Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 52: An update and a conclusion

Bishop’s letter of 12 November 1959 ended as many of them did, with a mish-mash of subjects, though this time it was as if she was filling in to divert herself from the death of her old friend Marjorie Carr Stevens. In the midst of the final updating that concludes this letter, Bishop interjects (set off again by dashes): “Maybe I shouldn’t burden you with my sad news, but you did know Marjorie and I thought you’d like to know.” Bishop quietly adds, “I was awfully fond of her and feel dreadful about it.” From the accounts she had received, she knew that Marjorie’s death had been difficult, so Bishop says what we all say in the face of such information: “I hope and pray she didn’t suffer very much.”

The biggest diversion Bishop offers is an account of Lota’s grandchildren, “five, now,” who had visited “several times” recently to swim, because “it is getting hot again.” The grandchild who got most of Bishop’s attention was “Lotinha, not quite two.” This toddler was “the best swimmer of all — she is amazing.” Bishop observed that she “bobs like a cork.” Fond of water and swimming herself, Bishop admired this innate ability. She observed, “she’d walk right into, or onto, six feet of water if we didn’t hold onto her.” Not only did the wee one want to go into the water, “she refuses to come out, even after her teeth are chattering.” Bishop then tells Grace a little story about this natural-born swimmer, one that her aunt undoubtedly appreciated fully: “She wore a bathing suit for the first time the other day — a small rag of her brother’s — but didn’t like it — screamed ‘Take off my bikini! Take off my bikini!’ — so went as naked as a cherub, as usual.” The spot where they were swimming was the pool Lota had created near the house at Samambaia. Bishop noted that “the water is deep and icy cold.” It came out of the mountain that loomed behind the house. Bishop told Grace that she had some “snapshots” of the children, and would send some to her aunt “when I get copies made.” Bishop sent her aunt a number of photos from Brazil, but if she followed through on this promise, the photos to not survive.

(Lota's house at Samambaia in the early stages of its construction.)

Even though it was only early November, Elizabeth and Lota were already thinking about the Christmas holidays: “We hope to get to the beach, again — Cabo Frio — for Christmas but haven’t been invited yet!” They had gone to this beautiful spot a number of times. I wrote about one such visit in Post # 38.

In the end they did go, but at this point, it was uncertain, so Bishop observed that if an invitation was not extended, “we’ll try to go to another famous beautiful old beach place and stay at a hotel for a few days.” Just where this was she doesn’t say. However it would unfold, Bishop said that she and Lota needed to get away because “it is getting just too complicated here, with servants, ex-servants, Lota’s (boring) relatives, [and] ‘grandchildren’.” In the face of this ménage (menagerie?), “It’s easier to give them all a little something and then go away.”

The conclusion of this letter was interrupted by “Lunchtime,” but upon returning Bishop began to wind down in earnest: “I hope you are all well now — how is the leg?” This query prompted Bishop to bring up the subject of support hose: “I keep reading about those new stockings that look like nylons but seem to give SUPPORT at the same time.” But Bishop then wondered if such devices might not be “heavy enough for your needs?” Grace was an ample woman her whole life.

Then a zig back to the beginning of the letter: “Tell me if you don’t get the little books” — that is, the cookbooks about jelly and jam, and cookies — “or if you’d like any others” (books, that is). Being so far away, there was little Bishop could send her aunt by way of gifts, but she noted that books were “one of the few things I can manage to send to you.”

Then a zag back to Grace: “I do hope you are well and that the job is easy and that you are enjoying it.” Just what job the seventy-year old Grace was doing is not indicated, but she still had a few years of nursing left in her.

Having closed her letter with the usual “With love, Elizabeth,” a P.S. was added: “I’d intended to try to get Mary Morse to bring back the maple syrup for us!” Whether this was a gift Grace had hoped to send (she had sent it before), or just one they asked Mary to secure herself, is not clear. In any case, Mary had changed her travel plans and returned to Brazil sooner than expected. Not getting this gift, hearing about the death of Marjorie, wondering about Grace’s health: all these things prompted Bishop to write: “maybe I’ll get there myself.” A plan to go to the U.S. during the upcoming winter had been given up, Bishop writes, because “$ is absolutely impossible for Lota now and she has a big land deal on.” Bishop trails off this somewhat sad letter with “but sooner or later —” Isn’t that so for all of us.

Bishop’s next letter to Grace followed closely in the wake of this one, prompted by receiving one from her aunt.

Click here to see Post 51.

