|
In his exploratory study of modern American poets, economist David Galenson limited his analysis to 11 outstanding innovators who averaged more than three poems per anthology. Of the 11, six were finders and five were seekers -- experimental poets tending to do their most important work later in their careers. That was the career pattern for all five: Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Each of the five was also known for detailed observations. In the case of Williams, Moore and Bishop, they focused sharply on the world around them. Lowell and Stevens put more emphasis on the relationship between their interior life and their observations. Like many seekers, most of the five struggled to finish poems or frequently revised previously completed works.
Elizabeth Bishop, 1911-1979: seer and seeker
|
|
Elizabeth Bishop, senior success story
At age 65, Bishop wrote her second-most-popular poem, “One Art,” about coping with life’s losses. As a seeker, she revised the ending dramatically over the course of at least 17 drafts. In the second draft, the poem’s final stanza grimly recounted the loss of a lover: “your loss spelt disaster.” Fifteen drafts later, Bishop had changed her mind, as this excerpt shows:
One Art
…
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
|
|
|
|
|
A friend and follower of Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop shared Moore’s difficulty in letting go of a poem. She often described a work as “endless,” meaning that she couldn’t bring it to an end.
She spent six years on “Song for the Rainy Season” before finishing it and about as long writing “Crusoe in England.” Her work on “The Moose” lasted even longer – she began it in 1956 and completed it in 1971.
Bishop also shared Moore’s interest in detailed observation of nature. Critic David Perkins described her as “famous for close, particular, and witty descriptions of objects.” Poet-critic Randall Jarrell said that “all her poems have written underneath, I have seen it.”
Bishop achieved success earlier than many of the best experimental innovators but, like many of them, she continued going strong to the end of her career.
Two of her poems appear in the Top 20 list -- “The Fish,” which she wrote at age 29, and “One Art,” which she wrote at age 65. Among the Bishop poems that appear in anthologies, 25 percent are from her twenties and 15 percent from her thirties.
Her peak decade was her forties, which accounts for 29 percent of her reprinted poems. She slowed down in her fifties, with four percent, and rebounded in her sixties, with 27 percent.
|
