Prose (69 page)

Well, this is very difficult. I think I had better send you a more organized essay next week sometime. I hope to catch you before you depart for the interior. One thing more about the poems, though. I agree that you and Marianne Moore should not be “dragged in” with each other; you write very differently, I think. If I mention Marianne Moore it will be as a friend of yours, not as an “influence.” That odious word!

Your second letter is as full of wonderful and necessary information as your first. I know that
where
you wrote poems is not all that relevant to
how
they arrived, yet what you say is interesting; I wonder if people don't like to be told that sort of thing. Thanks also for the dream background of Varick Street, Rain Towards Morning, the last stanza of Anaphora (this last puzzles me). Of what significance [is] the title—it means a repetitive phrase at the beginning or end of successive verse in my dictionary, but does your poem repeat any phrases? Oh yes, and I wanted to ask you about your use of “syllabics.” The Roosters
looks
as if it were written by counting syllables, but I don't think it is. The rhythm seems to me more subtle … as you suggest, heard, not counted.

I am interested to hear that you were a friend of John Dewey. My father is a philosopher—C.L. Stevenson, he wrote a book on Ethics called Ethics and Language and is to give the Alfred North Whitehead lectures here in May—who has the same quality of humility and honesty … no Transcendentalist, however. You ask about me. Yes, I am doing some part time teaching at the Cambridge School this year, but I am not going to continue after the summer. Mark (Elvin) is my second husband; (Caroline is my daughter by a first disastrous marriage) we were married only last November, having known each other only a month or so. He is an Englishman, historian, sinologist, linguist, brilliant and sensitive but not very well. His eye for painting and for contemporary music (he also is fond of Webern) is much better than mine, and he tells wonderful stories from Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Summerian mythology to Caroline. She adores him. I studied the cello when I was at college as an undergraduate at Michigan and I still play in string quartets when I have time. Both my sisters are violinists and my father is a fine pianist. Caroline is affectionate, beautiful, passionate and vain. I have some fears regarding her future, but many of these are motherly imaginations I think. That will give you some idea of who I am. I suppose I really think of myself as a poet. I send you these because they seem to me to “follow” you to a certain extent. I read your poems for the first time only last winter. Thank you so much again, for your patience and help.

 

Caixa Postal 279, Petrópolis

Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

August 24th, 1963

(in Rio)

Dear Mrs. Elvin:

Thank you for your note of August 14th—I'm in Rio at present it just reached me here yesterday. I'm sorry your first letter got lost—I believe I did warn you! I'm glad you got the DIARY and I have also written Brandt & Brandt to send you copies of the poems they have on hand—I am not sure how many, but they're most of the next book. (If one called EXCHANGING HATS appears, please omit.) Since the last book is 8(?) years old, I think you should see some later poems.

You have been having a wonderful summer, I see, and you've been to all the places in the U S A I've never been to (except New Orleans; I have been there). And camping—heavens!

I wonder how Phyllis Armstrong is—and she's still at the Library, I gather. I was fond of her, and she's been a most admirable secretary to all the poets who ever worked there. But I think you should realize that we were never “close” at all; that she knew me very slightly and during probably the lowest nine or ten moths of my life, long ago in 1949–50. I did not enjoy Washington, nor the Library,—and I am afraid Phyllis may have given you a false impression of me as a figure of gloom and reclusion. If you have the opportunity, it would be much better to talk to some of my friends and colleagues—Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, say—or May Swenson, Howard Moss, or the painter, Loren MacIver. These are all old friends and would have more accurate ideas of me—

Here is a snapshot of Robert Lowell and me taken when he visited me here last year—

I do not mind criticism of my
work.
But
That stay in Washington still remains a nightmare to me and my life there mercifully totally unlike most of the rest of it!

I am looking forward to seeing your chapters in September.

Sincerely yours,

        
Elizabeth Bishop

 

Caixa Postal 279, Petrópolis

Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

October 2nd, 1963

Dear Miss Elvin:

Thank you for your letters. I am actually staying in the country this week so I received them first-hand and quickly. I like what you say in the September 24th one, 2nd paragraph, about the poems. But oh dear—“the moon finds everything amusing”—how on earth did that get in there? That's a mistake—it's from something I never finished, scarcely wrote, I think. Will you please throw it out, and also one called “Exchanging Hats” if it has turned up again? I'm not sure what you did get. I have about eighteen poems towards a book, but I am not satisfied with them and hope to add a few more.

Since I work so slowly myself, how could I possibly object to anyone's working slowly? Please don't worry about it.

About Phyllis Armstrong—yes, I was a bit nervous. As I said, I liked her and I think she liked me. But at that time—1949–50—I felt that she understood very little about poetry, couldn't tell good from bad, didn't seem to get “the principle of thing” at all—and misunderstood, or misinterpreted, her varying poets as well, probably. She undoubtedly has learned, or had to learn, a lot since then, poor girl! And it was a bad year for me.

Now letter 2—the “Chronology”—I'll just go straight through it making a few corrections and answering your questions as they come along.

My father was a contractor, oldest son of J. W. Bishop (who came from Prince Edward Island, so I'm ¾ths Canadian). 50 years and more ago the Bishop firm was very well known—they built public buildings, college buildings, theatres, etc., not houses. (Many in Boston, including the Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, etc.) My father died when I was 8 months old.

I lived some with my maternal grandparents in a
very
small village called Great Village, in Nova Scotia, and started school, just “Primer Class”, there. I lived one winter with my paternal grandparents in Worcester. Then I lived with an aunt, married but childless, in and around Boston for several years, until I went away to school. I used to go back to Great Village summers and other times, and also went to a summer camp at Wellfleet (no longer in existence) for six summers where I became passionately fond of sailing. I had very bad health as a child and my schooling was irregular until I got to Walnut Hill—that's why I was a year or two older than average in getting through college.

