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 novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile
resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that
will intrigue listeners interested in both Bishop and Toibin.
For Toibin, the secret of Bishop's emotional power is in what she leaves
unsaid. Exploring Bishop's famous attention to detail, Toibin describes
how Bishop is able to convey great emotion indirectly, through precise
descriptions of particular settings, objects, and events. He examines
how Bishop's attachment to the Nova Scotia of her childhood, despite her
later life in Key West and Brazil, is related to her early loss of her
parents--and how this connection finds echoes in Toibin's life as an
Irish writer who has lived in Barcelona, New York, and elsewhere.
Beautifully written and skillfully blending biography, literary
appreciation, and descriptions of Toibin's travels to Bishop's Nova
Scotia, Key West, and Brazil, On Elizabeth Bishop provides a fresh and
memorable look at a beloved poet even as it gives us a window into the
mind of one of today's most acclaimed novelists.
