-4r0OOySQMOQ4SLzcW_wCi6uOCe9PEEtbEVjutLJRPQbo34VeglOYiPePTMRHRI_kTkpfhLM12NeJa_qwC0Bpnu9U5vM-d2wkSnSrPLteOmFBfGrR_LQcx-NOKw1W4waxG96Nz6VSjVsDtADqxczAyVltFcMOP58I4wi6WeNikl41u2TMv4yXwzrRV/s4608/IMG_6556.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8Gw-4r0OOySQMOQ4SLzcW_wCi6uOCe9PEEtbEVjutLJRPQbo34VeglOYiPePTMRHRI_kTkpfhLM12NeJa_qwC0Bpnu9U5vM-d2wkSnSrPLteOmFBfGrR_LQcx-NOKw1W4waxG96Nz6VSjVsDtADqxczAyVltFcMOP58I4wi6WeNikl41u2TMv4yXwzrRV/s320/IMG_6556.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Waxing moon.)</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1f-VEUTHtTdMc3zTqXaeUNbbkt_dFKFBMpia2MoLimS3WYEEeD9KZRbjqemTGYSY7vl5zOWky7Rb9VqiBHs3Nyy93HG4ZdBoarc6nMIJtkYjb8scBv6YvOza2kAJqPRePkBnF7-I7tYrF61eecbhzKHEZVLxeP1kQpi6ptlb_BzS3BucAL6pLmUacr5DK/s4608/IMG_6469.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1f-VEUTHtTdMc3zTqXaeUNbbkt_dFKFBMpia2MoLimS3WYEEeD9KZRbjqemTGYSY7vl5zOWky7Rb9VqiBHs3Nyy93HG4ZdBoarc6nMIJtkYjb8scBv6YvOza2kAJqPRePkBnF7-I7tYrF61eecbhzKHEZVLxeP1kQpi6ptlb_BzS3BucAL6pLmUacr5DK/s320/IMG_6469.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(The EB corner in the library of the house.)</b></div>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-87740786517862421182023-09-02T08:46:00.000-03:002023-09-02T08:46:03.623-03:00<p><b>“Out
of the Ninth-Month Midnight”</b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In
memoriam, Flight 111 (2 September 1998)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Late
afternoon, wind off the land.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Mountainous
clouds backlit by sun.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The
water is quicksilver.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Systaltic
─ now and then, now and then.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The
harbour is a heart, whole<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and shattered,
held together,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">torn
apart by its own pulse ─<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the
circle of sun, the season,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the
millennium.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Suddenly,
two quivers of light<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">as
though far away has epitomized.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Plovers,
a pair, semipalmated,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">winter-ready,
rare<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">on
this bit of beach at the Point.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My
gaze caught on their bright white<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">airborne
bellies;<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I
follow them to the shoreline.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They
become stones.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Have
they come to answer the question<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I ask
of the Atlantic?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They
have come to rest in the midst<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">of
their imperative ─<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the
space between them<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">is the
moment between contractions<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">when
eternity relaxes<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and
the chambers of the world<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">fill
with silence.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With
my binoculars I see their dark<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">brown
eyes keeping watch,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the
single dark breast bands,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the
nearly all dark beaks.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So
still, so alert<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">they
are perfectly aware of survival’s<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">fragility.
They simply know<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">the
temperature of tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is
me who holds us<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">inside
a compass,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">a
dial; but there is no circumference<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">except
what I need to cradle<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">my
desperate longing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Time
is broken and mended<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">in
every breath, and the ocean<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">ticks
strangely in the blood...<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here,
on a September littoral,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">where
late afternoon sun slants seaward,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">with a
warm wind blowing off the land,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">on a
long journey between now and then,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">these
two together pause<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">because
life and death will not.</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglSjJFNGjsIK0NmUrHiIzMiYj1dq4K9EcrysaOBEyqVf9vCAFalP9svpUxAWcPGs2M2anZgBZDlZGh2gVMnZOkJ8JGYxxa00leoYSG6cm3NHDK_rcknMEMJ17vDAWhB1LN6WBUr22FTq-v-wL16aqUCebX9qxA617lApw8ObhvTTqrLLDNYPLQVIaCODOF/s4608/IMG_6556.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglSjJFNGjsIK0NmUrHiIzMiYj1dq4K9EcrysaOBEyqVf9vCAFalP9svpUxAWcPGs2M2anZgBZDlZGh2gVMnZOkJ8JGYxxa00leoYSG6cm3NHDK_rcknMEMJ17vDAWhB1LN6WBUr22FTq-v-wL16aqUCebX9qxA617lApw8ObhvTTqrLLDNYPLQVIaCODOF/s320/IMG_6556.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">(I wrote this poem years ago and had forgotten it until I was reminded that today is the 25th anniversary of the crash of Swiss Air 111 off the south coast of Nova Scotia. Much has happened in the world since that terrible night and its aftermath, but it behooves us to remember. The photo was taken by Brenda Barry in late August in Great Village, the waxing moon, several days before it became the Blue Super Full Moon on 31 August.)</div><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><br /></span><p></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-91255836008355248152023-07-11T06:58:00.001-03:002023-07-11T06:58:57.624-03:00Summer poetry reading at the EB House<p style="text-align: justify;">I had the
great privilege and honour to read with three exceptional poets on Saturday, 8
July 2023, in Great Village, N.S., at the Elizabeth Bishop House: <a href="https://www.dal.ca/faculty/agriculture/news-events/news/2020/09/18/rosaria_campbell_retirement.html">Rosaria Campbell</a>, <a href="https://kaylagwrites.com/">Kalya Geitzler</a> and <a href="https://writers.ns.ca/member/margo-wheaton/">Margo Wheaton.</a> Over 25 people attended – a lively
gathering if ever there was one. I hope everyone had as nice a time as I did. I
am so grateful that once again such in person convegences are possible. Ever so
uplifting to meet with friends and strangers and share poetry, especially in
such a beloved setting as the EB House. Here are a few photos of the event. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwxoyzxUmdvqKZQHgNIhWY2JbFwVOhAA1xHAmSIKJkVoTPjyqubIqcxxli9nOGoAGyAvN83r0h0NnhMKekIw2n9Q76fVI2XaYpe2OAXdRm4Y2u4vjLaS9zS_CM2tLNITpv2rDF279yOBqKwFD2hypo-Nwv_pSt0IiM1nWdp81nkmjceouTFCWiz3Z_9Nvi/s4000/IMG_0052.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwxoyzxUmdvqKZQHgNIhWY2JbFwVOhAA1xHAmSIKJkVoTPjyqubIqcxxli9nOGoAGyAvN83r0h0NnhMKekIw2n9Q76fVI2XaYpe2OAXdRm4Y2u4vjLaS9zS_CM2tLNITpv2rDF279yOBqKwFD2hypo-Nwv_pSt0IiM1nWdp81nkmjceouTFCWiz3Z_9Nvi/s320/IMG_0052.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p>(Gathering in the dining room of the EB House. </o:p></span>Photo by Brenda Barry)</div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZfgwWw8MzmG0YQTLxP_1HsLAuQ80OB5KRhEGfjcPdCPi4iGkkG4UrpaVBs6yozRgsH7lfjcKz3D2f2dhaNgZ_xVNIJe_Na3Qv9rffBa5C42MV4oScLabKRiWSS0tNtjk_mczoSt4VpB3lA3PZW1707BbSA-ovh9AM1rsNxYLNriAVSNjEJla8jn3pu0p/s4000/IMG_0059.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZfgwWw8MzmG0YQTLxP_1HsLAuQ80OB5KRhEGfjcPdCPi4iGkkG4UrpaVBs6yozRgsH7lfjcKz3D2f2dhaNgZ_xVNIJe_Na3Qv9rffBa5C42MV4oScLabKRiWSS0tNtjk_mczoSt4VpB3lA3PZW1707BbSA-ovh9AM1rsNxYLNriAVSNjEJla8jn3pu0p/s320/IMG_0059.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">(Rosaria
Campbell reading. Photo by Brenda Barry.)<span style="text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIz38gojmQBEIcpeDAtIx5co8Ho73hV7wbsXgqg4T0s01GVz6HfUl2hAvh4GbJ24cSDcaP6WqGpI_frgpVODnjNlwTvIdfMiOPJCSAOKhJSeygtxYlYE-2yPbr58aWK-PTTFmKYtDT2Q_wgOGHY_4yl1_IJ7nNpbiTBNoUayJbwBcnr0zgZzqaWR7nzcYQ/s4000/IMG_0065.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIz38gojmQBEIcpeDAtIx5co8Ho73hV7wbsXgqg4T0s01GVz6HfUl2hAvh4GbJ24cSDcaP6WqGpI_frgpVODnjNlwTvIdfMiOPJCSAOKhJSeygtxYlYE-2yPbr58aWK-PTTFmKYtDT2Q_wgOGHY_4yl1_IJ7nNpbiTBNoUayJbwBcnr0zgZzqaWR7nzcYQ/s320/IMG_0065.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">(Kayla
Geitzler reading. Photo by Brenda Barry)<span style="text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWoKV9-SUThGEbz2mqwgxF55IhwYX0F01owbcgPK46_hUT7c3G3_5c8MRd9gN2Emi_7rES41N0HwmxPnbDAo2h91Zn-zCZSRMOx1AZBANowGODV0PVGXPoNmWiKVE-YYd_ha55sPALza0-98giXUo5PJNisAo1AMqwDbJkj9DIC45bm8FKOlFwmyGfb4oZ/s4000/IMG_0071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWoKV9-SUThGEbz2mqwgxF55IhwYX0F01owbcgPK46_hUT7c3G3_5c8MRd9gN2Emi_7rES41N0HwmxPnbDAo2h91Zn-zCZSRMOx1AZBANowGODV0PVGXPoNmWiKVE-YYd_ha55sPALza0-98giXUo5PJNisAo1AMqwDbJkj9DIC45bm8FKOlFwmyGfb4oZ/s320/IMG_0071.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">(<a href="https://writers.ns.ca/author-spotlight/author-spotlight-margo-wheaton/">Margo Wheaton</a> reading. Photo by Brenda Barry)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXkxWlsCex8GxjXOj_164vKQRDI7S1blwaRFNFRJOsqK_LLgvsErP6ESZycXJxeMBegXIK-apgr-a1j1UebcqBSoaKGyHeTltQ5MVdebIDr7uMM99KsOWdq7k1QKuRVa44GPS-E48I7Jf9avaaAbbpcRe293BnYxIGT-3bZjklwTTCj2A9Bsx5jJ1At57F/s2016/GV%20reading%208%20July%202023%203.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXkxWlsCex8GxjXOj_164vKQRDI7S1blwaRFNFRJOsqK_LLgvsErP6ESZycXJxeMBegXIK-apgr-a1j1UebcqBSoaKGyHeTltQ5MVdebIDr7uMM99KsOWdq7k1QKuRVa44GPS-E48I7Jf9avaaAbbpcRe293BnYxIGT-3bZjklwTTCj2A9Bsx5jJ1At57F/s320/GV%20reading%208%20July%202023%203.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">The quartet
