(1917–1977)
U.S. poet“I went to see [George] Santayana daily. The talk ranged from autobiography, philosophical theories on world politics, Aristotle’s theory of sensation, Spanish quotations, ideas on Boston, lots of very catty and very good gossip and above all Boston and religion. The meetings were delightful for me and perfect, except that he is deaf and couldn’t hear a word—shouted or whispered—that I said.”
more infosource: letter to Elizabeth Bishop, dated December 6, 1950, written from Florence, in Words in Air (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 115.
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category: communication, deaf, friendship, George Santayana, philosophy
medium: Letter
“When are you sailing so I can meet you at the dock with champagne?”
more infosource: letter to Elizabeth Bishop, dated April 24, 1952, in Words in Air (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 137.
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category: bon voyage, champagne, dock, farewell, friendship, goodbye, ocean, romance, sailing, sea
medium: letter
“I seem to spend my life missing you.”
more infosource: letter to Elizabeth Bishop, dated November 10, 1969, reprinted in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 655.
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category: friendship, heartbreaking, life, love, romance
medium: letter
“Living in New York after Boston is like discovering that there is oxygen in the air—people to talk to, plays, opera, and something in the air that somehow makes people very different here from what they are in Boston.”
more infosource: letter to Elizabeth Bishop, dated February 15, 1961, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 350-51.
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category: Boston, New York City
medium: letter
“Psycho-therapy is rather amazing—something like stirring up the bottom of an aquarium—chunks of the past coming up at unfamiliar angles, distinct and then indistinct.”
more infosource: letter to Elizabeth Bishop, dated November 18, 1949, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 92.
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category: aquarium, past, psychology, shrink, therapy
medium: letter
Robert Lowell