Elizabeth Bishop House Artist Residency: application deadline 15 April 2018

(click to enlarge)

Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 51: Marjorie

The disquistion on jaboticaba and pitanga jelly finished (and thanks to John for finding so many videos to augment Bishop’s words), Bishop turned to a much more serious subject in her 12 November 1959 letter: “I’ve had some very bad news — my friend Marjorie [Carr Stevens] died unexpectedly — at least to me, and most of her friends, I think — on October 21st.” All the dashes suggest the difficulty of relating this shock. It is as if the previous paragraphs were a means to avoid telling the most important thing she had to tell.

Marjorie and Elizabeth met in Florida in 1941. Marjorie was married but separated from her husband. They moved in together and were a couple for some time. They travelled to Mexico in 1942 and in 1947 to Nova Scotia. Even after the intimate relationship ended, they remained good friends. Marjorie met Grace in 1947 and when Grace spent time in Florida during the 1950s (with Aunt Mabel and her daughter Hazel), she and Marjorie saw each other again. I wrote about this connection in post # 35.

(Marjorie on the right, with Pauline Hemmingway, Key West, 1940s.)

Bishop knew that Grace would be sad about this premature death. Marjorie “was just 50, I think,” Bishop noted. The root of  this death was her “long history of tuberculosis,” a condition about which Grace knew. Bishop reported that Marjorie had “recovered — cured herself — several times.” This resilience had made Bishop decide “she was tough.” Marjorie had revealed to Bishop in letters that “she had been having ‘asthma’ … increasingly the last two years,” a condition Bishop was all too familiar with, and one that caused her concern. The immediate trigger for this death was, however, travel.

She told Grace that Marjorie had gone “to Guatamala for her vacation.” The problem was the “unpressurized plane & discovered it too late, and had a severe attack.” This attack “injured her heart badly.” Another reason for the asthmatic Bishop to fear flying (even modern airplanes offer health risks that we tend not to regard with much concern, so ubiquitous is flying).

 (Marjorie Carr Steven’s passport application, 1941.)

One of Marjorie’s brothers and their mutual friend Jane Dewey were the sources of Bishop’s information, so she knew that Marjorie was travelling with a friend, “an old lady who was taking her — it must have been hell for her.” After leaving Central America, they “went to Nassau, to try sea-level.” Sadly, it didn’t help, “Marjorie got worse.” Then she went into hospital “to try an oxygen tent and died a day later.”

Bishop reported that Marjorie “had planned” to visit Brazil that very April, “and she wanted to come so much.” Bishop summarized Marjorie’s situation for her aunt, saying that her friend “hadn’t really had much fun in her life, although she enjoyed things so much — a dreary husband (and I never could stand her family, either!).” Grace might not have felt as upset as Bishop, but she and Marjorie had clearly connected, “Marjorie liked you very much and always asked about you, almost every letter.”

Bishop had known so much loss by this time in her life, but there is something unsettling about losing a contemporary, a dear friend with whom one has shared a deep and abiding  connection, that is disruptive to one’s system. It haunts. Elizabeth and Marjorie had “been friends for more than twenty years.” Their friendship had been confined to letters for more than a decade, but for Bishop, correspondence was not a distant mode of contact, even if letters crossed thousands of miles. Even so, she confessed to her aunt, “I can’t seem to take it in very well yet — I suppose because I live so far away.”

After this sombre subject, Bishop quickly turned back to a more pleasant topic: a trip to Cabo Frio for the holidays. The next post will conclude this letter.

Click here to see Post 50.

Con Spirito -- A New Short Film about Elizabeth Bishop Starts its Kickstarter Campaign

The makers of the film write:

Synopsis 

 "Inspired by true events. 

 "At Vassar College in 1933, Elizabeth Bishop and Margaret Miller sneak around campus in the dead of night posting an anonymous call for submissions to their experimental, boundary-pushing literary newspaper, Con Spirito. Caught in the rebellious spirit of the mission, they wind up spending the night in a tree, discussing their radical venture, life at Vassar, writing, and loneliness. As the sun rises on Vassar’s campus, the two women leave their perch on the tree with a new, profound understanding of each other, and of the challenges ahead of them."

 Why make this film? 

"Con Spirito is a character study of one of the most important figures in American poetry; it is also a story of rebellion. In the era of Trump, #metoo, and a Hollywood finally ready to confront patterns of inequality and abuse of power, we need women telling women's stories. Stories about women finding their voice, as artists and as individuals. Stories about women pushing boundaries and discovering new ways to exist and create in the world. Stories about intimacy and connection between women, told in a way that's neither fetishized nor trivialized. We'd like to think that anyone who loves Elizabeth Bishop's poetry will be fascinated by the historical background of the film. We hope that the film will go beyond that to tell a powerful, universal story of youth, rebellion, and self-discovery."