on the verandah of the EB House.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">Standing: Kayla and Rosaria; seated: Margo and
Sandra</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">(Photo by Roxanne Smith)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-53004080479448278342023-06-22T07:17:00.004-03:002023-06-22T07:17:41.083-03:00Poetry reading at Elizabeth Bishop House<p> On Saturday 8 July, a poetry reading will take place at the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, N.S. The poets reading are Sandra Barry, Rosaria Campbell, Kayla Geitzler and Margo Wheaton. Learn more about the reading on its <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/654548192814601/?acontext=%7B%22ref%22%3A%2252%22%2C%22action_history%22%3A%22[%7B%5C%22surface%5C%22%3A%5C%22share_link%5C%22%2C%5C%22mechanism%5C%22%3A%5C%22share_link%5C%22%2C%5C%22extra_data%5C%22%3A%7B%5C%22invite_link_id%5C%22%3A2558966600908562%7D%7D]%22%7D">Facebook event page</a>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR74vSy90EmS9ZP7A3ENWXHQY7F-D52pJlu6ptTpbjIJmTWLNT73Af_yk36OgNsDSsQybTIMVTrhvYyUXlRH8NOwq_imbbWu6PiakVcjJ75QgDmHFu564YjGWT3qt2IpMv-EdauaZ4g2ubPY_3t11J6av3eLiqMxJBaOOHqOIF7Mk4cV3fQh9kEWbkKP5B/s2304/EB%20House%20Event%20Poster%20final%20(1).png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2304" data-original-width="1728" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR74vSy90EmS9ZP7A3ENWXHQY7F-D52pJlu6ptTpbjIJmTWLNT73Af_yk36OgNsDSsQybTIMVTrhvYyUXlRH8NOwq_imbbWu6PiakVcjJ75QgDmHFu564YjGWT3qt2IpMv-EdauaZ4g2ubPY_3t11J6av3eLiqMxJBaOOHqOIF7Mk4cV3fQh9kEWbkKP5B/w357-h476/EB%20House%20Event%20Poster%20final%20(1).png" width="357" /></a></div>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-47670062662519414602023-06-19T10:50:00.001-03:002023-06-19T10:52:35.904-03:00EBSNS holds its 2023 Annual General Meeting in Great Village, N.S.<p style="text-align: justify;">For the
first time in its history, the EBSNS held its AGM in the Elizabeth Bishop
House. A merry band of 20 members and guests gathered for a lively afternoon of
business, an uplifting presentation and delicious treats. You can read the
minutes and see other documents connected to the business side of things on the
<a href="https://elizabethbishopns.org/events-projects/">EBSNS website</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The highlight
of the afternoon was a fascinating presentation by writer Rita Wilson and
illustrator Emma FitzGerald, who collaborated on <i>A Pocket of Time: The
Poetic Childhood of Elizabeth Bishop</i>, published by Nimbus Publishing in
2019. They shared rich descriptions and details of their respective creative
processes, which lead to a timeless book about Bishop’s childhood in Great
Village. The assembled sat with rapt attention as both artists shared the
often surprising path that brought the book into being. The location was perfect
for the presentation, as the book is set mostly in the house. We all felt the
magic of being in the place that meant so much to Bishop. After the presentation,
Rita and Emma conducted an exercise with the audience, having them draw
pictures connected to memories of childhood. Lots of questions were asked that
generated lively discussion.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b>Here are a
few photos of the gathering.</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ2eXuhTqqCVf-u3M44S49mhs5uf17iJspume8Ehvg_M7ddyqv_YaHZwtzWTojWjaPdFyBx7IqkA60nw_fg2SD0dWcUWQTb5Vt38ChNQCQegI7fJD_oANZIJUSUcbHaR6s7EOudRki-1c4TyE1_y9u8WcXSW4WQVGTTlNm__d2fho5SgHAQqQSax1TU5MJ/s4000/IMG_9965.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ2eXuhTqqCVf-u3M44S49mhs5uf17iJspume8Ehvg_M7ddyqv_YaHZwtzWTojWjaPdFyBx7IqkA60nw_fg2SD0dWcUWQTb5Vt38ChNQCQegI7fJD_oANZIJUSUcbHaR6s7EOudRki-1c4TyE1_y9u8WcXSW4WQVGTTlNm__d2fho5SgHAQqQSax1TU5MJ/s320/IMG_9965.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Rita Wilson)</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjznvO8gr19v5LWUdSRvvHrxB1Nb3bFoqHw1OwPXHv4zSnt4RjY_NO7eGlj0Yt9wGXJ9WeQRnJii5ve5pZqRLFgkqu9w_c68acwzv6sYmqF0f0ffDPVKJnPctsHXb_3gWwPYuh2tr-82zr9RzFNwlgqtG4KowPZ-UdtvtmaxcIbjKAqmXxs5mvRXe-Bv8eT/s4000/IMG_9976.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjznvO8gr19v5LWUdSRvvHrxB1Nb3bFoqHw1OwPXHv4zSnt4RjY_NO7eGlj0Yt9wGXJ9WeQRnJii5ve5pZqRLFgkqu9w_c68acwzv6sYmqF0f0ffDPVKJnPctsHXb_3gWwPYuh2tr-82zr9RzFNwlgqtG4KowPZ-UdtvtmaxcIbjKAqmXxs5mvRXe-Bv8eT/s320/IMG_9976.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Emma FitzGerald)</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL8LdmJFwM7iib-EGZKyYJsgn-dsGuAdMOKN8sBSPQQNsHXBremcrSFEJH6q_5hGrkQK9S5ss7gvpbmXcT80fbR7hRYCiPMFyGHwUVJcFhxcpTyiyYeMclCRNPQmoMq8O9x4STMaiPTGk-VthV-89ERMwx-1_4bBjWJ7VXd74V_elxYCyW26tIBPgiaMDL/s4000/IMG_9968.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL8LdmJFwM7iib-EGZKyYJsgn-dsGuAdMOKN8sBSPQQNsHXBremcrSFEJH6q_5hGrkQK9S5ss7gvpbmXcT80fbR7hRYCiPMFyGHwUVJcFhxcpTyiyYeMclCRNPQmoMq8O9x4STMaiPTGk-VthV-89ERMwx-1_4bBjWJ7VXd74V_elxYCyW26tIBPgiaMDL/s320/IMG_9968.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(The assembled listening closely.)</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeluar9petezBZY8KdCA1VZGJN9YTsX_7UNNYDANS3HafQFBUw76psG3kE3WiI5Il8bXHv5O1N7kJIebwNi2RvYCv19YnUJvz1jmPRXmMjt4blP2lbTbZBpEd1LYwNt72R4cffw3JcV5iEZx2OSmjLo_YZbwbFe2wgyNpmtkr5CQ6GQzuHOpaq9CRlZggM/s4000/IMG_9991.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeluar9petezBZY8KdCA1VZGJN9YTsX_7UNNYDANS3HafQFBUw76psG3kE3WiI5Il8bXHv5O1N7kJIebwNi2RvYCv19YnUJvz1jmPRXmMjt4blP2lbTbZBpEd1LYwNt72R4cffw3JcV5iEZx2OSmjLo_YZbwbFe2wgyNpmtkr5CQ6GQzuHOpaq9CRlZggM/s320/IMG_9991.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>N.B.: 2024 will
mark the 30<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova
Scotia. The EBSNS board is planning a series of events at the EB House in June
next year to mark this milestone. More information about these events will be
posted as it becomes available.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">********************************************************************</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One of the
new additions to the EB House is a hand-made hooked rug done by Colchester
fabric artist Penny Lighthall, based on Bishop’s poem <a href="https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2003%252F02%252F08.html">“First Death in Nova Scotia.”</a>
Appropriately, it has been placed in the parlour. You can learn more about
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pennytextileartist">Penny’s work</a> on her <a href="https://www.facebook.com/savingearthartspace">Facebook pages</a>. Thanks to Penny for giving such a delightful gift to the EB House. Rug hooking was an art form that Bishop's maternal grandmother and aunts engaged in regularly. She noted in a letter to a friend that the house was full of such rugs.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoioDBvIWM-C0zo0SAauOwKNrKGeUYoktEQY_aV5g0JVQDsIf1fNPUtAA-WW7yzKFApzBs8hERRrMs_Sp4dZkbSeVdh5Ix2JRMVjNPyvIjCnFkpexyuoqvgHb9dtYizVRhMCLrCOBdShdV0Z_5HZeF3tsUs9INNDcO7VPRBUfuCcQGi1vOC71WYZSUnjHK/s4000/IMG_9950.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoioDBvIWM-C0zo0SAauOwKNrKGeUYoktEQY_aV5g0JVQDsIf1fNPUtAA-WW7yzKFApzBs8hERRrMs_Sp4dZkbSeVdh5Ix2JRMVjNPyvIjCnFkpexyuoqvgHb9dtYizVRhMCLrCOBdShdV0Z_5HZeF3tsUs9INNDcO7VPRBUfuCcQGi1vOC71WYZSUnjHK/s320/IMG_9950.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Rug by Penny Lighthall)</b></div></div>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-44585545051337312832023-05-27T08:06:00.004-03:002023-06-19T10:51:53.154-03:00EB event on 1 June 2023<p style="text-align: justify;">Grolier's Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, MA, will host a Bishop conversation (in person and virtual) on 1 June at 7 p.m. Click here to learn how to register: <a href="https://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org/upcoming-readings">Upcoming Readings — Grolier Poetry Book Shop</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix-V5S2WWY29gG7obYO_mzWQ3SyiKI3hVuSnvTHE3AIReaVGLw3U61iO2pnFhMvm0vYcZIhuqGy5CqGzluQI8Czl3RFEb0TB9vJ7IdaLWPiisHC18OLLhw6sF-ToyH79o-ogQro7iIOk-Y3wKpUqGP4AozIhMTH87fAb0GtYVZn_7Jz61nPeagkciPRA/s480/EB%20RL%20presantation%20--%20Groliers%201%20June%202023.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix-V5S2WWY29gG7obYO_mzWQ3SyiKI3hVuSnvTHE3AIReaVGLw3U61iO2pnFhMvm0vYcZIhuqGy5CqGzluQI8Czl3RFEb0TB9vJ7IdaLWPiisHC18OLLhw6sF-ToyH79o-ogQro7iIOk-Y3wKpUqGP4AozIhMTH87fAb0GtYVZn_7Jz61nPeagkciPRA/s320/EB%20RL%20presantation%20--%20Groliers%201%20June%202023.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">This conversation has been made<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p7usHoiarI"> available online</a> and can be</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">accessed at the this link.</div>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-10159965067099374682023-05-01T11:09:00.000-03:002023-05-01T11:09:02.262-03:00Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia 2023 Annual General Meeting<p style="text-align: center;"> <b style="font-size: 14pt; text-align: center;"><i>EBSNS Annual General Meeting</i></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Saturday, 17 June 2023, </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">1:30 p.m.</span></i></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Elizabeth Bishop House,</span></i></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">Great
Village, N.S.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-align: left;"> </span></i></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;"><b><i>No admission. Everyone is
welcome!</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZpxGhHMkWSey4a7cK9riAdrER90w7Ihq1dnLJgaa-pZwRweFkYsgS0mecQVDEn_eIlxluyOb__sZUwGFpX2-ygM86ldKesZRBzg5simYlk-z7WLSKk6l3DRFAI4FPkS5W_Qrr1fWrGTgs3-QfSAoC6i9fuxORN0GPZ_Gs9sWCED-uJvJFtwdwxtRbeA/s4608/IMG_2147.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZpxGhHMkWSey4a7cK9riAdrER90w7Ihq1dnLJgaa-pZwRweFkYsgS0mecQVDEn_eIlxluyOb__sZUwGFpX2-ygM86ldKesZRBzg5simYlk-z7WLSKk6l3DRFAI4FPkS5W_Qrr1fWrGTgs3-QfSAoC6i9fuxORN0GPZ_Gs9sWCED-uJvJFtwdwxtRbeA/s320/IMG_2147.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Special
guests will be writer Rita Wilson, author of </span><i style="font-size: 14pt;">A Pocket of Time: The Poetic
Childhood of Elizabeth Bishop</i><span style="font-size: 14pt;">, and the book’s illustrator Emma FitzGerald.
