Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979), an American poet, wrote poems that offer exquisitely detailed descriptions of landscapes, animals, and objects. But her seemingly calm, objective style can be deceptive, because many of her poems contain deep emotional undercurrents. Her emphasis on outward appearance and precise detail is a way of controlling and containing intense feelings of fear, anxiety, loss, and desire.
Bishop often explored the way in which travel can make the familiar seem strange, and the strange seem familiar. In poems about maps, pictures, foreign countries, and domestic scenes, Bishop showed how easily the world can become puzzling, mysterious, even threatening. But she also showed how we can find ways to live in the world with a slightly ironic sense of comfort and belonging.
Stylistically, Bishop’s poems display a relaxed, conversational tone, though many are written in difficult verse forms. Bishop sometimes spent years revising a single poem, yet her language always sounds fresh and spontaneous.
Bishop was born on Feb. 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Poems: North and South—A Cold Spring (1955). Bishop died on Oct. 6, 1979. The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 was published in 1983, and The Collected Prose in 1984. A selection of previously unpublished material was issued in 2006 as Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments.