For further information on the film, the team behind it, and to support the Kickstarter campaign:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/781990065/con-spirito-a-short-film?ref=project_share

First Encounters

1.

Strange appearances,
full of serendipity
and charm. Newfoundland.

2.

Awful but cheerful,
looking for something something
something. Then: the House.

3.

Meetings, non-meetings
almost Akhmatovian
-- I mean my ego.

4.

Ten years I lived here --
nobody had mentioned her
to me. Intriguing.

5.

Newfoundland Journal.
Many generous people
invited us in.

6.

I stand here, iron.
What you ask moves tormented
through my mind. Then. Now.

7.

A green-covered book,
tiny, well-packed, straightforward,
unostentatious.

8.

-- Blueberry patches.
Like a child in Wonderland,
I came here to write. ---

9.

Once a failed poet,
now failed collector of them,
I love how words sound.

10.

As perfect a work
as any I have looked at,
a treasure within.

11.

Now forever gone,
it hung on a bedroom wall
in the Poet's House.

12.

As a choir member, --
"Song for a Rainy Season"
-- I could feel the damp.

13.

Chateau Frontenac,
an old and ornate hotel,
knows our language well.

14.

Completely gob-smacked
I have no recollection
no link letter left.

15.

Under the window
new and abiding desire,
age-old saudade.

17.

Less than meaningful
Dead White Protestant Males rule
and -- unknowing -- reign.

18.

Vanadous, uranic,
bluebell tunicates blossom,
vain, but not raucous.

19.

Where mint grows by brooks,
the Bay of Fundy's sheer tides
crumbling ribs of marl.

20.

On the syllabus --
"Post-Modern American
Poetry" -- her name.

21.

Who was this poet
becoming canonical
in America?

22.

Find her reticence
grounded in Nova Scotia:
in burnt hawkweed.

23.

I contributed
one poem to Canticle.
Being drawn closer.

24.

Bike rides, afternoon
naps, silence, asparagus --
like so many things.

25.

Printed distinctly
in black ink on the blank page --
the first one -- her name.

26.

In my final year,
and then the summer after,
the sound of her mind.

27.

Down shore is haunted.
"It's a racial memory --
something genetic."

28.

Fear or loneliness --
detached otherworldliness
-- this separate life.

29.

Enthusiastic,
spoiled, quick to judge, insecure,
I grew my hair out.

30.

Behind tall locked doors,.
wondering what it could mean,
The Manuscript Room.
.
31.

Sable Island trip.
Maud's painting of Great Village.
A challenge. A spark.

32.

Living the so-called
simple life, in an old home
amidst old patterns.

33.

On a dim column
the image of a cock carved:
porphyry and bronze.

34.

Lo que no sabe
una niña huérfana,
saben las olas.

35.

A delicious chat,
wafting around my psyche,
tossed on Fundy tides.

36.

Crossing hemispheres
as I have done to travel
perfectly at home.

37.

Something more subtle?
Lupins, say, -- all pencil-thin,
prophetic, silent.

38.

There's my confession,
but I've made up for it since:
wet red mud glazed blue.

39.

Reaching for the Moon.
Deceptive simplicity
drawing the drawing.

40.

Ask each sophomore
to memorize one poem.
The meadows unfold.

41.

Enter the unknown
fascinated by the doors'
handles and latches.

42.

"Reaching for the Moon"
(in German "Die Poetin") --
always out of place.

9 January 2018

DON DU POÈME

И слабым голосом страданий и любви 

Шепнешь ли бедному творению: «Живи»?

(1.) XIII

島

Land lies in water.

Mendacious and envious,

it is shadowed green.

(2.) XVII

壩

Tired Seawall Inn:

its sign maker knew too well

land lies in water.

(3.) XVIII

婚

A wedding's theories

are like this old brass rubbing:

it is shadowed green.

(4.) L

餵鳥

Balcony breakfast

(thimble of coffee and crumb),

A scabby lakefront.

(5.) LI

旅行問題

Freighter. Towelette lef

t (the little we get for free)

moist on the tea tray.

(6.) LXII

一個藝術

Where it was, you meant

to travel: were it only

a YMCA,

the wryest Athenaeum

still left in all Wyoming.

(7.) LXXXIV

拂晓

Its otherness ahead,

moonlight on a tidal pool,

the sea and its shore.

(8.) XCIII

課

If A cheats whomever,

B shares the consequences.

We have come this far.

(9.) XCIV

螺旋桨豆豆

Another drab day.

This year our hats will need a

rotary headband.

(10.) CIV

沼

The true Everglades

spread far beyond the bounds of

regulated verse.