They will talk about the creative process for this delightful and important
book about Bishop’s deep and abiding connection to Great Village.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlptuBPo9f_XCtFOHmMmeTCqX5NVlJtvDgOFGHtO9Uodifa8fR417MM2Zxc8LPERZou5aeMdKDS3upazJzreO7zEyh-YStL67cU_Ks8XdKFqEc6zGHPxi2HrLdxorNs55db4cbAeXsoU2-Mijxhzbj85et7iuAEAkohxffCEvSBGxspnceANnyv3I7Iw/s640/A%20Pocket%20of%20Time%20Hfx%20launch%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlptuBPo9f_XCtFOHmMmeTCqX5NVlJtvDgOFGHtO9Uodifa8fR417MM2Zxc8LPERZou5aeMdKDS3upazJzreO7zEyh-YStL67cU_Ks8XdKFqEc6zGHPxi2HrLdxorNs55db4cbAeXsoU2-Mijxhzbj85et7iuAEAkohxffCEvSBGxspnceANnyv3I7Iw/s320/A%20Pocket%20of%20Time%20Hfx%20launch%201.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_2i6LoHIeFVh2DBVJ4zIiw5fKtTQMEH8v3C6bX5vu7CSp-peUJodTsnY1RLIr7JgyiKNWPmDJ95Xbvufnr1VrSriK35JtuRJei9S3ioHRuC6W3s2fnVqq1kMvXQ4rsjO1AEy-4fMXvuLCHHyfd5Ag6ESoCXUBN_vToncmsarJQ45GTviGN7Qhbkp59g/s2306/A%20Pocket%20of%20Time%201%20--%20advertisement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2306" data-original-width="1506" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_2i6LoHIeFVh2DBVJ4zIiw5fKtTQMEH8v3C6bX5vu7CSp-peUJodTsnY1RLIr7JgyiKNWPmDJ95Xbvufnr1VrSriK35JtuRJei9S3ioHRuC6W3s2fnVqq1kMvXQ4rsjO1AEy-4fMXvuLCHHyfd5Ag6ESoCXUBN_vToncmsarJQ45GTviGN7Qhbkp59g/s320/A%20Pocket%20of%20Time%201%20--%20advertisement.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-32188448880303716302023-04-10T10:19:00.002-03:002023-04-10T10:19:41.286-03:00New additions to the Elizabeth Bishop House<p style="text-align: justify;">Some years
ago (pre-pandemic), the EBSNS set up an exhibit of Elizabeth Bishop and Bulmer
family artefacts in the sanctuary of St. James Church in Great Village, N.S. It
remained there, with items being changed periodically, ever since. Recently,
the church was sold and is now in private hands, the sanctuary being
transformed into a concert space. The EBSNS decided that it was now time to
move the exhibit to another place. The board is delighted to report that this
new place is the Elizabeth Bishop House in the village. The principal elements
of the exhibit were two stunning hand-made cabinets built by Great Village
carpenter Garry Shears. Early in April 2023, EB House administrator Laurie Gunn
secured the assistance of several strong fellows and the cabinets and their
contents were removed from the church and taken across the road to the EB
House. A minor adjustment was required to the larger cabinet, so it would fit,
which Garry Shears kindly did – and now both cabinets are installed in the
house. The larger cabinet is in the front room (the good parlour). The smaller
cabinet was put on the upstairs landing. The EBSNS board wishes to thank all
those who had a hand in this transfer. That it was done so quickly is all due
to Laurie Gunn. While not as public a space as the original location, it is
felt that the cabinets and their precious artefacts are now in a safe space,
and one that is entirely appropriate to them. Here are a few photos of the
cabinets <i>in situ</i>.<span style="text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZE4SRAk9F-fggxXgqzOsqNRdvGWwyuc5kAiw5pR3dDJi1dLNDqIfLz9X_yeGRSJLf70pQ3an7olA6nBkLvs0o0plRB9jGEjzXPi3fJW1ihrVhCaWfwfbiysSULM34qxS3dM7_Fi6sxT9JqhmtZU5pX8jMb-qTrXvxnwCXWb9RVn25lg8s4LysgPFE_A/s4032/Cabinet%20--%20large%20--%20in%20EB%20House%20April%202023%202.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZE4SRAk9F-fggxXgqzOsqNRdvGWwyuc5kAiw5pR3dDJi1dLNDqIfLz9X_yeGRSJLf70pQ3an7olA6nBkLvs0o0plRB9jGEjzXPi3fJW1ihrVhCaWfwfbiysSULM34qxS3dM7_Fi6sxT9JqhmtZU5pX8jMb-qTrXvxnwCXWb9RVn25lg8s4LysgPFE_A/s320/Cabinet%20--%20large%20--%20in%20EB%20House%20April%202023%202.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Photos by Laurie Gunn)</b></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0kPJFKzMlQAuLXuSrx4Z2S35N1CZ68K-WLQTpvpeRXhORtxiCliGElLkLY-Tt9QqWwPBSEsjUFXnvHqQ_6rwZLHLvlAwPa7Zdfwv_U5MDkSaz2zH4gzXTLDNRf1YNB0CYvRN5MT1pVOI--q89xfnRUTSETZu_DBZob-z7Pkgj0OrB-lUsMTQuRikww/s4032/Cabinet%20--%20small%20--%20in%20EB%20House%20April%202023%203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn0kPJFKzMlQAuLXuSrx4Z2S35N1CZ68K-WLQTpvpeRXhORtxiCliGElLkLY-Tt9QqWwPBSEsjUFXnvHqQ_6rwZLHLvlAwPa7Zdfwv_U5MDkSaz2zH4gzXTLDNRf1YNB0CYvRN5MT1pVOI--q89xfnRUTSETZu_DBZob-z7Pkgj0OrB-lUsMTQuRikww/s320/Cabinet%20--%20small%20--%20in%20EB%20House%20April%202023%203.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><o:p>Stay tuned for more information about the EBSNS AGM, to be held on Saturday, 17 June 2023 at the EB House, Great Village, N.S.</o:p><p></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-48967167038438156042023-02-20T12:32:00.001-04:002023-02-20T12:32:45.802-04:00World premiere of new Elizabeth Bishop inspired choral work<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">W<span style="color: #555555; font-size: 10.5pt;">ord
just in from the Elizabeth Bishop Society in the US: We are pleased to announce
the world premiere of a choral work titled</span><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #555555; padding: 0cm;"> <b><i>The Unknown Sea</i></b>
by renowned composer <b>David Conte</b>. This new choral orchestral work is
inspired by the texts of the poet <b>Elizabeth Bishop</b> and will feature
mezzo soprano <b>Lena Seikaly,</b> chorus, piano, and chamber orchestra. Conte
himself will be in attendance and participate in a pre-concert conversation led
by the former <b>Poet Laureate of California, Dana Gioia</b>. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: #555555; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #555555; padding: 0cm;">The concert will be performed by the Washington Master Chorale
and will be held on March 5, 2023, at 5:00 PM at Washington’s National
Presbyterian Church, at 4101 Nebraska Avenue, NY in Washington, DC.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--></span><span style="color: #555555; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #555555; padding: 0cm;">According to the Master Chorale, "<i>The Unknown Sea</i>
will be paired with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s masterful cantata, <i>Dona Nobis
Pacem </i>based on <b>Walt Whitman</b>’s poems, as well as texts from the
Hebrew Bible and Latin Mass.”<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--></span><span style="color: #555555; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #555555; padding: 0cm;">This world premiere was originally planned for the spring of
2020, but the premiere was delay by the outbreak of Covid. We are very pleased
that the event will now be held.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--></span><span style="color: #555555; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #555555; padding: 0cm;">More information may be obtained by contacting Travis Hare: </span><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="mailto:travis@kendrarubinfeldpr.com" title="mailto:travis@kendrarubinfeldpr.com"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #0066a4; padding: 0cm;">travis@kendrarubinfeldpr.com</span></a></span></span><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-no-proof: no;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvX7MLTIb4UboWiO_XdQRxFfKGtAVwoCCmw93UtV8kDHaPAATvc6eho7Bzd-R3WxEMh4k8TDPIUrZn-mWoPp0l50Vn9halMUbGudnFbjpC_iJsVdRqWKEkareyMayaLJEcsCO0npAJcrVGvs2nSfNhyxjIz9b6Yp9OVbXKQTVDBQhqhq_-b0Y5wDHJxw/s640/For%20Email%20Blasts.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="640" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvX7MLTIb4UboWiO_XdQRxFfKGtAVwoCCmw93UtV8kDHaPAATvc6eho7Bzd-R3WxEMh4k8TDPIUrZn-mWoPp0l50Vn9halMUbGudnFbjpC_iJsVdRqWKEkareyMayaLJEcsCO0npAJcrVGvs2nSfNhyxjIz9b6Yp9OVbXKQTVDBQhqhq_-b0Y5wDHJxw/w429-h298/For%20Email%20Blasts.jpeg" width="429" /></a></div><p></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-54722850094166583772023-02-17T12:09:00.000-04:002023-02-17T12:09:12.333-04:00Sable Island “Total Immersion”: A response to “Geographies of Solitude”<p style="text-align: justify;">On
Wednesday evening, 15 February 2023, at King’s Theatre in Annapolis Royal,
N.S., I had the privilege of attending a screening of <a href="https://www.gosfilm.com/about">“Geographies of Solitude,”</a> film-maker Jacquelyn Mills’s stunning documentary about Sable Island
and its long-time “inhabitant” Zoe Lucas, who first arrived on the island in
1971, and who has spent time there every year since then.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://thefilmstage.com/exclusive-trailer-for-jacquelyn-mills-geographies-of-solitude-takes-a-gorgeous-journey-through-nature/">“Geographies of Solitude”</a> is a visual and sonic feast, an intimate and profound exploration
of Zoe’s decades-long connection to one of the most mythical and historical
islands of Canada. At once richly factual and breath-takingly lyrical, by turns
earthy and ethereal.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I met Zoe
about 20 years ago and thanks to her invitation, I had the even greater
privilege of going to Sable Island in May 2008, with our mutual friend Janet
Barkhouse. I was there only for a day, but it was a day I will never forget, a
trip of a life-time. I was keen to see Mills’s film and was thrilled by its
scope, from the microscopic to the celestial, the great sweep of the island and
the ocean were the backdrop for an unfolding of Zoe’s remarkable work
(research, recording, education, advocacy) that includes geology, meteorology,
zoology, botany, etc. She has been involved in one way or another with all the
research work that has happened on Sable Island in the past half-century.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzS3Dg1r_eL3W77uuMlHYKkw093fOSACFXOBKvdRQp3DNK23YCXXqiZgcDYdsB0mgeRrInmR4BsVHt04RVeyeKVKU2UUCDoKbsSX6cDFwKx_e49Z_oD6_oy9UFehCSH8VR1m8Tvw3b0B7EKDTAaZye1l-BNKc4OGyW6oqMchO0kNt1xAFtbzxZ0ZoYKQ/s1280/Janet%20Barkhouse%20Sable%20Island%20photographs%20001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzS3Dg1r_eL3W77uuMlHYKkw093fOSACFXOBKvdRQp3DNK23YCXXqiZgcDYdsB0mgeRrInmR4BsVHt04RVeyeKVKU2UUCDoKbsSX6cDFwKx_e49Z_oD6_oy9UFehCSH8VR1m8Tvw3b0B7EKDTAaZye1l-BNKc4OGyW6oqMchO0kNt1xAFtbzxZ0ZoYKQ/s320/Janet%20Barkhouse%20Sable%20Island%20photographs%20001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">(Photo by Janet Barkhouse. Sable Island from the air)</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">One of the
many reasons I wanted to go to Sable Island was that Elizabeth Bishop visited
there in 1951.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her great-grandfather
Robert Hutchinson had been shipwrecked out there in 1866 and she was keen to
see the Ipswich Sparrow, which nests only Sable Island. Her intention was to
write a piece about the island for <i>The New Yorker</i>, which she tentatively
titled “The Deadly Sandpile,” an acknowledgement of its more famous moniker,
“The Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Sadly, she never finished the piece; but her
interest in the island remained with her for the rest of her life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB8mNl4se02diBU9qRm-wulqhOaeFybmlDikLKmozUcY4hswiXKc4X9egSmsdxqvGlAdgPam6k-5MyuuwUOD49AT2_bJS3Wg1ovdmVPFGUEhXkFE5csjzRi3TV1J_DGsbVmxkyPuXBnDcyqPNvoTyyiOZwFoffpmitca09C5CqeHQQyocvbMSQfUBUvg/s640/Gerry,%20Janet,%20Sandra%20Sable%20Island%202008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="640" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB8mNl4se02diBU9qRm-wulqhOaeFybmlDikLKmozUcY4hswiXKc4X9egSmsdxqvGlAdgPam6k-5MyuuwUOD49AT2_bJS3Wg1ovdmVPFGUEhXkFE5csjzRi3TV1J_DGsbVmxkyPuXBnDcyqPNvoTyyiOZwFoffpmitca09C5CqeHQQyocvbMSQfUBUvg/s320/Gerry,%20Janet,%20Sandra%20Sable%20Island%202008.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">(Photo by Zoe Lucas. L. to r. Gerry, Janet, Sandra on the south beach)</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Zoe’s first
