In this book, novelist Colm Toibin offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Toibin creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a
"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
