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
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.)
men moths
...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do..
strong swimming heaven
Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare.
jobs writing temptation
Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs--no regular hours, so many temptations!
home stayed strangers strangest travel-and-tourism watching
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres?
running country travel
All my life I have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper - just running down the edges of different countries and continents, 'looking for something'.
believe forgive-me sloth
I am overcome by my own amazing sloth...Can you please forgive me and believe that it is really because I want to do something well that I don't do it at all?
success envy people
There are some people whom we envy not because they are rich or handsome or successful, although they may be all or any of these, but because everything they are or do seems to be all of a piece, so that even if they wanted to they could not be or do otherwise.
cheerful awful
All the untidyactivity continues, awful but cheerful.
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.
world looks painting
If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.
dream song fall
I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips, Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow. Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sung to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on my head, And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow! There is a magic made by melody: A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep To the subaqueous stillness of the sea, And floats forever in a moon-green pool, Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.