landfall there in 1971 overlapped for a few years with Bishop, who died in
1979. I like to think Bishop would have been as intrigued, as thousands are,
about this young woman who ended up devoting her life to the place and the
cause of Sable Island and environmentalism in general. Towards the end of the
film, Zoe observes that there wasn’t an actual single decision she made that
put her there, but a series of small decisions that in and of themselves didn’t
mean much, but added up: then “something happens.” This idea about how life
unfolds was one Bishop herself shared.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Mills’s
film, shot on 16 and 35mm film, is a feast for the eyes and ears. The
soundscape is especially rich and vibrant, even at times a bit overwhelming
(which is saying a lot because the images are astonishing, one after another
after another). One fascinating expression is the sound of invertebrates
walking: beetles, snails, ants </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> somehow Mills was able to bore down
into what is inaudible to human ears (especially in an environment like Sable
where the wind blows and waves crash continuously). And then somehow, using
magical technology, the sounds of these creatures moving is transformed into
music! Bishop was passionate herself about music and would have been awed by
this wonderful gesture in the film. We also hear the horses, the seals, the
birds (one newborn seal sounds hauntingly like a human baby – we are not
separate from the natural world, though our daily, political and social realms
often create walls/barriers that keep us from feeling the connections </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> and to our peril).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And most
importantly we hear Zoe talking about her connections to the island </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> the history of her time there, details about her work, reflections on
all manner of experiences. All the while we follow her on purposeful wanderings
across the dunes and beaches, hearing that wind blow, while, pen and notebook
in hand, she records everything she sees and finds; and we sit with her in her
inner work spaces </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> sorting and washing garbage,
inputting data into colossal spread sheets that are searchable by dozens of
categories.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There is so
much glory and tragedy and mystery connected to Sable Island and Zoe has
thought about all of it, noting at one point that after decades of living
there, she still can come upon something and say, “Wow!” That actually happens
in the film when she finds an especially large (terrifying) spider among some
flora and puts it in a specimen jar. Exciting!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Of course,
the horses are the great wonder of the island (even more so than the tens of
thousands of seals that congregate there to have their pups) – and Mills gives
us a great dose of them in all their splendor – in life and death. Mills does
not look away from the natural cycle of life on the island, which is uplifting,
rather than sad. What is sad and deeply troubling, however, is the garbage that
Zoe has been collecting and documenting minutely for decades. Mills makes us
look right into the heart of the results of our gross consumption and
disposable society. Zoe has been recording this impact long before there was
the global consciousness of the immeasurable amount of plastics in our oceans.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW6HV6jcn--E7QTNX_5LOvyNvVDHDthMLjSxb1RpbqpL3u3gzyxvmaaoAgxU18DYTV5_AWlJHkFfsxBB8Ke5hPsC_Vx-oNpWLca1GsRnr6EYENJE-yZpai6jGSQY3lqBJPojndh0YkBkZiiR23esmtcjLEFxOHQVMDp9WUSRIWMkUPWn5ooYrcGq1LBw/s1280/Janet%20Barkhouse%20Sable%20Island%20photographs%20021.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW6HV6jcn--E7QTNX_5LOvyNvVDHDthMLjSxb1RpbqpL3u3gzyxvmaaoAgxU18DYTV5_AWlJHkFfsxBB8Ke5hPsC_Vx-oNpWLca1GsRnr6EYENJE-yZpai6jGSQY3lqBJPojndh0YkBkZiiR23esmtcjLEFxOHQVMDp9WUSRIWMkUPWn5ooYrcGq1LBw/s320/Janet%20Barkhouse%20Sable%20Island%20photographs%20021.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">(Photo by Janet Barkhouse. Zoe and foal)</div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">To account
for all the elements in this intimately shot, intricately woven documentary is
not possible </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> it must be seen because it is
immersive. But there are often distilled, crystalized moments, always
thought-provoking, that shine. For me, one of the most delightful is the
archival footage of Jacques Cousteau in 1981 landing on Sable Island in the
helicopter from “The Calypso,” being greeted by a young Zoe Lucas, who takes
him on a tour. How cool is that!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Bravo to
Mills for doing her own “total immersion” on Sable Island, looking through her
lens so directly and deeply at the wondrous scope (temporal, physical,
existential) of this unique place on our planet. A few years ago, Zoe and other
keen supporters of her work and of Sable Island formed the Sable Island
Institute. I was glad to see the institute so directly mentioned at the end of
this film. <a href="https://sableislandinstitute.org/">Check out its website and learn more</a>; this site is also a “total
immersion” </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> among many things, it shares dozens
of Zoe’s astonishing photos of the island. I suggest that Zoe has taken more
photos of it, collected more diverse data about it, and has shared more
knowledge and insights about the island than any other person on the planet. It
was a good thing, for us all, that she just happened to end up there!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-78751727430203528212023-02-14T08:57:00.002-04:002023-02-14T08:57:52.790-04:00Long over due post<p style="text-align: justify;">It has been
some time since we last posted, and missed marking Bishop’s birthday last week
(112<sup>th</sup>). The Bishop Society has been rather dormant recently and it
is taking time to wake up and stir into action, but slowly it will happen. The
society will be hosting it Annual General Meeting on Saturday, 17 June 2023, at
the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village. The society is excited to welcome
writer Rita Wilson and illustrator Emma FitzGerald to speak about A POCKET OF
TIME: THE POETIC CHILDHOOD OF ELIZABETH BISHOP. There will be more information
about the AGM on the society’s website and on this blog, as the date
approaches.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVYJcZGTbuhSxIp4tVTsUCA7A2IIQ9W2TSFqsK3mSsY4Ucc-M67k_w2knHor7SQ0yxYDbgDDXGxuYXlEgZPNYv2cOz2Hi_xDjVyi5RiXD0EAAC05zpIKz4Yul_3fKJweARzREPCLO-_QEPSST6WCjdrTSazFXud5au3Mncq34bfLDFyc6YIrrwzupb3g/s2306/A%20Pocket%20of%20Time%201%20--%20advertisement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2306" data-original-width="1506" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVYJcZGTbuhSxIp4tVTsUCA7A2IIQ9W2TSFqsK3mSsY4Ucc-M67k_w2knHor7SQ0yxYDbgDDXGxuYXlEgZPNYv2cOz2Hi_xDjVyi5RiXD0EAAC05zpIKz4Yul_3fKJweARzREPCLO-_QEPSST6WCjdrTSazFXud5au3Mncq34bfLDFyc6YIrrwzupb3g/s320/A%20Pocket%20of%20Time%201%20--%20advertisement.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The <a href="https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/">American Literature Association conference in Boston from 25-28 May 2023</a>, will feature
two Bishop panels of exciting presentations by scholars such as Neil Besner,
Rebecca Bradburn, Vidyan Ravinthiran and Thomas Travisano.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Here are
links to two fascinating Bishop inspired projects. It is great to see so much
creative response to Bishop’s life and art continue.</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://www.themosaiccat.com/one-art/">https://www.themosaiccat.com/one-art/</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://lauremeloy.wordpress.com/one-art-making-something-out-of-nothing/">https://lauremeloy.wordpress.com/one-art-making-something-out-of-nothing/</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And, finally,
here are two images of a needle art project done by Brenda Barry, inspired by
the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, N.S. (a petit point cross stitch rendition
of this iconic and much loved house). I am happy to report that the artist retreat at the house is going strong, already well booked up for 2023.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYGvKhjpHq8YP1iGW3M-8ZpvX3UqKh_2wT1byyeQ9cwjazq6f3jYNoUo5W3_C3QZ3HXGFgCjmKKB0VQrYadfsBjs0MAD1NAnhUIYb7msqjLKP6Jbe1KimFCxNLFvLPFOJ0007eqRQnasqjdG9zVR6yXKPxzZ6z9YJNjYHNhkbRSfIr8ag_Q5pV7mU6SA/s4000/EB%20House%20cross%20stitch%20February%202023%201.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYGvKhjpHq8YP1iGW3M-8ZpvX3UqKh_2wT1byyeQ9cwjazq6f3jYNoUo5W3_C3QZ3HXGFgCjmKKB0VQrYadfsBjs0MAD1NAnhUIYb7msqjLKP6Jbe1KimFCxNLFvLPFOJ0007eqRQnasqjdG9zVR6yXKPxzZ6z9YJNjYHNhkbRSfIr8ag_Q5pV7mU6SA/s320/EB%20House%20cross%20stitch%20February%202023%201.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1HP0oby5vRDvLR0WooxjbfwbH-6dsbGTfPZVZNm7LcREjOHSnhLqU31ijionQG7h2nWMEjGX4rAB3gF7HDwMsvmzNiqMnOmFqJ0wfvXn2OjPzmO8CaycgI5b8yTVqxXiQEZa7MgOxjU6afpmwBMCDhyGItpXgBavIgtPmw5R-HrTWu8n8aioxhqyZaw/s4000/EB%20House%20cross%20stitch%20February%202023%202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1HP0oby5vRDvLR0WooxjbfwbH-6dsbGTfPZVZNm7LcREjOHSnhLqU31ijionQG7h2nWMEjGX4rAB3gF7HDwMsvmzNiqMnOmFqJ0wfvXn2OjPzmO8CaycgI5b8yTVqxXiQEZa7MgOxjU6afpmwBMCDhyGItpXgBavIgtPmw5R-HrTWu8n8aioxhqyZaw/s320/EB%20House%20cross%20stitch%20February%202023%202.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-14265695816538334262022-10-21T08:21:00.002-03:002022-10-21T08:21:30.024-03:00Exciting Poetry Reading at the Elizabeth Bishop House, 29 October 2022<p style="text-align: justify;">If you are anywhere near Great Village on Saturday, 29 October 2022, get yourself to the Elizabeth Bishop House for an exciting poetry reading, hosted by writer-in-residence Margo Wheaton. A stellar group of poets will reading! After all the damage and challenge presented by Hurricane Fiona, it is great to see the literary arts alive and well in the village.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oGElg3jSyEw-Y33taahOW8wIqviW48Thx2w30p31vsSXxWREkzRRKvAkWgSj18-9AZbToS0_5i7evU94PrjktA3omaCrx7fnUuxh8t29aGkfuklyHCLIymjISysRzprsXMKVpC2EJH-aRFOMUjbL0ASEI3R5z6tDocjr3TaklYu08QGr9eqS0Tf6KA/s4703/EB%20House%20Reading%20%20.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4703" data-original-width="2760" height="473" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oGElg3jSyEw-Y33taahOW8wIqviW48Thx2w30p31vsSXxWREkzRRKvAkWgSj18-9AZbToS0_5i7evU94PrjktA3omaCrx7fnUuxh8t29aGkfuklyHCLIymjISysRzprsXMKVpC2EJH-aRFOMUjbL0ASEI3R5z6tDocjr3TaklYu08QGr9eqS0Tf6KA/w310-h473/EB%20House%20Reading%20%20.JPEG" width="310" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-55029435972333864732022-09-28T13:05:00.000-03:002022-09-28T13:05:01.515-03:00Hurricane Fiona and Great Village<p><span style="text-align: justify;">One of the
most iconic buildings in Colchester County was damaged by Hurricane Fiona,
which roared through the eastern part of Nova Scotia on 23-24 September 2022.
