Afterword

Anyone doing a complete production of the play should also have Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. The letters from the play correspond to the following letters, which are numbered and dated in that book as follows. Occasionally, text from two or three letters has been combined, in which case the number and date refer to the letter or letters from which the text was primarily drawn. The letters are not always quoted verbatim.

9		1. 46 King Street, New York, May 12th, 1947
9–10		2. 202 E. 15th St., New York, New York, May 23, 1947
10–11		3. Briton Cove, Cape Breton, August 14th, 1947
11		4. Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, August 21, 1947
12		6. New York, N.Y., September 22nd, 1947
13		12. November 3, 1947
14		13. Key West, Florida, November 18th, 1947
14–15		14. November 20, 1947
15		18. 630 Dey Street, Key West, Florida, January 1st, 1948
15		19. January 21, 1948
15–16		23. March 18th, 1948
16		24. Washington, D.C., March 22, 1948
16		33. Wiscasset, Maine, June 30th, 1948
16–17		34. July 2, 1948
17		35. Sunday, July 11th, 1948
17–18		36. July 14, 1948
19–20		43. Ipswich, Massachusetts, August 16, 1948
20–21		44. Stonington, August 22, 1948
21–22		51, 47, 48. Library of Congress, September 7, August 27, and August 30, 1948
22–23		53, 52. September 11th and September 8th, 1948
23		58. October 25, 1948
24		61. December 5, 1948
25–26		64, 18. Key West, December 21 and January 1st, 1948
26		65. December 24, 1948
26		66. December 31st, 1948
27		67. January 5, 1949
27		68. January 11th, 1949
27–28		69. January 14, 1949
28		72, 73. Monday the 31st January and February 21st, 1949
28		74. Baldpate Mental Hospital, Georgetown, Massachusetts, April 10, 1949
29		75. Yaddo, August 5, 1949
29		78. Washington, D.C., October/November 1949
29–30		80. 29 West 104th St., NYC, November 18, 1949
33–34		115. Care of Lota de Macedo Soares, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 21st, 1952
34		118. Iowa City, Iowa, June 14, 1953
36–38		157. Castine, Maine, August 9, 1957
40–41		162. 115 East 67th Street, New York, August 28th, 1957
43		158. New York, N.Y., August 11, 1957
43–44		137. June 18, 1956
45		143. January 1957
45		145. February 7th, 1957
45–46		146. February 27th, 1957
46		137. June 18, 1956
47–49		174, 175. Petrópolis, Brazil, December 11th and 14th, 1957
49		176. January 29th, I think—1958, I know
49–50		177. Saturday, March 15th, 1958
50		178. APRIL FOOL’S DAY 1958
52		269. Rio, Sunday morning, May 26th, 1963
53		337. Friday, February 26, 1967
54		349. 15 West 67 St., N.Y.C., October 9, 1967
59		373, 374. May 13th, 1970
59		375. Harvard University, October 20th, 1970
61–63		391, 392. March 28 and April 4, 1972
64		397. July 28, 1972
64–65		442. January 16th, 1975
66		459. August 2nd, 1977

The play mostly follows the chronology of the letters with some exceptions. I’ve suggested some subtitles for dates that signify leaps in time or jumps in location. But I think to make the reader, or audience, overly aware of dates and place would be to make the play overly biographical. The play should have, instead, the flavor of an intimate conversation that manages to be intimate because matters like time and place are increasingly irrelevant.

Also, the letter that begins “Dear Cal, A commission for you” is taken from a letter Elizabeth Bishop wrote to Carley Dawson about Robert Lowell in One Art, p. 165. The fragment beginning “Marianne, loan me a noun/Cal, please cable a verb!” is from “Letter to Two Friends,” in Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop, p. 113. The fragment beginning “Let Shakespeare and Milton” is from “Let Shakespeare and Milton,” in Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box, p. 126.