Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

A selective list literary criticism on American poet Elizabeth Bishop, favoring signed scholarly articles and books and peer-reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites.

main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century poetry | 20th-century women writers | about literaryhistory.com

Introduction

"Elizabeth Bishop." Modern American Poetry. Eds. Robert Dale Parker, Edward Brunner, and Cary Nelson. Excerpts from reputable critical discussions for The Fish, The Man-Moth, At the Fishhouses, Filling Station, Questions of Travel, The Armadillo, In the Waiting Room, Pink Dog, Crusoe in England, One Art. On "Filling Station" Commentary from leading critics, short excerpts.

"Elizabeth Bishop." Poetry Foundation. Ed. Catherine Halley. Good, encyclopedia-type introduction to Bishop, her biography, themes, and techniques, with reliable text for selected poems.

"Elizabeth Bishop." A brief introduction to Elizabeth Bishop. Academy of American Poets.

On the publication of Elizabeth Bishop's collected works and letters by the Library of America, marking the first time it has done so for a woman poet. A PBS news interview with Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz. 14 February, 2008.

Benigni, Michael. "The Oracular Imagination in Elizabeth Bishop." Antigonish Review 123.

An exercise for analyzing tone in poetry using Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish" as an example, from Bedford St. Martins. An exercise on symbolism in the same poem.

Literary criticism

Axelrod, Steven Gould. "Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia in Brazil." Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 2001.

Bidney, Martin. "'Controlled Panic' Mastering the Terrors of Dissolution and Isolation in Elizabeth Bishop's Epiphanies." Style, Fall 2000.

Carson, Luke. "James Merrill's manners and Elizabeth Bishop's dismay." Twentieth Century Literature, Summer 2004.

Colwell, Anne Agnes. "About Elizabeth Bishop." Colwell notes that "in the spring of 1934, the year her mother died and the year of her graduation [from Vassar College], Bishop met and became friends with poet Marianne Moore. Through Moore's influence, Bishop came to see poetry as an available, viable vocation for a woman. Moore recommended Bishop for the Houghton Mifflin Prize, and Bishop's manuscript North and South was chosen for publication in August 1946 from over 800 entries." Modern American Poetry.

Dodd, Elizabeth. The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H.D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop (U of Missouri P 1992). Publisher's web site. At Google Books.

Doreski, C.K. "Proustian closure in Wallace Steven's 'The Rock' and Elizabeth Bishop's 'Geography III.'" Twentieth Century Literature, Spring 1998.

Doreski, C.K., ed. Themes and discussion questions for readers of Bishop's poetry. Heath Guides.

Fast, Robin Riley. "Moore, Bishop, and Oliver thinking back, re-seeking the sea" [Marianne Moore; Mary Oliver]. Twentieth Century Literature, Fall 1993.

Gilbert, Roger. "Framing Water: Historical Knowledge in Elizabeth Bishop and Adrienne Rich," Scholarly article excerpt discusses similarities of language and intellectual differences, in regard to questions of knowledge, history, and the metaphor of immersion, in Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses" and Adrienne Rich's "Diving Into the Wreck." Twentieth Century Literature, Summer 1997.

Graf, Anastasia. "Representing the Other: A Conversation among Mikhail Bakhtin, Elizabeth Bishop, and Wislawa Szymborska." Comparative Literature, Winter 2005.

Longenbach, James R. Review of Modern poetry after modernism (Oxford UP 1997). "Cogently argued, filled with close readings that are impressive for their logic and lucidity, clearly composed out of a passionately sympathetic engagement with the poetry that is its object, and eloquently, sometimes beautifully written, Modern Poetry After Modernism is a powerful treatment of what Longenbach calls second- and third-wave poets of the twentieth-century." Covers Bishop, Jarrell, Wilbur, Richard Howard, Pinsky, Clampitt, Ashbery, and Jorie Graham. College Literature, Fall 1998. Reviewed by Michael Thurston.

Page, Barbara, ed. "Elizabeth Bishop, American Poet." Primary and secondary bibliography, locations of Bishop papers, and a few recommended links. Surprisingly limited exhibition from Vassar College, Bishop's alma mater.

Pickard, Zachariah. "Natural history and epiphany: Elizabeth Bishop's Darwin Letter." Twentieth Century Literature, Fall 2004.

Removed articles

Ausubel, Jonathan. Ausubel examines the language of domination and submission in Bishop's poetry, contending that there is a persistent social subtext in her poems that extends well beyond gender. "Subjected People: Towards a Grammar for the Underclass in Elizabeth Bishop's Poetry." Connotations 4.1-2 (1994-95). Lengthy critical responses to this article follow (removed).

Barker, Ilse. A talk about Bishop's life. "The Search for the Earthly Paradise," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Barry, Sandra. Scholarly paper discusses how Bishop was affected by family and place in both her formative years as an artist and her mature aesthetic. "An Artist in the House," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Costello, Bonnie. The influence of W.H. Auden on Elizabeth Bishop. "Auden and Bishop," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Flynn, Richard. Scholarly paper discusses Bishop as the consummate poet of childhood. "'Home-made! But aren't we all?': Crusoe in the Nursery," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Gardner, Thomas. A scholarly paper compares poet Jorie Graham's visual writing techniques with Bishop's, contending that Graham's style puts her squarely in Bishop territory. "Elizabeth Bishop and Jorie Graham: Suffering the Limits of Description," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Huang-Tiller, Gillian C. A scholarly paper discusses Bishop's progressive destabilizing and disruption of the sonnet form. "Elizabeth Bishop's Feminist Poetic Travel From 'Sonnet' (1928) to 'Sonnet' (1979)," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

McCorkle, James. A scholarly paper compares Bishop's "Crusoe in England" and Derek Walcott's "Crusoe's Island," and the effort in both poems to attain a lyric identity with Robinson Crusoe. "Colonialism, Gender, and Lyric Identity: Refigurations of Crusoe in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Derek Walcott," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Raab, Josef. A scholarly paper investigates Bishop's social and political concerns. Although Bishop was a socialist, she avoided direct discussion of politics in her poetry, prose and letters. "The Political Dimension of Elizabeth Bishop," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Rosenbaum, Susan. A scholarly paper discusses Bishop's dislike of the confessional style in poetry. "Re-Reading Confessional Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop and the Confessional Moment in American Poetry," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Schwartz, Lloyd. On the continuities in Bishop's poetry from North and South to Geography III. Ploughshares, Spring 1977 (removed).

Shore, Jane. "Elizabeth Bishop: The Art of Changing your Mind." About Bishop's brilliance in language and using metaphors. Ploughshares, Spring 1979 (removed).

Shifrer, Anne. A scholarly paper shows how Bishop's delight in objects was more than an aesthetic impulse; she also had an ethnographer's relish of objects as repositories of hidden lives and cultural meanings. "Elizabeth Bishop as Delicate Ethnographer," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

A conversation with Elizabeth Bishop by George Starbuck, Ploughshares, Spring 1977 (removed).

Walker, Cheryl. A scholarly paper explores new terrain in Bishop criticism, reading her as a poet of the spirit. "Reading Elizabeth Bishop as a Religious Poet," from a Symposium at Vassar, September 1994 (removed).

Gagnier, Bruce. Elizabeth Bishop at Tibor de Nagy. New York Exhibitions. Art in America, June 1997 (removed).

Frost, Carol. "Elizabeth Bishop's Inner Eye." New England Review, 2004 (removed).

main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century poetry | 20th-century women writers | about literaryhistory.com

1998-2010 by Jan Pridmore