(11.) CXVI

誤讀的地圖

The sea level map's

netted surfaces, red as

the maple's leaves.

(12.) CXLVI

冬季馬戲團

The Winter Circus,

elephant withers cinctured,

ends with its season.

(13.) CXLVIIIa

朝の曲

Occasional verse.

But aren't we all? Homemade.

Laconic. At sea.

(14.) CCLII

千鳥

Bright faery hue: rose-

edged amethyst at dawn,

February eighth.

(15.) CCLVIII

一個藝術

for M.A.D.

Was the day chosen?

Wound afresh with red birthday

ribbon, frozen creeks.

(16.) CCLXXXIII

松島

Valid otherness:

a white violet's hardness

over the islands.

(17.) CCXCIII

伊丽莎白·毕肖普

in memory of Elizabeth Bishop

So many the hats

she exchanged for essentials:

asthma, honesty.

(18.) CCCVIII

美国国会

Quockerwodgers all,

hanging on words they dangle

from their tangled strings.

(19.) CCCXII

哲学

Zen gets you nowhere.

Poetry? No more than a

wheezy song en route.

(20.) CCCLXVIII

兔子

The deft horned owl

sinks its talons in my back.

The end of the world.

(21.) CCCLXXXV

譽

Now the mourning doves,

renowned once for moving South,

return North unknown.

(22.) CD

旅行問題

in memory of Elizabeth Bishop

And here, or there... No.

One herder meets another,

their cattle mingle.

(23.) CDXVII

捕夢網

In memory of Elizabeth Bishop

Fraught with art and creed

handcrafted, aught, Writer, but

your sonnet. Caught. Freed.

(24.) CDLXIV

工人

Puddles of moon fish,

an inch of dim smoke swabbing

the main deck gunnels.

(25.) CDLXXIV

騷客

Perfectly useless,

the amputee's shoemaker

doesn't give a fig.

(26.) CDLXXXII

沙錢

Sand dollar bezels

scant steps from the horizon:

cold stars and planets.

(27.) DVII

在青苔

for EAAB

Slow-witted, owlish

eyes half-veiled in the moonlight.

Wild white violets.

(28.) DVIII

請

for EAAB

Ale house. Weepy remorse.

Lying awake and knowing

somewhere you're asleep.

(29.) DXIV

布雷顿角高地国家公园

How unlike Borglum's

narcosynthesis these rocks,

lichens, gray moonbursts.

(30.) DXVI

西門·馬吉斯

Helen's valley forge.

Golden apple smell once more,

lovely hell-green flames.

(31.) DXXXVI

三次

Cockerel checklist

digged out of the bight's sea chest.

Click. Click. Goes the dredge.

(32.) DXXXVIII

遲來的感謝

The bromeliads

long gone, I don't dare write you

in herbalist mode.

(33.) DLVIII

文音

電報

"RIVER VERY BIG"

(any verb very rigid)

"MISS YOU VERY MUCH."

(34.) DCXXIII

冷泉

This spring, too, is flawed:

now tumbling over itself,

now slinking forward.

(35.) DCXLVI

极光

Bubbles intersect:

the sensible BBC

utters foxfire truths.

(36.) DCXCI

物の哀れ

Solitary clouds,

each aware of the others

covering its sky.

(37.) DCCLXXIV

旅行的問題

Never to have heard

the sound of your heart beating —

surely a pity.

(38.) DCCCVIII

多毛海棠

Putative doily,

all too thick with grey crochet —

Life is a taboret.

(39). CMXXXVII

羅盤點

Jay North, Clint Eastwood,

Robert Southey, Adam West:

"Dear, my compass still — "

(40.) CMXLII

夏季雪

Gouts of Bishop's Weed:

ivory-edged, green-centred,

Snow-on-the-Mountain.

(41.) CMLXXIX

大帳篷

Ample-roofed bandstand,

shielding the politicians'

abandoned platforms.

(42.) CMLXXX

Дар ума

Life is a gömböc:

homogeneous, convex,

mono-monostatic.

(43.) CMLXXXII

晶洞

Ladders. Lattices.

Let us let ice floes crumble,

faceted within.

(44.) M

常識

We have come this far:

the senses are five heartaches,

meadows mown too close.

(45.) MLXVI

信

World of our knowing

our knowledge tastes of window

sills, panes, and rain drops.

(46.) MCXXV

喘息

The cool damp night mist

leaves me gasping for my breath,

hanging on my words.

(47.) MCXXXIII

おくのほそ道

Just after breakfast

— book half-unread, coffee drunk —

a trail of bread crumbs.

(48.) MCLIII

一藝術

One last narrative.

