FREE ESSAY ON ELIZABETH BISHOP

ELIZABETH BISHOP

Sam Worley
English 2013
May 3, 1999
Why Elizabeth Bishop was Considered to be Dickonsonian in
Her Writing Style
Poet Elizabeth Bishop was as simple as she was complex. The
lucid and uncomplicated images she created with her
seemingly elementary style were anything but; in fact, the
complexity that resides within her characteristically simple
prose, which demonstrate a purity and precision like no
other, are known only to those who can see beyond their
fa?ade. Attention to outer detail and an unquenchable desire
to portray her inner pain, Bishop favored a more simplistic
approach to convey the immense pain and suffering she
endured throughout her life. Utilizing the concepts of
surrealism and imagery, as well as incorporating landscape
and geography, the troubled poet cleverly and quite
appropriately captured her audience with images of her own
anguish. 
Only since her death has Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) been
generally recognized as one of the four or five finest
American poets of this century. One reason it's taken so
long may be Bishop's low profile: she lived in Brazil for
almost half her productive life, published a slim new book
of poems only once a decade, disliked giving public
readings, and participated in none of the movements of her
time. 
Bishop's masterly descriptive powers were the energy she
invested in an attempt to found a poetry not on what had
happened to its author, but on what its author saw and felt
and shared with others in the present, whether what was
shared was a set of friends, a series of real or imagined
travels, books read, or sights seen.
Bishop, besides being an award winning poet, was a prolific
letter writer. Her friend and publisher, Robert Giroux, has
assembled and edited over 500 of the letters Bishop wrote to
her friends from around the world. 
Emily Dickonson's closest friends knew she wrote poetry,
because she often included poems or lines from poems in her
many letters. What they had no way of appreciating, however,
was the magnitude of her solitary achievement. When she died
at 56 her sister Lavinia found in a drawer over 1,700 poems
--- the result of a lifetime's concentrated work. And since
the publication of a small selection of those poems four
years after her death, Dickinson's reputation has risen;
today her place among the very best poets to have written in
English is unchallenged.
Dickinson in her early 30's made some tentative attempts to
get published, but her work was far ahead of its time and
she did not meet with success. Only seven poems were
published in her lifetime, each changed by editors to suit
the day's standards of rhyme, punctuation and meter. 
The many similarities between Bishop and Dickonson are
clearly evident in their lives and their writing styles. 
Both women were from the New England area; both never
married; both wrote about their pain, suffering and anguish;
both were minimally published before their deaths; both used
a simple. easy to read, writing style; and both wrote or
incorporated nature into their themes. The only differences
were Emily Dickonson's religion and isolation, whereas
Elizabeth Bishop was well travelled and considered to be an
agnostic.
Elizabeth Bishop nearly mirrored Emily Dickonson in
every way, and that is why she is considered to be
Dickonsonian.