The 112-foot steeple of St. James Church, now the Great Village Arts and
Entertainment Centre, took a direct hit from wind, which knocked it off its
axis. This structure, a registered heritage property, has stood for over 125
years, taking all kinds of weather. So that the winds of Fiona caused this
damage indicates just how intense a storm it was.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimOkXQZ9oKG-ci7hZelfENjpuTzXc5KNR9CCTdsF8ku6z2hzTXxEmdSCTDkg08YR6-om5Vou0uJnJKImwY8U6CBVOTO8UuCIhMVW2A3qvUcO20shHsLHLPil4bG8peMbatbPTttXodOTeNgKrtUP8p4xlU1c__bkeWzv0xYtV2z1fbQ_xS34rhoNv_sA/s1800/St.%20James%20Church%20--%20Fiona%20September%202022%204.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="1440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimOkXQZ9oKG-ci7hZelfENjpuTzXc5KNR9CCTdsF8ku6z2hzTXxEmdSCTDkg08YR6-om5Vou0uJnJKImwY8U6CBVOTO8UuCIhMVW2A3qvUcO20shHsLHLPil4bG8peMbatbPTttXodOTeNgKrtUP8p4xlU1c__bkeWzv0xYtV2z1fbQ_xS34rhoNv_sA/s320/St.%20James%20Church%20--%20Fiona%20September%202022%204.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">All who
drive along Highway 2 from Truro to Parrsboro see this building, which stands
at the centre of Great Village. It is the heart of this historic community,
which has been immortalized in the writing of the poet Elizabeth Bishop, who
grew up under its spire.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Below are
some images of the damage and the process to remove the steeple. Just what will
happen is still up in the air (no pun intended). From my perspective, I hope
the will and the resources either to repair and restore it, or to
rebuild/replace it) exists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgodV8yjcUaI3MLG2h-HYrwWpY1vb0mmtc4i4DLHZyGY64gJd76qK8rxp_9L-zi83Ep9rxlCiJnSq7gUSLQEhJ0A-8jDspxn9FV0nv6MOw8DlPLhcgrBENyTC2EGoizBTmI5YNzPHMPTiV7M8eGCUfWMqCFCpXxn42GcBcFBUHozIoHoouTCaixld97_w/s640/St.%20James%20Church%20--%20Fiona%20--%20steeple%20removal%202022%202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgodV8yjcUaI3MLG2h-HYrwWpY1vb0mmtc4i4DLHZyGY64gJd76qK8rxp_9L-zi83Ep9rxlCiJnSq7gUSLQEhJ0A-8jDspxn9FV0nv6MOw8DlPLhcgrBENyTC2EGoizBTmI5YNzPHMPTiV7M8eGCUfWMqCFCpXxn42GcBcFBUHozIoHoouTCaixld97_w/s320/St.%20James%20Church%20--%20Fiona%20--%20steeple%20removal%202022%202.JPG" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9BlmHWFKpoPpSP7I9snanyHV8qZxG_MDTdIE3V4A4wYjkvgPvaIdVrL9GXUsFsHhPbiDla_7SQmIq8fKmkngScNnxqese9hKXuICGoWV5-MbxnrogIMi8wH-DD2dMTAd59f6X6hE_iUrskG_pVcImtlLH47hyoZvp65MueYasCTJsxkumyhEcb-HoRg/s960/gv5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9BlmHWFKpoPpSP7I9snanyHV8qZxG_MDTdIE3V4A4wYjkvgPvaIdVrL9GXUsFsHhPbiDla_7SQmIq8fKmkngScNnxqese9hKXuICGoWV5-MbxnrogIMi8wH-DD2dMTAd59f6X6hE_iUrskG_pVcImtlLH47hyoZvp65MueYasCTJsxkumyhEcb-HoRg/s320/gv5.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EBOQjyvvk2dp_A8kKU6MWcwsnH0lrBVPGue9ek8q4lxxshzif2WynpDcTqZOhi2X_CeflrJ95LyPIcWsiC_QAfsr5OBkam3ueAMNTtAMLekFp_98g53lYUJcbVlzx_3xtqcmVKna0dPfFSGiEooTeVkZjNIdkqyVQhv74RvA-6JWCSWxIOlO4YrTDw/s640/GV%208.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EBOQjyvvk2dp_A8kKU6MWcwsnH0lrBVPGue9ek8q4lxxshzif2WynpDcTqZOhi2X_CeflrJ95LyPIcWsiC_QAfsr5OBkam3ueAMNTtAMLekFp_98g53lYUJcbVlzx_3xtqcmVKna0dPfFSGiEooTeVkZjNIdkqyVQhv74RvA-6JWCSWxIOlO4YrTDw/s320/GV%208.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="Great Village Antiques Exchange | Facebook">Great Village Antiques</a> (directly across the road from the church) has been sharing
images and updates on its Facebook page. As has the <a href="Great Village Arts & Entertainment | Facebook">Arts Centre, on its Facebook page</a>. Word about this damage has spread far and wide, especially in the
EB world. I have received messages from people as far away as the U.K. and the
U.S.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In today’s
Chronicle Herald, John Demont has written about the damage to the church, and
to other natural iconic structures that did not survive the force of Hurricane
Fiona:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.saltwire.com/halifax/opinion/john-demont-how-disasters-teach-us-to-how-to-master-loss-100777631/">JOHN
DeMONT: How disasters teach us to how to master loss | SaltWire</a></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-28240230392839001502022-08-25T15:53:00.008-03:002022-08-25T16:13:15.470-03:00Viewing Window for John Scott's Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing<p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The full version of <i>Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing</i> will be available online via Eventive for a short window beginning Friday, August 26th, at 12:00 Canadian/US Eastern time (13:00 Atlantic; 13:30 Newfoundland; 15:00 GMT) until Sunday, August 28th, at 24:00 Canadian/US Eastern time (Monday, 29 August at 01:00 Atlantic; 01:30 Newfoundland; 03:00 GMT) at <a href="https://watch.eventive.org/virtualcinemapolis/play/62eca14e1df9d6007842f2fe?fbclid=IwAR0hkZzNRfKqbxCbZKlpdYvpU0ZfhD7nAsSKREMaPg4eX_5h3K56TyhMfsE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this link</a>:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://watch.eventive.org/virtualcinemapolis/play/62eca14e1df9d6007842f2fe?fbclid=IwAR0hkZzNRfKqbxCbZKlpdYvpU0ZfhD7nAsSKREMaPg4eX_5h3K56TyhMfsE" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="621" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGF5dR1m21VcRwFACuz16tfAluLbexKKg2w-5Ko2Z3psti9rg8f6um7w-fff4K8XpXq0_TVo6xkrNPwhNB_IQuzX9Yubfpg9PSaXxgbvExDq2D2CsrD5n81eUOeGOm_5EtQFB2jNxbaGr5W6_lV59-Oktd7T2Y2P1XnTcCyfQE43w8asRTl3wsIAJh/s320/bishop%20film.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-38389596541594552842022-06-01T14:09:00.002-03:002022-06-09T07:13:39.825-03:00Elizabeth Bishop Society of Nova Scotia -- Annual General Meeting in Great Village<p style="text-align: justify;">We are excited to announce that the EBSNS will hold an in-person AGM in Great Village, N.S., on 25 June. We will welcome writer Laura Churchill Duke as our special guest. We also have an exciting announcement about the acquisition of an important Elizabeth Bishop artefact. Everyone is welcome!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnbFc-6MkuXS__nqegWWorbM3DLn7B1GFYN1G7hADbTJVF5sXLfouPQoIcHQPDReWWYn5GZB6M9i-bLM3nYblM-ptGTVFkHnAn7ddoomobwPldZO3hp9MESIhW7shJIOxFYRslRDTZPM7QEbuGnkb0axZP9lNvyMmzXRA8wznyMkGiUflEhmqjzdMCtg/s1392/AGM%20Poster%20revised%20final%20version%202022.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1392" data-original-width="1062" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnbFc-6MkuXS__nqegWWorbM3DLn7B1GFYN1G7hADbTJVF5sXLfouPQoIcHQPDReWWYn5GZB6M9i-bLM3nYblM-ptGTVFkHnAn7ddoomobwPldZO3hp9MESIhW7shJIOxFYRslRDTZPM7QEbuGnkb0axZP9lNvyMmzXRA8wznyMkGiUflEhmqjzdMCtg/s320/AGM%20Poster%20revised%20final%20version%202022.png" width="244" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>(Click image to enlarge.)</b></div>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-63674767527012476212022-05-12T09:45:00.002-03:002022-05-15T08:20:37.778-03:00A Riverside Reading of EB Poems as recalled by Emma FitzGerald<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">To mark the closing of National Poetry Month,<a href="https://lahaveriverbooks.ca/"> LaHave River Books </a>in LaHave, Nova Scotia, hosted an afternoon reading of Elizabeth Bishop
poems on Saturday April 30th, 2022.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There were 4 readers: Lisa McCabe, a poet based on the
Dublin Shore; Janet Barkhouse (“Jannie B”), a self-described fan of the
bookstore, as well as a writer of books from Clearland; Sandra Barry, my host
here on the blog, as well as a Bishop scholar based in Middleton, and Black
Point’s Carole Glasser Langille, a poet and author of the newly released collection
of poems <i>Your Turn</i>.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrLbyF6lRK81NKXUk9ildm_RyLZMWBl9I2U7fcsHAnmru-rHq0HyeeDY19llz0tmwyQ-kA8wqL-hBvMovTCq-23-dj1m9iqlqX4jAVE6ByJj5JC5U6xcj6oiW2CYVWvW8_AQyK5teV8FUtfJObeldZrtTefF2U846RlxmQWlKbsUv7kqLQkizE8sqiGg/s4608/IMG_9092.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrLbyF6lRK81NKXUk9ildm_RyLZMWBl9I2U7fcsHAnmru-rHq0HyeeDY19llz0tmwyQ-kA8wqL-hBvMovTCq-23-dj1m9iqlqX4jAVE6ByJj5JC5U6xcj6oiW2CYVWvW8_AQyK5teV8FUtfJObeldZrtTefF2U846RlxmQWlKbsUv7kqLQkizE8sqiGg/s320/IMG_9092.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(The readers, left to right: Janet, Lisa, Sandra, Carole.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Photo by Brenda Barry. Click images to enlarge.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The setting, as always when at LaHave River Books, was pinch
yourself picturesque. The interior of the bookstore, so homey with its wooden
bookshelves, chairs, floors and even a piano, with geraniums and cacti at the
window, and of course, books upon books.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFqA32SSUbS6_BbU0WULg3Lf2zgq_hHNxLiDi17SA8sx0FksdxvkOJORRW1ZHf25Cjd0UBHacH61M4tsq8Tq-LvF7jPIGbYa8JgQe3K_GStm_K9kHLgFnyearP3H9iG809I1ewuFb-wPRFRlvniQ--CodU1R-IiZub1QDk8vNhkA-QudKfFCN3XakuA/s4608/IMG_9063.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxFqA32SSUbS6_BbU0WULg3Lf2zgq_hHNxLiDi17SA8sx0FksdxvkOJORRW1ZHf25Cjd0UBHacH61M4tsq8Tq-LvF7jPIGbYa8JgQe3K_GStm_K9kHLgFnyearP3H9iG809I1ewuFb-wPRFRlvniQ--CodU1R-IiZub1QDk8vNhkA-QudKfFCN3XakuA/s320/IMG_9063.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Interior of LaHave River Books. Photo by Brenda Barry)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Beyond the windowpanes the LaHave River, more ocean than
river, lay flat and blue grey, and along the shore some small buildings
surrounded by sparse trees were in view.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN7jhBFVWygxlFoVL6sheqOeh-6Jq6JqxZSDl27kU_4MPZjJHE_YYfxaKXN65LMcf_-up887iqY6DXlzv2xHki6dWIDhFxcmkFCTMhfTnE-9BGPAQRQ06fXRa5jFLKrVyTP1S6Si8EHsk4lPCOCq2tRyfntGMghrdBWCJ1vx9s63ThquocbcEqO8YiEA/s4608/IMG_9074.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN7jhBFVWygxlFoVL6sheqOeh-6Jq6JqxZSDl27kU_4MPZjJHE_YYfxaKXN65LMcf_-up887iqY6DXlzv2xHki6dWIDhFxcmkFCTMhfTnE-9BGPAQRQ06fXRa5jFLKrVyTP1S6Si8EHsk4lPCOCq2tRyfntGMghrdBWCJ1vx9s63ThquocbcEqO8YiEA/s320/IMG_9074.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(River through the windows. Photo by Brenda Barry)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The room was full and after introductions from book shop
staff member Marion, the poems were read:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1. <i>First Death in Nova Scotia</i> (read by Lisa McCabe)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2. <i>Filling Station </i>(read by Lisa McCabe)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3. <i>Sestina</i> (read by Janet Barkhouse)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4. <i>Poem</i> (read by Janet Barkhouse)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5. <i>At the Fishhouses</i> (read by Sandra Barry)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">6. <i>Sandpiper</i> (read by Sandra Barry)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">7. <i>The Moose</i> (read by Carole Glasser Langille)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">8. <i>Don't Kill Yourself</i> (a poem translated by Bishop,
written by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, read by Carole Glasser Langille)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This was followed by an encore:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">9. <i>Shampoo</i> (read by Lisa McCabe)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">10. <i>The Bight</i> (read by Janet Barkhouse)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">11. <i>Five Flights Up</i> (read by Sandra Barry)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">12. <i>One Art</i> (read by Carole Langille)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKaz4tSkKo7L-C9D-D-yZPy4Zunqhbp-13M2_TcjKKm84tV4qX7pqPbd-fIZMTSQcrSLC4W68NAyMaWF6FbFrNyi4FBGF2ViKG-ue8y8ftXhaU3ewB26IdKh2HmyIXVniQ49FhmTT9EVUKvKDe6q214DEKZRoFpsszIoYE6HSAKupf_aK7wN7FU14DQ/s4608/IMG_9086.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKaz4tSkKo7L-C9D-D-yZPy4Zunqhbp-13M2_TcjKKm84tV4qX7pqPbd-fIZMTSQcrSLC4W68NAyMaWF6FbFrNyi4FBGF2ViKG-ue8y8ftXhaU3ewB26IdKh2HmyIXVniQ49FhmTT9EVUKvKDe6q214DEKZRoFpsszIoYE6HSAKupf_aK7wN7FU14DQ/s320/IMG_9086.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Those gathered. Photo by Brenda Barry)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">What followed was a lovely chat, a kind of volley back and
forth across the room, of warm reminiscences.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First there was a memory of hearing Bishop speak at the
Guggenheim in NYC (Carole), which was followed by a memory of reading “Primer
Class” for the first time and seeing her own early school days in the Maritimes
described, hatching a lifelong thesis (Sandra). Then there was a discussion of
that strange indrawn breath described in “The Moose” and finding its echo in
Scotland (Carole), adding resonance to Lisa's initial sharing of visiting
Bishop's grave in Worcester one cold day in “sloppy snow” and finding a vintage
robin's-egg-blue typewriter on the grave, and Janet's declaration that Bishop
wrote “The Bight” in Florida on her own birthday. The personal seemed so
intertwined with each reader's experience of getting to know Bishop and her
work, and you can't help but sense that it is a never-ending journey.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was a very satisfying time and was followed by the
serving of a “Queen Elizabeth Cake,” big enough to feed everyone present. Andra,
the owner of the bookstore, ever gracious and cheerful, had made it for the
occasion. It provided a nice, sweet snack before we dispersed and made our way