One final journey elsewhere.

Travel is an art.

(49.) MCLIX

討論會

The rain goes on and on,

but which inane waterfall

is it speaking of?

(50.) MCXCI

我们去哪

Questions of travel

fall — soft, stolen, aquiver —

by the wayside now.

(51.) MCCCXV

Три бабушки

"It is what it is."

"It has always been this way."

"What will be, will be."

(52.) MCCCXVII

接

A dim, acrid smell

of skunk in Ontario,

a Maritime laugh.

(53.) MCCCXLVII

Après nous le déluge

Conjunction Junction

barely made the connection

between and and and

(54.) MCDIII

邏輯學家

From all the dangers —

either/or and neither/nor

— in reason save us.

(55.) MCDXXXII

沒有

Buds and bells and stars:

whether or not we know them,

they know their own names.

(56.) MCDXXXV

О Благодати

At ten after ten

breakfast on the balcony.

Why am I so blessed?

(57.) MDXXIX

歡樂

Sandra will be here soon.

Coffee with friends, Great Village,

lots to talk about.

(58.) MDXXXI

樺樹陰影

for Sandra Barry

Rude lattice of leaves,

their shadows the true Citadel's

true dialectic.

(59.) MDXL

太晚了

Lighter ironies,

these fish lore elegances,

esprits d'escalier.

(60.) MDXLV

万葉集

A myriad leaves

poets shiftless as ever

too lazy to count

(61.) MDXCIV

一成不變

They have not changed much:

the moon, the stars, these poems —

Still, I look at them.

(62.) MDCXXIII

約翰·柯川

Making the music

entrance from inside the heart

two bronze lions flank.

(63.) MDCXLIII

憾

Never to have pressed

an ear to chest to listen

to a heart beating.

(64.) MDCXLV

線

They are never real,

however they might wind up,

tangled or dangling.

(65.) MDCCLXXXIX

評論

for Tom Hastings

Who would not be pleased

as punch drunk from a haiku

plastered paper hat?

(66.) MDCCCLXX

義眼

We have come so far:

"This you may not see or say."

Now we would give up

our eye teeth to hear once more:

"Look your infant sight away."

(67.) MCMXXXIV

鯖魚的天空

Scissors. Window pane.

A dazzling dialectic

facets tin-roofed sky.

(68.) MCMXXXVIII

Plus ça change

for Sandra Barry and Laurie Gunn

New old kitchen stove:

the power has been shifted,

the oil is ordered.

(69.) MCMLII

千羽鶴

Flatfooted union

of pinion, wing, and beak —

sleeping standing up.

(70.) ENVOI

Yes

Birth and life and death:

wherever situated,

the same indrawn breath.

Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 50: Jelly

Having dispatched the lizards in the opening paragraph of her 12 November 1959 letter, Bishop shifts a major gear, returning to one of their favourite subjects: food — more specifically, the making of it. Before settling into the serious details, she remarks on a technical matter about the letter Grace was holding in her hands: “I am so delighted to have these new black typewriter ribbons.” The quality of the type of this letter is significantly clearer than the previous one, so many months ago. It is easy for us with our computers, tablets and devices to forget how “manual” Bishop’s typing was. The new ribbons were brought back by “our friend Mary Morse,” who had returned from time in the “U.S. and brought us presents.” The new typewriter ribbons were a boon to her letter writing, but “another friend” (perhaps May Swenson) had sent an even more prized gift, via Morse: “a pair of binoculars — I’m quite overwhelmed,” something she had longed for, but didn’t think she “could afford.” She would use them “to watch birds here [that is, at Samambaia] and ships in Rio.” Bishop noted that they were “Japanese and very good.”

After this introduction Bishop signalled the real shift: “—//” and introduced the next subject of this paragraph with a query: “I had an English bookshop send you two little cookbooks a while ago — I wonder if you got them yet?” Bishop is referring to two little volumes that Grace had in fact received. Bishop had sent them sometime in early 1957 (she mentioned her intention to do so in a letter dated 10 January 1957, which I discussed in blogpost, #26 of this series).

Clearly, Grace was remiss in not only letting Bishop know she’d received them, but in thanking Bishop for them. No matter. Bishop brought them up because she wanted to talk about jelly: “the jelly one is the one I use all the time and it is awfully good.” The second one, she noted, “I haven’t seen myself yet, but it sounded good!” These books are located in the Bulmer family archive at Acadia University and are described in the finding aid for this collection thus:

I.v.33. Jams, jellies and preserves: how to make them / Ethelind Fearon. – London: Herbert Jenkins, 1956. – 96p. Dust jacket slightly torn. – Gift from Elizabeth Bishop to Grace Bulmer Bowers.

