In this book, novelist Colm Tibn offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences the American poet Elizabeth Bishop.
"Colm Toibin's perfectly judged study of Elizabeth Bishop's writing, and especially her mastery of tone, has itself the tonal intimacy of a letter. He explores the places (Nova Scotia, Brazil) and working friendships (Moore, Lowell) central to Bishop's poetry of solitariness and exile; he finds her true companions in this 'restrained but serious ambition' (Wyatt, Herbert, Gunn); he distinguishes the candor of her art from the facts of her life, the emotions of her poetry from its causes. Above all, he honors Bishop's exact ways with language, and his sifting of what is said from what is unsaid in her poetry illuminates his own watchful and patient art as a novelist."--Saskia Hamilton, coeditor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
"This book offers the reader a luminous meditation on Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. It focuses, among other things, on the restraint of her style and the power of the unsaid in her work. But more than that: Colm Toibin meshes his journey as a writer with hers, showing with unique eloquence how her poems have entered and guided his life. I have no doubt this book will become one of the essential texts on Bishop's work."--Eavan Boland, author of A Woman Without a Country: Poems
"Colm Toibin--a sensitive critic as well as a novelist--has written an almost ideal introduction to the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. This could become the introduction to Bishop for people who intend to read her for pleasure."--Stephen Burt, author of Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry
"I have always been drawn to Bishop's spare poetry, but it was reading Tóibín's analysis, which manages to be both a personal reaction and an objective assessment, that helped me to appreciate her fully. Subject and critic can seldom have been as well-matched as they are here, and the insights go in both directions, illuminating Tóibín's novels as well as Bishop's poems."
---Catherine Peters, Raceme