back to our respective homes on an appropriately cold spring day.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4c1n66Y0BsPf2WPtTZZMjt93ZSQjar43kcknSt-DIOWgmWvVhP4t1KyHvHWKj5GrOXWaIYvNIfd2aCPGY2uj861pJddpL0fnWJ_2m4hgmplfD1nOju4PFcVgKBHpEAIFh1YSkdIlAtsU5oLM1Bt9um-8D8gFoQ3SLS64fvMZ6OdIphVFl92vZ339cLg/s4608/IMG_9096.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4c1n66Y0BsPf2WPtTZZMjt93ZSQjar43kcknSt-DIOWgmWvVhP4t1KyHvHWKj5GrOXWaIYvNIfd2aCPGY2uj861pJddpL0fnWJ_2m4hgmplfD1nOju4PFcVgKBHpEAIFh1YSkdIlAtsU5oLM1Bt9um-8D8gFoQ3SLS64fvMZ6OdIphVFl92vZ339cLg/s320/IMG_9096.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(The cake, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">almost gone! Photo by Brenda Barry)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">***************</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.emmafitzgerald.ca">Emma FitzGerald</a> is an illustrator living in Lunenburg, N.S. She illustrated Rita Wilson's <i>A Pocket of Time</i>, about EB's childhood. Her most recent book, with writer Andrea Curtis, is <i>City Streets Are for People</i>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">One of Emma's drawings of the riverside reading was of Sandra Barry.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7zBzV3DyxZJAPL9JBcDb0IutmHr8Kpv8JP-hXctd3qrE4Gvvdlpvu7yqiSmF95BBuzpSt2TtpsC-GoauR4eHgiwMoIrpW64JP-LMsl3kGPVV43h5YM49tBo41EWzRxzTp9zgHRmOo4cv0HFqHQIGdLglINIjP9UYaM1_4xFXpqHtlIRRlfh3tQ4WujQ/s4032/Emma's%20drawing.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="1860" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7zBzV3DyxZJAPL9JBcDb0IutmHr8Kpv8JP-hXctd3qrE4Gvvdlpvu7yqiSmF95BBuzpSt2TtpsC-GoauR4eHgiwMoIrpW64JP-LMsl3kGPVV43h5YM49tBo41EWzRxzTp9zgHRmOo4cv0HFqHQIGdLglINIjP9UYaM1_4xFXpqHtlIRRlfh3tQ4WujQ/s320/Emma's%20drawing.jpg" width="148" /></a></div>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-10227996497567780112022-04-27T08:17:00.002-03:002022-04-27T08:17:45.045-03:00Reading of Elizabeth Bishop poems in Key West<p style="text-align: justify;">From our Key West correspondent Malcolm Willison: To mark
National Poetry Month members of the Elizabeth Bishop Key West Committee held a
virtual reading of her poems which was recorded by Valley Shore Community
Television. <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Freflect-vsctv.cablecast.tv%2FCablecastPublicSite%2Fshow%2F2431%3Fchannel%3D1&data=04%7C01%7C%7C3ab9a44ebc1a4f8ff84408da18301146%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637848891969599703%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=wXX4CbP19rr1hEf4G2cUNmZKJlaK2ko2bTOSlW9GZvM%3D&reserved=0">You can access the reading online by clicking here</a>. The reading is
about an hour long and features a number of writers, including Malcolm, with strong ties to Key
West.</p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-83277572070650427872022-04-18T06:41:00.001-03:002022-04-18T09:22:11.167-03:00Review of Jonathan Post’s Elizabeth Bishop: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022) by Angus Cleghorn<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiesfCiPFZWaV87wN4vnlTmO0PIdfz5jBDB5v3TBtuceO66qMkXB7AO13D4O_jbKeKTc1txXE_hYCmGGzZmT6Y2YVPJHDCshN0QmrrOqpmpMSFixspCu46Q42LlyOleZeKpyvDGuwZ_DcR0JP1C6V_3T8e_eGWZ93ojS02m-ux5Jjmyy6t9dyr4Y_WoDg/s550/Jonathan%20Post%20--%20Elizabeth%20Bishop%20cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiesfCiPFZWaV87wN4vnlTmO0PIdfz5jBDB5v3TBtuceO66qMkXB7AO13D4O_jbKeKTc1txXE_hYCmGGzZmT6Y2YVPJHDCshN0QmrrOqpmpMSFixspCu46Q42LlyOleZeKpyvDGuwZ_DcR0JP1C6V_3T8e_eGWZ93ojS02m-ux5Jjmyy6t9dyr4Y_WoDg/s320/Jonathan%20Post%20--%20Elizabeth%20Bishop%20cover.jpg" width="204" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This
very long series of over 700 volumes may not always be introductory. Such is
the case with this fine book by Jonathan F. S. Post, Distinguished Research Professor
of English at UCLA. The writing is clear enough for an introductory reader and compounded
by expertise that displays knowledge of English poetic history as well as
Bishop’s oeuvre. I was happy to bounce around from poem to poem to consider
similarities and developments. A first-year college reader might drop a few
balls with the mental pinball machine. Still, I would recommend this book to
any reader of Bishop because Professor Post’s insights are fine-tuned with a
good ear and extensive poetic foundation. The author cites Eleanor Cook; this
book has a similar down-to-earth perceptive mastery that one finds in Cook’s
books, such as </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Elizabeth Bishop at Work</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">In
order to find references to scholars the reader has to turn to References at
the back of the book as there are no in-text citations or footnotes. I found
this annoying because I had the sense that some of Post’s information was
coming from sources but I could not see any. It makes the pages appear to lack
academic integrity. I suppose the Oxford series is aimed at a general reader
who prefers not to be weighed down by academic references, but Dr. Post’s
academic skills and experience are such that I’d prefer to see where some ideas
come from. I’ve always found footnotes cumbersome, but basic in-text citations
would help. It wasn’t until I was a few chapters in that I finally turned to
page 127 to find References. Nothing in-text leads the reader there.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Upon
first reading page 1 from this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/elizabeth-bishop-a-very-short-introduction-9780198851417?cc=us&lang=en">Very Short Introduction</a></i>, I was concerned because the first heading is “The Bishop
phenomenon,” which is a recognizable title of a well-known essay by Thomas
Travisano, and yet there is no citation for it: is this mere coincidence or a
gaffe? It is troubling in a book that’s supposed to have authority. Two pages
later a poem title was incorrectly printed as “Sub-Tropics” when Bishop’s prose
poem series is actually called “Rainy Season; Sub-Tropics.” The first part of
the title is crucial in this “vignette,” as Post describes the three
substantial prose poems on sub-tropical critters. My growing sense of dread was
compounded by repetitious mis-appellations of “Machedo” Soares. Bishop’s
lover’s name was elsewhere spelled correctly as Lota de Macedo Soares. Sloppy
editing in the Oxford University Press machine. Several pages later Dr. Anny
Baumann was described as a “lifelong friend,” however, Bishop only began seeing
her in 1947 at age 36 as the “Timeline” at the back notes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Post
began to win me over as he described the “perfect pitch” of speech in “The
Moose.” Also, since I had been wondering about the approach taken in this book
series, I was relieved to find this in chapter one’s “Biographical beginnings”:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">the focus of this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Very Short Introduction</i> is to introduce
new <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">readers to her verse,
the one truly inexhaustible ‘story’ of <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Bishop’s life. From this
perspective, biography is an<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">important first step
because places and people, heightened by<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">memory and travel—those
features of inner and outer geography<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">so crucial to Bishop—are
part of the fabric of her verse. (10)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Nice balance there.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It’s the readings of the
poems where Post excels. With Bishop’s late autobiographical poem “In the
Waiting Room,” Post describes the retrospective narrator’s experience as a
“child’s frightening identification of herself as female” while listening to
her aunt cry out in pain in the dentist’s office, leading to Bishop’s
self-consciousness amidst humanity: “But I felt: you are an </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> / you are an </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Elizabeth</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, / you are one of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">them</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">.
/ </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Why </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">should you be one, too?” Post
plays with numbers adeptly:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Yes, ‘one, too’, a
female, that is, but as ‘one’ becomes ‘two’, the young<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">girl, having been made
uneasily aware of her body, her gender, and<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">her connection to
others, separates from the child and, assuming<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">the adult poet’s
consciousness, comes into the ‘night and slush and<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">cold’ of Worcester on
the ‘fifth | of February, 1918’. The date<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">reminds us that ‘The War
was on’, outside as well as inside. (13-14)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Complex and accurate. We
next read about “Sestina,” also from 1976’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Geography
III</i>. I especially like how Post does not try and fill in biographical
particulars beyond what the poem offers. There is a tendency in Bishop
criticism to inject copious details from the life into the art, which Post does
not do, and which is a measure of respect:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">We don’t know why the
grandmother is crying, although she hints that her<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">tears are environmental
and seasonal, and are possibly connected,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">moreover, to a larger
world of fate as foretold by the almanac.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Since only the
grandmother talks, we’re also not sure of the exact<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">bond between adult and
child, the family ties behind an afternoon<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">teatime ritual, although
the child certainly wishes to please the<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">grandmother by proudly
showing her a drawing of a house. (16)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">It’s important for
readers to not say too much and make assumptions about the object of the poem’s
grief. Is the man with tear-like buttons Bishop’s father or grandfather? It is
a child’s drawing so we can’t pinpoint identity beyond the poetic
representation.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Next are “Filling
Station” and “First Death in Nova Scotia.” By the end of this very substantial
chapter 1 it’s evident that this is no breezy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Introduction</i>. “Filling Station” is potentially linked, rightly so, to
the gas station across from the Bishop-Bulmer house in Great Village (now
Wilson’s). “Somebody loves us all” finishes the poem with potentially divine
and parental overtones. “To the psychoanalytic critic, she is a compensatory
sign for the mother Bishop lost …” (20). Here we see theoretical framework and,
beyond that, interpretation extends to Bishop’s greatest prose story, “In the
Village,” which begins with “mother’s wrenching scream” (20). Not many
introductory readers will have read “In the Village” but this interpretive
reach is necessary to read Bishop’s poetry in connection with the life in her
One Art. Post returns to the end of “Filling Station” and its “loves”:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Not all of these
contexts are equally persuasive, but one more<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">suggestion is needed. I
think it is possible to read this gesture<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">rhetorically, that is,
on its own terms, as an evocation of hope by<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">someone momentarily
‘filled’ by what she has seen. Bishop’s poems<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">often end in an open
space, leaving us not so much reaching<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">irritably after facts as
simply recognizing, as in ‘The Moose’, that<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">‘Life’s like that’. A
person, the speaker, moved to questioning the<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">place of things,
including her place in an initially foreign setting<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">like a messy filling
station, can sometimes arrive at a better, more<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">generous understanding
and say just this sort of thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGhY2bdOJI3XOg8pFURgh25pqECSNTfwO9yneE5ZhEVFjZAvcufu_kVQUFITQeMv8PhloAH8lxKHKZmt5gHoXWVrnZ2wjaIjbzS4GTjutjGQm_xp_kLwNborcO52SdYMxI5OB9imI01jRVqQd2SnioaRvCMDf4--3ywOxcNUoR4XMbDpDmqpLEaAQv6g/s3832/Laurie%20Gunn%20--%20EB%20House%20Scilla%20April%202022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3832" data-original-width="2872" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGhY2bdOJI3XOg8pFURgh25pqECSNTfwO9yneE5ZhEVFjZAvcufu_kVQUFITQeMv8PhloAH8lxKHKZmt5gHoXWVrnZ2wjaIjbzS4GTjutjGQm_xp_kLwNborcO52SdYMxI5OB9imI01jRVqQd2SnioaRvCMDf4--3ywOxcNUoR4XMbDpDmqpLEaAQv6g/s320/Laurie%20Gunn%20--%20EB%20House%20Scilla%20April%202022.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>(Scilla in bloom at the Elizabeth Bishop House, April 2022. See Wilson's service station in the background. Photo by Laurie Gunn. Click to enlarge image.)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></b></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Casual expressions of
life experience are intrinsic to reading Bishop. Much of the pleasure comes
from being an accidental tourist accompanying her travels. This chapter ends by
touching on “Questions of Travel”:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">But surely it would have
been a pity<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">not to have seen the
trees along this road,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">really exaggerated in
their beauty,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">not to have seen them
gesturing<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">like noble pantomimists,
robed in pink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">“Yes, surely. Who
wouldn’t want to be part of this fantastic venture?” (24) To many readers the
appeal of reading Bishop is adventure – geographic and verbal.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Chapter
2 is on “Formal matters” and here Post really excels. Contemporary readers will
appreciate his vast knowledge of the poetic tradition through centuries.
