Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet, distinguished as Poet Laureate of the United States . Her work is characterized by a rigid formal control and a predilection for the description of objects and places. North and South ( 1946 ) and Travel Matters ( 1965 ) are her most notable collections of poems.
Biographical summary
She was born on February 8, 1911 in Worcester , Massachusetts . She was raised by her grandparents in Nova Scotia because her father had died when she was only eight months old and her mother suffered from a mental illness for which she had to be sent to a psychiatric residence in 1916 .
Literary beginnings
She began publishing her first poems in a student magazine and, years after enrolling at Vassar College, she founded, together with other writers, the independent literary magazine “ Con Spirito ”.
Throughout his life, he visited a significant number of countries and cities around the world and, for several years, he lived in France , Florida and Brazil .
Bishop was a lecturer at universities for many years. She briefly served as a professor at Washington University , before serving as a professor at Harvard University for seven years.
He also taught at New York University before ending up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He usually spent his summers at his home in Maine , on an island called North Haven .
Bishop, who struggled financially throughout much of his career, increasingly supported himself through scholarships and awards.
Private life
Regarding her private life, it can be said that Elizabeth Bishop, despite having had romantic ties with different women, only had two stable relationships: the first with Lota de Macedo Soares , a well-off Brazilian socialist architect, and the other with Alice Methfessel, who inherited the rights to Bishop’s literary work.
Works
- The Diary of “Helena Morley,” by Alice Brant, translated and with introduction by Elizabeth Bishop, (Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1957 )
- Three Stories by Clarice Lispector,” Kenyon Review 26 (Summer 1964 ): 500-511.
- The Ballad of the Burglar of Babylon (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968 )
- Exchanging Hats: Paintings, edited and introduced by William Benton, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996 )
- Rare and Commonplace Flowers: The Story of Elizabeth Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares, by Carmen L. Oliveira; translated by Neil K. *Besner, (Rutgers University Press, 2002 ).
Poetry
- North & South (Houghton Mifflin, 1946 )
- A Cold Spring|Poems: North & South — A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1955 )
- A Cold Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1956 )
- Questions of Travel (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965 )
- The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969 )
- Geography III, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976 )
- The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983 )
- Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments, edited and annotated by Alice Quinn, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006 ).
Awards and Distinctions
- 1945 : Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship
- 1947 : Guggenheim Fellowship
- 1949 : Appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress
- 1950 : American Academy of Arts and Letters Award
- 1951 : Lucy Martin Donelly Fellowship (awarded by Bryn Mawr College)
- 1953 : Shelley Memorial Award
- 1954 : Elected to lifetime membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters
- 1956 : Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- 1960 : Chapelbrook Foundation Award
- 1964 : Academy of American Poets Fellowship
Death
She died of a cerebral hemorrhage at her home in Lewis Wharf , Boston . She was buried in her hometown of Worcester , Massachusetts .