I.v.34. Biscuits and American cookies: how to make them / Ambrose Heath. – London: Herbert Jenkins, 1953. – 96p. Dust jacket slightly torn. – Gift from Elizabeth Bishop to Grace Bulmer Bowers.

Bishop then launched into a technical aspect of jelly-making, as if she and Grace were in medias res of a serious discussion: “I made jelly for years without using the alcohol test for pectin — now find it is so easy and makes the whole thing so fool-proof I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner.” Bishop then goes on to explain how to do this test: after “extracting the juice,” “put a spoonful in a cup and cover it with another spoonful of alcohol — rubbing alcohol is good enough.” If the juice “jells, more or less, or at least sticks together, in 5 minutes — it’s ready to add the sugar.” Bishop noted that the little book she’d begifted her aunt “tells this” test, but referred to “alcohol as ‘methylated [sic] spirits’ in the English way.” She didn’t know if this term would confuse Grace, or if “in Canada” such a term was also used.

After this little treatise on fool-proof jelly, Bishop boasted to her aunt that she had “made 34 jars of JABOTICABA jelly last month.”

I guess you would want a fool-proof method when making that kind of quantity! Undoubtedly, Grace had no idea what Jaboticaba was, but Bishop writes as if her aunt did, noting that it was “a wonderful year for them,” meaning the fruit of this strange tree.

As if all this production wasn’t enough, she also wrote, “and a few more of PITANGA,” yet another exotic fruit that Grace would never have seen. Well supplied with jelly, Bishop was also “trying Jaboticaba liquer [sic],” but the results of that experiment were not yet known. This beverage “comes out rather like grape,” she observed, whereas “Pitangas are bright orange, semi-transparent, like little six-sided lanterns, lovely things — we have one tree.”

When I went to Brazil in 1999, I had one meal at a rather posh restaurant in Oscar Niemeyer’s Grande Hotel in Ouro Prêto. I don’t remember the main course, but I do remember the dessert. My companions and I chose a plate of various preserves and conserves (with cheese and biscuits, I think), including jaboticaba jelly. It was an almost black purple, vibrantly sweet with a real zing to it. At least that is how I remember it. I suspect there was Pitanga preserve, too.

(Grande Hotel, Ouro Preto)

Bishop’s November letter shifted gears again in the next paragraph, this time to sorrowful news about the death of a friend, someone Grace also knew. More of that in the next post.

 

(Jaboticaba tree!)

Click here to see Post 49.

Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for granted...

Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 49: Lizards

"The lizards scarcely breathe; all eyes

are on the smaller, female one, back-to,

her wicked tail straight up and over,

red as a red-hot wire."

            “Brazil, January 1, 1502”

Brett Millier says that the above poem was part of a “second-wave of poems about her adopted country” (300), which Bishop began to write in 1959. “Brazil, January 1, 1502” appeared in The New Yorker on 2 January 1960. (Millier 301)

I start this post about Bishop’s next letter to Grace with these lines and facts because this letter, dated 12 November 1959, commences with a lively account of lizards at Samambaia.

As I mentioned last time, this November letter breaks a long gap, the previous letter being dated August. It is clear that the letters between them had continued, but what happened to them is unknown. Bishop begins this one with a declaration, “I’m not sure who owes whom a letter now.” This bespeaks of a steady exchange, not a three month silence, because Bishop also thought that their last epistles “crossed.”

Without any more preliminaries, Bishop launched right into her exotic account, one I’m sure she knew would make Grace laugh.

She started with a brief weather report: “a quick rain and hail storm with the sun shining at the same time.” One result: “everything looks dazzling.” Another result: “the lizards have started to come out again.”

It is her account of the lizards’ activities that relate directly to what she was writing at the time. “Watching the lizards’ love-making is one of our quiet sports here!” She tells Grace about the ritual: “the male chases the female, bobbing his head up and down and puffing his throat in and out like a balloon.” One wonders if Grace could imagine this courting display (the only place she might have seen it was on the pages of a National Geographic). Bishop observed that the males were “much larger and uglier” than the females. In this chase, Bishop notes, “the female runs ahead and if she’s feeling friendly she raises her tail up over her back like a wire — it is bright red, almost neon-red, underneath.” All this chasing was often for naught, as Bishop reported: “He hardly ever seems to catch up with her.”

These shenanigans were not always confined to outside. Bishop informed her aunt that “sometimes the cat will pursue a huge one right through the living-room.” Imagining that might be even harder! This pursuit “usually” happened “when we have squeamish lady guests, who shriek.” The main instigator of this race was Bishop’s cat Tobias, whom, she thought, probably did “it on purpose, really.”