“Bishop’s supreme valuation of formal variety as a means to singularity was
certainly one of the reasons she was drawn to George Herbert, and perhaps a
reason why, rather surprisingly, she never quite embraced Emily Dickinson”
(29). It’s important and enjoyable to trace Herbert’s formal inventions as they
affect Bishop’s poetic workings. Other influences near and far such as Robert
Frost and the Brazilian cordel make their way into Bishop’s variety. Bishop’s
collaboration with Marianne Moore is discussed in an excellent reading of
“Roosters.” Here again, though, the lack of clear reference is frustrating when
Post mentions the poem’s ‘“violence” of tone’ in quotation marks just like
that. Not many introductory readers would figure out that this “violence”
harkens back to a letter that Bishop wrote about “Roosters” to Moore, or that
Thomas Travisano wrote an essay on Bishop’s ‘“violence” of tone’ in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elizabeth Bishop and the Music of Literature</i>
(Palgrave 2019). There is no reference at the back of the book for Travisano’s
essay, Bishop’s letter, or anything to explain the odd punctuation here. Sloppy
editing.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">This
is not Post’s fault. He excels as formal reader of all kinds of Bishop poems,
such as “Questions of Travel,” in which he brings in the Baroque and Hopkins to
pinpoint prosodic iambs, dactyls, extra syllables, spondees, and Anglo-Saxon
beat in this poem that to me sounds like water falling. “Here is not
description per se, but the act of experiencing in the mind what the eye sees.”
This goes back to a reference that is acknowledged in the text to an essay from
1929 by Morris Croll, “The Baroque Style in Prose.” George Lensing has written
beautifully about this in a 1995 special issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wallace Stevens Journal</i> focused on Bishop and Stevens. Croll
and Stevens depict “a mind thinking,” which is part of this section’s heading.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">To
some degree Wallace Stevens set the table for his modernist<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">contemporaries
when he wrote in ‘Of Modern Poetry’, ‘The poem<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">of
the mind in the <i>act of finding </i>| What will suffice. It has not<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">always
had | To find: the scene was set; it repeated what | Was in<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">the
script’ (my italics). There is a great deal of Stevens in Bishop;<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Harmonium
</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">was a
book she said she had almost by heart; she<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">elsewhere
spoke of admiring the ‘display of ideas at work’ in his<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">poetry.
And there are lines in her poetry that, without the example<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">of
Stevens, seem unthinkable in their majestic play with<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">perception:
‘This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">angels,
| flying as high as they want and as far as they want<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">sidewise
| in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections’ (‘Seascape’).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">But
‘if accuracy of observation is equivalent to accuracy of<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">thinking’,
as Stevens himself observed in <i>Adagia</i>, it is Bishop, not<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Stevens,
who best fulfilled the modernist ideal of poetry as the act<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">of
finding on a human scale in a world of familiar and not so<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">familiar
objects. (42)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Bishop
often found the unfamiliar through animals; this otherness helped her sometimes
criticize human morality, something she found in Marianne Moore’s poetry <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">…
without condescension, ‘without “pastoralizing” them as [the critic]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">William
Empson might say, or drawing false analogies’. And in this <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">‘unromantic,
life-like, somehow <i>democratic</i>, presentation of animals’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Moore
helped Bishop (who was also aided by her reading of Darwin) to <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">write
about animals and, more broadly, nature from a sympathetic but<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">not
exclusively human-centred perspective …. (51-52)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">This
enables Bishop’s poetry to be read now as a critique of the Anthropocene age.
Sometimes Bishop’s animal poems are more closely linked to humanity, as in “The
Armadillo” dedicated to Robert Lowell. Chapter 3 focuses on Lowell and Moore as
influential practitioners for Bishop’s animal descriptions.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">One
of Bishop’s most critical poetic representations of humanity occurs in “Brazil,
January 1, 1502,” which Post discusses with subtlety: “her delving—to redeploy
an idiom from ‘The Map’—into the shadows that inhabit the shallows” (55). Those
shadows become the forest canopy under which indigenous women retreat while
being attacked by rapacious Portuguese colonizers. Post weaves Ovid’s Philomel
story from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Metamorphoses </i>as well as
Shakespeare’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rape of Lucrece</i>
into the poem’s tapestry to show that Bishop is<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">appropriating
one kind of violence (sexual) through another (artistic), <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">to
reveal a world long familiar to the reader but now seen mysteriously <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">anew,
as only the closely woven fabric of her marvellous art can do. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">For
Bishop the explorer, coming to terms with the cheerful natural landscape<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">means
coming to understand the sometimes awful footprint of<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">human
history. (59)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Chapter
4 on poetry and painting includes some of Bishop’s paintings from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Exchanging Hats</i> by William Benton and
continues fine analysis: “We might regard ‘The Fish’ as a painter’s paradise,
and also a reader’s” (67). I feel the same way about “Seascape” and “Pleasure
Seas.” Excellent examples from “A Cold Spring,” “Santarem,” and “Over 2,000
Illustrations and a Complete Concordance” are canvased. Post precisely notes
that only “Large Bad Picture” and “Poem” are technically ‘ekphrastic,’ meaning
“a poem about an artwork, usually a painting. The doors open wider if we use
‘ekphrasis’ in the original classical sense of any verbal description of something
seen (think ‘Cape Breton’) …” (75). As with many of Bishop’s readers, Post
reads “Poem” with delight, as did Howard Moss when he received it at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Yorker</i>: “I wish I could read a poem
like that every day for the rest of my life” (80).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">This
book features six illustrations, two of which are photographs by Rollie McKenna
somewhat similar to the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elizabeth
Bishop in Context</i>, which Post wrote to me that he regretted not having read
by the time his book went to press. Chapter 5 on “Love known” begins by finding
Thomas Travisano’s 2019 biography <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love
Unknown</i> an unclear title aside from the allusion to the Herbert poem. For
Bishop knew love, as the posthumous poems “It is marvelous to wake up
together,” “Breakfast Song” and “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vague
Poem </i>(vaguely love poem)” display in different ways. Post does nice work
with more subtle expressions of desire such as “Quai d’Orleans” and “Four
Poems,” the latter of which he reads as an experimental poem. A section
entitled “Still explosions” examines “The Shampoo,” and finds its first stanza
perplexing: “Odd to think of lichens exploding” (93). Really? On daily walks I observe
lichens on rocks and their various amoebic shapes do burst (perhaps my eyes
perceive via Bishop’s painterly descriptions). I can forgive Dr. Post’s
different aperture when I read this rich conclusion about the final stanza:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">…
set off with a dash (for spontaneity) and a comma (for a pause), <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">the
single word ‘Come’, a directive that carries lightly the weight <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">of
an entire tradition of <i>carpe diem </i>poems in English. (Think <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Marlowe’s
‘Come live with me’ or Ben Jonson’s ‘Come my Celia, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">let
us prove | The sports of love.’) And in that directive, we might <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">fancy
Bishop taking control of those loose black hairs in ‘O Breath’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">that
were flying around, intolerably blown about, and weaving <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">them
into a love-knot about something as domestically simple and <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">sensual
as washing a companion’s hair. (94)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">While
it may not quite be an entire tradition’s weight, we might also find Emily
Dickinson’s dash and comma style here. Earlier in the book Dickinson was
understandably downplayed in favour of Herbert, but her signature pauses may
figure in “—Come,” and in the delayed foreplay of “Four Poems” and its spaces.
After “The Shampoo,” Post finds that another domestic poem about Bishop’s love
for Lota de Macedo Soares. “Song for the Rainy Season” “… continues the
association of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eros </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aqua</i>, both life-giving forces in Brazil”
(97).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">“Bishop
is the great travel poet of our modern era,” chapter 6 begins authoritatively
(103). “[L]yric time and leisurely thinking” are observed by Bishop in a 1965
letter to Robert Lowell referring to “Walking Early Sunday Morning.” At the
back of the book we can find reference to Roger Gilbert’s influential <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walks in the World: <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Representation and Experience in Modern American Poetry</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> from 1991</span>. Post locates “‘The End of
March’ [a]s a ‘walk poem’ along the shore south of Boston …” (104). Complexity
overflows from this poem, especially its accumulative ending. As often the case,
Wallace Stevens is read into this poem’s mechanics. To me, the whole poem can
be read as a dialogue with Stevens’ metrical form and his imagination embodied
in lion figures; Post chooses the “lion of the spirit” from “An Ordinary
Evening in New Haven.” Back in 1991’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Questions
of Mastery,</i> Bonnie Costello discussed Bishop’s use of Stevens’ lion sun
while referring to Harold Bloom’s prior interpretations. The richness of “The
End of March” and Bishop’s meta-dialogue with Stevens endures — partly because
Bishop’s poem is so playful with its “artichoke” crypto-dream house and flaming
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">grog a l’americaine</i>” Stevens would
enjoy, also because readers can choose a suitable measure of rich textural
engagement within the basic message of the poem: “Go for a walk, especially
along a beach. It might change your mood, your inner weather, for the better”
(116).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">From
the influential author of “Sunday Morning” to “Bishop’s ultimate Sunday poem,”
(117) we go to Santarem where the poet’s mind is in motion again; amidst the
“dazzling dialectic” of converging blue and brown rivers, an older Bishop plays
with self-correction, as pinpointed in Post’s knowledge of rhetorical figures:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">the
device of ‘metanoi’, meaning ‘afterthought’, for the first time <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">she
confuses church and cathedral, then again as ‘epanorthosis’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">or
‘emphatic correction’, by enjambing the phrase across a stanza <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">break
and adding an exclamation point: ‘the church | (Cathedral, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">rather!)’.
(117)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">And
yet everything is so well remembered about this place “in which contemplation
wins out over commerce” (119). This subtle use of Bishop’s “Large Bad Picture,”
and its dialectical “commerce or contemplation” is doubtfully picked up by many
introductory readers, and so it remains an unacknowledged reference.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Jonathan
Post in his epilogue does refer to “the classroom. For a number of years, I
taught Bishop in a seminar called, simply, ‘How to Read a Poem’” (120). It is
this pleasure that jumps off the page. One feels the company of a master who
makes it easy, in his own words, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">…
because Bishop is so good at taking you through the steps. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">First
step, look closely; second step, look closer still; third step <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">look
even more closely, but especially now with an eye to where <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">the
poem is going, not to where you think it should be going, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">but
where its diction, syntax, grammar, and punctuation<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">lead.
