Geography III

Whether writing about waiting as a child in a dentist's office, viewing a city from a plane high above, or losing items ranging from door keys to one's lover in the masterfully restrained "One Art," Elizabeth Bishop somehow conveyed both large and small emotional truths in language of stunning exactitude and even more astonishing resonance. As John Ashbery has written, "The private self . . . melts imperceptibly into the large utterance, the grandeur of poetry, which, because it remains rooted in everyday particulars, never sounds 'grand,' but is as quietly convincing as everyday speech."

During her lifetime, Bishop published five slim books of poetry (80 poems in all). Geography III—Bishop’s final book, first published in 1976—brings together her more openly autobiographical poems—such as "Crusoe in England," "In the Waiting Room," and "The Moose."



Contents
In the Waiting Room
Crusoe in England
Night City
The Moose
12 O'Clock News
Poem
One Art
The End of March
Objects & Apparitions
Five Flights Up

Praise

“The extraordinary thing about Miss Bishop is that she is both a public and a private poet, or perhaps her poetry by its very existence renders obsolete these two after all artificial distinctions (artificial insofar as poetry is concerned). The private self—the quirkiness, the rightness of vision, the special sights and events (a moose, a filling station) that have intrigued Miss Bishop to the point of poetry—melts imperceptibly into the larger utterance, the grandeur of poetry, which, because it remains rooted in everyday particulars, never sounds ‘grand,’ but is as quietly convincing as everyday speech.”—John Ashbery

 

"For over forty years, Elizabeth Bishop's immaculately wrought poems have earned her the reputation of a poet's poet. With its calmly circumspect being and elegant finish, deploying space in formally perfect patterns, each small portfolio of work resembles classical architecture."—Herbert Leibowitz, The New York Times Book Review

“Through masterful fusions of metaphor, Bishop creates a new world and resolves and dissolves its differences in the dazzling dialectic of her vision.”—Jane Shore, Ploughshares

About the Author(s)

Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop (1911—1979) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She traveled widely as an adult, living for years in France and then Brazil, before returning to the United States.

photo: Joseph Breitenbach

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