When you Google lizards and Brazil, you get hundreds of possibilities and thousands of images. Even when I narrowed it to mating rituals, I could find nothing to match Bishop’s description. I asked Carmen Oliveira, the author of Flores Rares e Banalíssimas, if she had any idea which lizard Bishop described. She sent me the photo below and told me that in Portuguese, lizard is legarto. Even if it is not exactly correct, it is a nice lizard that looks like it has attitude!

The 12 November 2018 letter is as wide-ranging as all the others Bishop wrote to her aunt. The next paragraph, and next post, brings in one of their favourite subjects: food.

Click here to see Post 48.

Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 48: Concluding Miscellany

The final few paragraphs of Bishop’s letter of 25 August 1959 offered a wide range of topics. First, there was the usual observation about the weather: “It is starting to get hot again; ‘winter’ seems to be over already,” at least, she said, in Rio. It was still “cold up in the mts.”

As concerned as Bishop was about Grace’s health, not all the news had been bad. Bishop congratulated her aunt “on losing 15 pounds — that’s a good bit.” There was no segue to the next comment: “Isn’t it surprising about the Queen?” What could she mean? Undoubtedly, she was thinking of Her Majesty’s pregnancy. That summer Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were in Canada, on the longest royal tour to this country in its history. By this time it was known she was pregnant again, with the baby who would become Prince Andrew. Andrew was born on 19 February 1960, so the Queen was in the early stages of her pregnancy by this time. Perhaps Grace’s declaration of weight loss made Bishop think of the Queen, who would be gaining weight (perhaps there was an announcement while they were in Canada?).

 (The expecting Queen Elizabeth, 1959.)

All this thought about weight led Bishop to her next leap: “There is a bad meat shortage here.” This statement was accompanied by a brief story of her going out that very morning at seven a.m., and standing “in the line with all the maids, and managed to get a pound of liver for the cat!” She explained further that she and Lota would “manage on eggs, or buy a chicken,” but the little cat, who was about to have kittens, needed the meat.

The food shortage might have been connected to inflation, which Bishop noted “is terrific,” observing the huge rise in the cost of “beans and rice — the national diet of the poor here.” The price of these staples had risen “500 percent since last year — if you can believe it.” Then Bishop editorializes with the comment that this development “might change the food habits,” which she felt was “a good idea”; but she did not elaborate on this observation.

Keeping on the subject of food, though not for the poor, she told Grace that they “went to a dinner-party last night — buffet, which they call here ‘American style’.” The ten who gathered at this repast included “a couple of dull scientists, one of them a friend of mine from N.Y., in town for a congress.” The main course was roast loin of pork. Clearly, no meat shortage here. One of the desserts at this buffet was “Angel’s crops”: “the kind of crop a hen has — at least I think that’s more or less what it means!” Bishop knew how much Grace enjoyed hearing about desserts, though perhaps not quite as much now with her successful effort to lose weight. Bishop described this sweet delicacy: “wet little cakes, very sweet and full of eggs, floating in syrup.”

The next segue was more logical. Bishop wrote that she would send her aunt the recipe for another Brazilian dessert, “Blessed Mothers,” assuring Grace that they weren’t hard to make “if you can get a coconut?” She was sure that if Grace attempted them, they “would impress Mrs. Max L[ayton] very favorably!”

Still not done with desserts (Bishop clearly had a sweet tooth), she asks Grace if she made “baked custards?” A Brazilian twist on this common dessert was “orange custard — made exactly like any baked custard except instead of milk you use orange juice.” Further instructions were offered with the added hint to bake it “slowly” and “caramelize the mold first.”

Turning back to Grace’s letter, Bishop wrote, “Your garden makes us envious.” Bishop noted that all they had in their garden at the moment was “too much lettuce.”

Having run the length of her time and subjects, Bishop concluded: “Now the housekeeping column will come to an end.” She concluded with her usual regards to Phyllis, “if you are with her,” and signed off “With much love.”

Then there is a significant gap before a letter dated 12 November 1959 takes up the narrative. That will be for the next post.

Click here to see Post 47.

Letters to Aunt Grace, Part 47: Dogs and Cats

After having addressed her concerns over Grace’s health in the first paragraph of her letter of 25 August 1959, Bishop turned to an account of a different sort, though one she clearly thought would interest Grace. Bishop informed her aunt that she and Lota “have had a very sad time of it lately — both our dogs died, within four days.”

If one had to label Bishop in terms of her animal preference, one would probably choose “cat person.” Yet she had many creatures as pets during her life (including a number of birds) and her closest childhood pet was Betsy, her Great Village dachshund. Dogs were also a significant part of her life.

