Elizabeth Bishop (1911–79), who published 101 poems in her lifetime, was not as famous in the 1970s as she is now. In the UK, Chatto & Windus published an abridged edition of her Poems in 1956, and Selected Poems in 1967; The Complete Poems was published by Farrar, Straus (NY) in 1969. Carcanet published the UK editions of Bishop’s Exchanging Hats: paintings (ed. William Benton) in 1997, and of Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box: uncollected poems, drafts and fragments (ed. Alice Quinn) in 2006. Her name recurs in Carcanet correspondence; for example, writing to Val Warner in 1998, MNS admits: ‘I continue to adore Bishop, probably disproportionately. Poets that one can teach and actually convey one’s enthusiasm for are few. I manage it sometimes with [W.S.] Graham, usually with [Eavan] Boland, and almost always with Bishop.’
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
16 October 1970
Dear Mr. Schmidt,
Your letter was forwarded to me by my publisher and I just received it two days ago. I think if I could receive such a letter once a month, say, life would be greatly improved; you probably can have no idea how cheering I found it. Thank you very much. I am touched by your going to all that trouble to find my poems, and buy them.
Of course I’ll be happy to have you use the lines from ‘Varick Street’ and ‘Questions of Travel’. I’m curious to see which lines. Please be sure to send me your book, won’t you – I rather hope that Faber takes it because they print the best-looking commercial books, don’t you think? Your own Carcanet Press may do even better – I wonder what that name comes from – but I suppose it is more helpful to be published by one of the big recognised houses.1
The idea of a dedication seems almost too much – but of course I’d be awfully flattered. I am eager to see Desert of the Lions – perhaps you could send it to me, but only if you have extra copies…
Robert Lowell is an old friend and has always been very kind about my work and has helped me innumerable times, in many ways.2 We met about the time we published our first books – or rather it was really his second: Lord Weary’s Castle. I have had two letters from him recently and he sounds much better, and was about to start teaching at Essex when he wrote the last one. I am here for this semester, teaching the two seminars he taught here for six years, I think. I am not really a teacher; I’ve done it only once before, and of course it is impossible to take his place. However, I am hoping the novelty of my amateurishness and the change of sex, etc., may help out – the students have been very nice to me so far.
This will be my address until Christmas, at least. As Cal may have told you, I live mostly in Brazil and have for many years – so I was interested to hear that you apparently make Mexico your home and also live in Egypt. Perhaps we share a geographical obsession?
Faithfully yours,
Elizabeth Bishop
*
Ian Hamilton, editor of the review, had given me Elizabeth Bishop’s Selected Poems to write about and I had been astonished by them. In part it was the varied and inventive formalism, the understatement, and the clarity of them, in part the variety of geographies, which seemed to take in my own Latin America in ways I’d not seen in verse before. Originally Hamilton had offered the book to Charles Tomlinson, but he had declined to write about it. I worked on my review essay for a couple of months, sent it to Hamilton who, at the time, I much admired. He never responded at all and the piece did not appear.
When Robert Lowell came to All Souls, his British publisher Charles Monteith arranged that I meet him. It had been my hope to study with him at Harvard, but when I went up he was ill and William Alfred had taken over his poetry course. I did not meet him in the States but at Oxford he was larger than life. Monteith had hoped he might become Professor of Poetry but Edmund Blunden had pipped him at the post, largely on the strength of the anti-American vote, it seemed to most of us.
I discovered Lowell, when I first went to meet him, in great distress, rather like Laocoön tangled in his typewriter ribbon, which he had tried to change but unavailingly. I extricated him, changed the ribbon for him and soon had agreed to type for him, working in particular on the final typescript of Notebook. He agreed to read for the Poetry Society. We met regularly, both in his rooms and on occasion at Pin Farm where Carcanet was taking shape. It was there that Peter Jones and I introduced Lowell to Ian Hamilton, who came to tea with his beautiful wife Gisela. What I best remember is that she was wearing a lovely slanting beige summer hat, said nothing, and charmed Lowell.
My main interest in Lowell was to find out from him about Elizabeth Bishop. He must have tired of my continual inquiries, but he mentioned me to her, and he encouraged me to write to her. I dedicated my second book of poems to her.
Guillaume Apollinaire, Hunting Horns, translated by Barry Morse
John Balaban, Vietnam Poems
George Buchanan, Annotations
Marcus Cumberlege, Poems for Quena and Tabla
Roger Garfitt, Caught on Blue
Peter Jones, Seagarden for Julius
Sally Purcell (ed and tr), Provençal Poems Gareth Reeves, Pilgrims
Michael Schmidt, Bedlam & the Oakwood
Michael Schmidt, Black Building Alexandra Seddon, Sparrows
Robert B. Shaw, Curious Questions Adrian Wright, Waiting for Helen