(1911–1979)
U.S. poet and writer
Elizabeth Bishop
I really can’t bear much of American life these days—surely no country has ever been so filthy rich and so hideously uncomfortable at the same time.
Letter to Robert Lowell, dated August 28, 1957, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 229.
When you write my epitaph, you must say I was the loneliest person who ever lived.
Letter from Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, dated August 15, 1957, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 225.
I’ve always promised myself I’m going to spend my declining years just taking walks in Rome. Nothing could be more profitable, I think, for the last 20 years of one’s life.
Letter to Robert Lowell, dated Sunday, July 24, 1948, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 45.
I think almost the last straw here though is the hairdresser, a nice big hearty Maine girl who asks me questions I don’t even know the answers to. She told me: 1, that my hair “don’t feel like hair at all.” 2, I was turning gray practically “under her eyes.” And when I’d said yes, I was an orphan, she said “Kind of awful, ain’t it, ploughing through life alone.” So now I can’t walk downstairs in the morning or upstairs at night without feeling like I’m ploughing. There’s no place like New England.
Letter to Robert Lowell, July 11, 1948, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 42-43.
Please—take care of your health! Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs—no regular hours—so many temptations!
Letter to Robert Lowell, August 26, 1963, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 495.
Please never stop writing me letters—they always manage to make me feel like my higher self…
Letter to Robert Lowell, August 26, 1963, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 332.
It is getting warmer all the time and I have been swimming almost every morning—except for two marvelous stormy days. Today the sea is like pale blue satin, with a mauve haze—huge freighters and tankers coming in slowly through the haze, like ghosts—lovely.
Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 419.
I always seem to be trying to do six or seven different poems at the same time and just hoping I can keep them all well-nurtured enough so that one of them will suddenly get strong enough to take over all by itself until it is done.
Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 77.