This means listening to the poem, bringing the ear out of<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">hiding
in order to help the eye to see and the mind to think.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Bishop’s
poems are always about surfaces getting deeper, about<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">knowledge
as process. (121)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">She
“makes us feel that we’re all there as part of the poem’s creative energy at
the moment </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">of
its arriving” (123).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">********************<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Angus
Cleghorn teaches English at Seneca College in Toronto, and once explored the
Moose route in Nova Scotia during a stay at the Bishop-Bulmer house in Great
Village.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-70889018014264583502022-04-07T06:42:00.002-03:002022-04-07T06:42:47.219-03:00Reading of Elizabeth Bishop Poems to Mark National Poetry Month<p>I am
honoured to be participating in a reading of Elizabeth Bishop poems at the
<b>LaHave River Bookstore on Nova Scotia’s South Shore on 30 April 2022 at 4:00
p.m. </b>I will be joined by three other writers: <b>Janet Barkhouse, Carole Langille
and Lisa McCabe</b>. You can learn more about the wonderful LaHave River Bookstore by
checking out their <a href="https://lahaveriverbooks.ca/">website</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Independent-Bookstore/LaHave-River-Books-1489810344364484/">Facebook page</a>. Hope to see you there.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOQ7llFY_ftrKf5GwXxCddn6OJgJzvK_gF4RTG2IYc97HYjvcYz_XlwSRNUoZa7OW7ofRIJm6oL5snFK3sgZnDiIoY3ZHlepDE76UmqzXWl1fUkcX06A7vMfFqHkhUMVtH1KBY9IEUELy7EO9_TOpkTyINTgqX41jGiBus3OmVVTHFyJUw6Osy73YQQ/s1056/EB%20Quartet%20tribute%20to%20EB%20Apr%2030%202022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1056" data-original-width="816" height="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOQ7llFY_ftrKf5GwXxCddn6OJgJzvK_gF4RTG2IYc97HYjvcYz_XlwSRNUoZa7OW7ofRIJm6oL5snFK3sgZnDiIoY3ZHlepDE76UmqzXWl1fUkcX06A7vMfFqHkhUMVtH1KBY9IEUELy7EO9_TOpkTyINTgqX41jGiBus3OmVVTHFyJUw6Osy73YQQ/w332-h405/EB%20Quartet%20tribute%20to%20EB%20Apr%2030%202022.jpg" width="332" /></a></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3714240941786290434.post-21693650391485087112022-03-21T06:37:00.001-03:002022-03-22T06:35:40.324-03:00Review: “Elizabeth Bishop in Context: Glimpsing (and Holding) the Poet’s Messy Universe” by Tristan Beach<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4Aj3Spyk9qs_DmMb0Tr4VVpmX3GjtKPwYAGTbeGOLsO33Aqd9bwrufWNUPaOqZmxrwBwzvFHsXLCu4bs1y80mvLUSyP19jlyhRUBIkEssNNVvojbNUwqFXgNycENQq-v6Q-P_sk1Eu_yL5_vWVwF9FlRV2aYHHjs1DJoZ_2OCPG7MXsqd8Oz6ghjmA/s273/Elizabeth%20Bishop%20in%20Context%20cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="273" data-original-width="180" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4Aj3Spyk9qs_DmMb0Tr4VVpmX3GjtKPwYAGTbeGOLsO33Aqd9bwrufWNUPaOqZmxrwBwzvFHsXLCu4bs1y80mvLUSyP19jlyhRUBIkEssNNVvojbNUwqFXgNycENQq-v6Q-P_sk1Eu_yL5_vWVwF9FlRV2aYHHjs1DJoZ_2OCPG7MXsqd8Oz6ghjmA/s1600/Elizabeth%20Bishop%20in%20Context%20cover.jpg" width="180" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Introduction</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">How far back do you go to find the sources of a
writer’s life and work? To ancestry and community? To family and childhood? To education
and experience? … Art is, probably, created somewhere in the messy middle… it
was so for Elizabeth Bishop, who described life as an ‘untidy activity’ </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Sandra
Barry, “Chapter 1: Nova Scotia” 17)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/elizabeth-bishop-in-context/5064D486F7B6E6E1C40C626FF6EB8F00">Elizabeth Bishop in Context</a>,</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"> edited
by Angus Cleghorn and Jonathan Ellis, is a groundbreaking, comprehensive
collection of essays that penetrates and reveals numerous facets of Elizabeth
Bishop’s life and legacy—observed within and across different contexts.
Cleghorn and Ellis write in their introduction, “Contexts do not provide all of
the answers to the many questions her poems and stories ask. In some cases, it
feels as if they make things messier… What happens when one context contradicts
the other? Which context matters more? Why these contexts and not others?” (2).
Cleghorn and Ellis do not attempt to answer these questions; rather, they let
the collection speak for itself. And, as Sandra Barry notes in her chapter on
Nova Scotia quoted above, like “Art,” this collection takes its readers
“somewhere in the messy middle,” offering numerous overlapping, contrary, and
highly unique ways of seeing, and reading into, the person, poet, philosopher,
critic, artist, correspondent, and teacher that was Elizabeth Bishop (17).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Structuring the Collective<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
thirty-five essays comprising the volume were penned by a global collective of
scholars, translators, poets, critics, editors, and admirers. Each essay bears
a chapter title corresponding with its respective context, and each context is
grouped with other similar contexts under a related thematic section. For
instance, Part II. “Forms,” contains chapters on literary, visual, and
epistolary genres as contexts such as “Lyric Poetry” by Gillian White and
“Translation” by Mariana Machová. Likewise, Part V. “Identity,” includes the
contexts of social constructs, such as “Gender” by Deryn Rees-Jones and Eira
Murphy, as well as the rich realm of symbols and the unconscious, such as
“Dreams” by Bonnie Costello.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">These
chapters provide nuanced ways of seeing Bishop’s life and legacy: <i>glimpses </i>into
the mess that the editors and contributors each contend with. The chapters echo
one another in their interpretations either by proximity (in their sequential
chapter order) or by examining common primary sources, such as Bishop’s poems
and letters—or by drawing on frequently cited criticism and biography. Through
these common dimensions each contributor offers numerous similar <i>contextualized</i>
frames for <i>glimpsing </i>Bishop. However, while these chapters briefly (few
span beyond 12 pages long) resemble one another, many through their
dissimilarity appear to enforce the messiness. Thus, collectively the <i>contextualized
glimpses </i>of each chapter do not total, nor do they form, a singular image
of the poet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Where
one chapter may trace the “apocalyptic threat” of WWII in “At the Fishhouses”
(Charles Berger’s “War,” which finds in the poem’s “total immersion” a
“dream-vision of the world sliding into extinction” 217), another chapter may
note the same poem’s musicality and earthly humor (Christopher Spaide’s
“Music,” in which the poem’s “total immersion” is identified as being “lifted”
from “interdenominational debates over baptism” 239). Coincidentally, both
chapters, despite operating from distinct contexts and even more distant
interpretations of the same poetry, appear in the same section, Part IV.
“Politics, Society and Culture.” Such separate, yet adjacent, thematically
related readings of the same poetry, letters, prose, and other primary sources
results in complex, nuanced visions of Bishop’s world—more accurately, her
universe—that trend more towards complementing than contradicting.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Contextualized Glimpses</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Among
the many contextualized glimpses in the collection are Bishop’s childhood detailed
in Nova Scotia (Barry’s “Nova Scotia”), as well as her boisterous, troubled
years in Brazil—the literary legacy there being politically mired (Neil
Besner’s “Brazil,” Machová’s “Translation,” Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins’s
“Brazilian Literature”). Other glimpses can be found in Part III.’s “Literary
Contexts,” which includes romanticism, surrealism, modernism, among others.
These chapters detail Bishop’s encounters with the different movements, locating
through hints or outright declarations in her letters and poems her resistance,
dismissal, or embrace of such movements. Also of note is her ambivalence toward
psychoanalysis due to several instances of failed psychotherapy as a child but
followed by her captivating and complicated friendship with her psychoanalyst,
Dr. Ruth Foster (Lorrie Goldensohn’s “Psychoanalysis”). Such ambivalence,
typical of Bishop who knowingly held opposites, can be seen in her apolitical
public stances yet personal anti-fascist sentiment captured in Berger’s “War,”
Steven Gould Axelrod’s “The Cold War,” and Jeffrey Gray’s “Travel.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">These
multiple contextualized glimpses into the mess of Bishop’s universe present us
with a person whose global influence extends beyond categorization, taking root
in our imagination, as Stephanie Burt examines in “Bishop’s Influence,” in Part
VI. “Reception and Criticism.” Burt charts Bishop’s far-flung influence—in
poetic form, device, attention, subject, and obsession—on American poetry in
the 21st century. Just as Bishop’s influence is extensive and her apparent
literary descendants numerous, her figure, too, appears multiple, as a
collective: we glimpse through </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elizabeth Bishop in Context </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">individual
</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Bishops, the many faces of Bishop that populates this universe. Bishop the
social critic, Bishop the alcoholic, Bishop the loyal friend, Bishop the survivor
of abuse, Bishop the patient, Bishop the lover.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Common, Complex Facets</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">One
common facet among many glimpsed across contexts is Bishop’s queerness, which
informed much of her attitudes, relationships, and resistance to literary
categorization or being lumped into a single movement (she famously resisted
being defined as a “woman poet” and disdained much being anthologized as such).
As Axelrod notes in “The Cold War,” Bishop’s position as a queer woman cast her
as an outsider to American society, vulnerable to McCarthyism through its
rampant, homophobic persecution of sexual and gender minorities. Axelrod locates
Bishop’s “binary thinking in the service of queer non-conformity” in her poem
“View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress” that castigates white,
straight, heteropatriarchal nationalism that dominated the American political
experience (223). Axelrod finds that although Bishop “had a ‘horror of
Communism’,” her “skepticism toward democracy… reflects queer alienation at
mid-century as well as forecasting later strains of liberal unease” (223, 224).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Where
Bishop’s queerness underlay her political affiliations and attitudes, it also
unpinned her complex relationships with other women and her conception of
gender. From childhood to late adulthood, her life was enriched by a global
network of female relations—aunts, teachers, mentors, students, friends, and
partners. In Rees-Jones and Murphy’s “Gender,” the authors chart the impact of
these relations on Bishop as a queer poet. They observe that, inspired by her
own intimate relationships and with other women while navigating openly
homophobic American society, Bishop’s view of gender was highly nuanced and
less monolithic or stable. For instance, the authors describe </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">North &
South</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> as “a book of sleepy disorientations; … a book which creates a world
in which bodies are not fully assembling or coming together” (315). Here,
Bishop resists fully, or at least consistently, gendering her speakers and, at
times, their subjects—frequently encompassed in an gender neutral “we” (315).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yet
Bishop’s playful, queer explorations, reversals, and deflections of gender
roles and norms are further complicated by her whiteness, which Rees-Jones and
Murphy identify in poems such as “In the Waiting Room,” in which Bishop,
“[setting] herself in a place of difference from the Black women in the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">National
Geographic,</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">” reproduces “hierarchies… in terms of race [that] risk
constructing a racist narrative of difference, a narrative which continues in
Bishop’s work” (320). Bishop’s politics, queerness, female relations, gender
conceptions, and whiteness—however clearly glimpsed or carefully
explained—nevertheless add many depths to the mess of her universe.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Conclusion: Community in Bishop’s Universe</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">As
individual readers of Elizabeth Bishop, we may investigate and grapple with the
many faces and forms of Bishop. In solitude and with only the original work in
our hands, our glimpses of the poet is ever elliptic, partial, and often outside
a community of other ways of seeing. However, </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elizabeth Bishop in Context</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
attempts to corral the mess without containing or parsing it, despite the
collection’s careful organization that resists a single, dominant gaze. By
admitting multiple ways of envisioning Bishop and within a collection that
covers an exhaustive (though not complete) amount of ground, we as solitary
readers gain this community of thoughtful, incisive glimpses grounded in their
respective contexts.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elizabeth Bishop in Context </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">adds a
necessary volume to the steadily growing field of Bishop studies, a field whose
community history Thomas Travisano narrates in his titular chapter, “Bishop
Studies.” Like other recent volumes, including Bethany Hicok’s <i>Elizabeth
Bishop and the Literary Archive </i>and Cleghorn’s own <i>Elizabeth Bishop and
the Music of Literature, Elizabeth Bishop in Context </i>further elevates and
legitimizes not just Bishop studies writ large but Bishop herself as a literary
force worthy of study within and throughout multiple contexts. And as Travisano
states in this community of scholars, students, readers, and teachers, “it was
precisely by learning to read Bishop’s work <i>in context</i> that Bishop
studies emerged as the steadily expanding and influential international field
that we know today” (author’s emphasis 382).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWOJZUzIjgUisMX_9OvLkxc6VFMm-h2w6amJAnC_eRQ0dPOSnunkEzDF4tAVXYqgy2vTIRRz22_pj107rsKcFACzseoJHyMTUG6WCfuvMjW-XZ9q8Qe_8o8JofV6AMn03GB17T3U_vJGBijh8UoXr6azZHvXbxUX7fnc2QbvWeFo86vB92K8UVy63ig/s718/EB%20sitting%20in%20chair%20unknown%20interior.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="695" data-original-width="718" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWOJZUzIjgUisMX_9OvLkxc6VFMm-h2w6amJAnC_eRQ0dPOSnunkEzDF4tAVXYqgy2vTIRRz22_pj107rsKcFACzseoJHyMTUG6WCfuvMjW-XZ9q8Qe_8o8JofV6AMn03GB17T3U_vJGBijh8UoXr6azZHvXbxUX7fnc2QbvWeFo86vB92K8UVy63ig/s320/EB%20sitting%20in%20chair%20unknown%20interior.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>Tristan Beach is a PhD student
in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his
MFA in Poetry from Goddard College and a BA in English from Saint Martin’s
University. He is a member of the board of directors for Olympia Poetry Network
and is the poetry editor for Pif Magazine. His creative and critical writings
have appeared in Pif, Conium Review, Shantih, The Pitkin Review, and elsewhere</b></span></p>Sandra Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17281125721509189334noreply@blogger.com0