She clarified the status of these canine companions telling Grace that one of them was Lota’s, while the other was “actually our friend Mary Morse’s.” Bishop described Lota’s dog as “a darling old mongrel probably about 14.” Lota, it seems, was more a dog person. Bishop observed that this female member of their family “had had a beautiful dog’s-life,” stating that she “probably had a hundred children”!! Even with such a productive life and so many progeny, Bishop noted that her death was hard and they “felt dreadful about it.” They blamed themselves for having been away so much in Rio, especially the most recent ten-day visit. This kind of guilt is common. They believed that if they had been home they “might have saved her.” Knowing Grace, the obstetrics nurse and former farm wife, would be interested in the details, Bishop gave them to her: “she was in heat and seemed rather old for such carryings-on and when we got back she just seemed rather tired, etc., and bleeding a bit — but we didn’t realize for a day or two it was anything worse, and then she just lay down and died.”

Mary Morse’s dog, “another female, about 9 or 10,” was clearly bonded with Lota’s matriarch, and Bishop recounts that she “was heart-broken and wouldn’t eat or drink water — cried and cried.” They did a consultation on this one, calling a vet in Rio, who told them to watch out for “pneumonia and infection and sure enough the next day she began to show the symptoms.” Bishop concluded that she had caught whatever she had from her elder. Lota and Bishop tried to save this one by administering “penicillin injections and medicines, etc.,” and they even gathered her up and headed back to Rio to see the vet. But all this effort was too late because it was “a violent infection of some sort, plus ‘melancholia’, plus her age, plus bad weather.” Sometimes the forces in the world are really stacked against us. Lota and Bishop held vigil for two nights, “and then she died, too.”

Not to be left out, Mary Morse’s cat, which Lota and Elizabeth were also tending, “(Mary is in the US for the summer)," was also having problems. As Bishop explained, “the cat isn’t supposed to have kittens because she is very tiny and had rickets, BUT — she is about to have them!” They had brought the cat to Rio, too, on their mission to save the dog and in some exasperation Bishop declared, “Now we are here in Rio again with the cat, again, waiting for the kittens…and scared to death for fear the little cat will die, too.”

Bishop reminded her aunt that she and Lota had spent May and June waiting for their maid to deliver her baby, Patricia (who had arrived by this letter and was “a lovely baby — very pretty, quite fair so far (both parents are dark) but with brown eyes, of course, and laughing already”), and now she was holding vigil again, “waiting for four kittens (the vet says there are four).” Again, Bishop reports a detail that Grace, who had helped deliver many babies, would find interesting: “He can’t do a Caesarian on the cat because you can’t keep them still enough afterwards.” With relief, Bishop said that the vet had agreed to come for the delivery, but Bishop was “afraid” that he would be removing “the kittens in little pieces or something,” a grim outcome indeed. All that mattered to Bishop was that they save the cat’s life. Still, Bishop reported that this tiny cat, which had “never been away from the country,” had immediately taken “to the apartment and used the pan of sand like a perfect lady.” Her preferred spot was “the terrace,” where she watched “the swallows and seagulls with big eyes.” Her letter does not reveal the outcome of this delicate situation.

Not all their animals were in such dire straits: “My own cat [Tobias] is blooming,” she wrote, “bigger and fatter and more spoiled than ever.”

When I read this letter many years ago, with her description of their troubles with the dogs, the first thing that leapt into my mind was her poem “Pink Dog.” Brett Millier says that Bishop began this poem during “the Carnival season of 1963” (343), though she did not finish it until 1979 (kind of like the temporal trajectory of “The Moose” — though not quite as long a creation period — these masterpiece creature poems clearly needed a great deal of contemplation, meaning many things, of course, not the least of which was she identified with these creatures in some way that took time to understand). In any case, one of the things this letter tells me is that when Bishop came to write “Pink Dog,” undoubtedly triggered by seeing such an actual dog, it was not just some distant spectacle that caught her attention. She had her own quite intimate relationship to draw on, for surely she would have remembered the death of Lota’s dear little, promiscuous female mongrel, which had happened only a few years before the stranger appeared that got her started on a new poem.

After this lengthy account of creature troubles (“deaths, deaths and sicknesses”), Bishop switched gears and concluded her letter with a mish-mash of odd and interesting items about life in Rio and even a hint at some world events. These are for the next post.

Bishop would be delighted to know that Nova Scotia has its own well-known “Pink Dog” in the form of Pink Dog Productions. This company created a wonderful video for “Sandpiper” as part of the EB100 celebrations in 2011.

 

Click her to see Post 46.