Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishopwas an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth8 February 1911
CityWorcester, MA
CountryUnited States of America
art delicate-things roaring
Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [...], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?
art self useless
What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.
breakup art writing
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.
art doors keys
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master.
art cutting loss
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
book sleep heart
Close, close all night the lovers keep. They turn together in their sleep, Close as two pages in a book that read each other in the dark. Each knows all the other knows, learned by heart from head to toes.
people democracy world
Democracy in the contemporary world demands, among other things, an educated and informed people.
children grandmother house
Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
dream baby islands
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food and love, but they were pleasant rather than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat. I'd have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands, like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography.
book pages fingertips
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
sorry writing people
I am sorry for people who can't write letters. But I suspect also that you and I ... love to write them because it's kind of like working without really doing it.
god one-love
Someone loves us all.
dream fall sleep
But he sleeps on the top of his mast with his eyes closed tight. The gull inquired into his dream, which was, "I must not fall. The spangled sea below wants me to fall. It is hard as diamonds; it wants to destroy us all.
feet pigs littles
The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.