My mother's maiden name was BULMER (not Blumer, as you have it).

Yes, I began college thinking I'd “major” in music, then switched to literature. (Now I wish I'd “majored” in Greek & Latin.) I studied the clavichord briefly at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, and more briefly with Ralph Kirkpatrick.
I have a Dolmetsch clavichord here—

I didn't go to Key West until 1937 or '38—just for a fishing trip. The next year I went back and lived there off and on for about nine years. The last year I kept a small garret—a real one—in Greenwich Village, too. I went to Yaddo once briefly in a summer (1947?) and later for longer—1950.

I don't remember how I used the Guggenheim now! Living expenses, probably—

I wish we could forget about the Brazil Book! It is so badly written and scarcely a sentence is as I originally had it; the first 3 chapters are closest to the original. But you left out the “Diary of Helena Morley”, and I am not ashamed of that.

“In the Village” is accurate—just compressed a bit.
“Gwendolyn” is, too.

By all means say I'm a friend of Marianne's! I met her in 1934 through the college Librarian, an old friend of hers, and it was one of the great pieces of good fortune in my life. Also mention Cal (Robert Lowell, that is) and Jarrell (although I haven't seen him for several years) (if you want to). Cal is one of my closest friends and I have the greatest admiration for his work.

I feel that the biographical facts aren't very important or interesting. And I have moved so much, mostly coastwise, that I can't keep the dates straight myself.

In the Pound poem, “Visits to St. Elizabeth's”, the chracters are based on the other inmates of St. E's, the huge government insane asylum in Washington. During the day, Pound was in an open ward, and so one's visits to him were often interrupted. One boy used to show us his watch, another patted the floor, etc.—but naturally it's a mixture of fact and fancy. The poem appeared in Partisan Review, not Kenyon as you have it. That's not very important—but I have published quite a bit in Partisan, from away back, and the editors have always been friends, gave me another award, etc.—

You ask the name of the friend I took the Newfoundland walking trip with—we were not “literary” friends and I'm afraid we lost track of each other years ago, so I don't think it matters.

I began publishing either junior or senior year at college. First, I think, were a story and a poem, maybe two, in a magazine called THE MAGAZINE edited for a few years by Ivor Winters. Before that I
had
received honorable mention (for the same contributions, I think) in a contest for college writing held by HOUND & HORN. I worked on the college newspaper off and on, and I was editor of my class year-book (but that had
nothing
to do with writing). Mary McCarthy, Eleanor Clarke, Eleanor's sister Eunice, and I, and two or three others, started an anonymous and what we thought “advanced” literary magazine. It succeeded so well that we were asked to join our original enemy, the official college literary magazine. (But I was NOT a member of Mary McC's GROUP—the one her recent novel's about. She was a year ahead of me.) The story Robert Lowell referred to, I think (since he likes it) must be one called IN PRISON. It's in the first Partisan Review Anthology—but it was published after college. The first poem of mine they published, I think, was “Love Lies Sleeping.” At least I remember getting a letter from Mary McC when I was in Paris, saying that PR was starting up again and would I send them a poem, and I think that's the one I sent—

During the war I worked briefly for the Navy, in the optical shop in the Key West Submarine Base—on binoculars. I was allergic to the acids used to clean the prisms so I had to stop, but I liked the work—and the “shop.”

While in Mexico I knew Pablo Neruda and I now realize he had more influence on me than I knew at the time. I studied Spanish with a refugee, a friend of his, we read a great deal of poetry—Lorca, Neruda, and early Spanish poets, etc.

I think that answers both your letters. I am not worried about time, so please don't you be. I think you are probably right about my anthropomorphism—although people speak, or used to, against it, it seems to be a fairly constant ingredient in all kinds of poetry through the ages, in varying amounts—Yes, I'd like to see the Twayne Aiken very much—hope it arrives safely. I know what you mean about “mechanical” troubles—we have them here, & also light rationing, because of the drought—which means lighting candles or oil lamps for a while every evening. In the country it seem fairly natural, but in apartments, shops, restaurants, etc. in Rio, it is very strange—

Sincerely yours,

        
Elizabeth Bishop

 

P.S. I read this over and see that I have made my hiking-companion sound mysterious without meaning to. Her maiden name was Evelyn Huntington and she was a year or two ahead of me. I am sorry I have lost track of her and hope to see her again sometime because she was a very entertaining girl—and we had a very good time. She was a Public Health worker—If you want
names,
just ask—but I gather the biographical sketch is sketchy.—Others who were in on our anonymous college magazine were Frani Blough Muser (later an editor of
Modern Music
for many years)—and Margaret Miller, who was with the Museum of Modern Art in New York for 20 years, I think—We were all interested in “modern” art, music, and writing—sophomores and juniors at the time, I think.

I believe I mentioned that I think John Dewey also influenced me—NOT his writings, which I have scarcely read, but his personality. The
poem
“A Cold Spring” is dedicated to his youngest daughter, an old friend, although quite a bit older than I am. The
book
“A Cold Spring” is dedicated to Dr. Baumann, my doctor in New York for many years—also now the Lowells' doctor and doctor to many of my friends—a general practitioner.

 

44 Porter Street

Watertown, Mass.

October 28, 1963

Dear Miss Bishop,

I received your letter of October 2nd quite some time ago. I probably should have answered it right away to reassure you about the mails, but I wanted to send you something more than a reassurance. You are very generous about my ponderous progress, but I am less so and keep wishing I could work more swiftly. However, I think I have an outline at last that will work. Next week or at worst, the week after, I'll send you twenty or thirty pages of a first draft—really very rough, I'm afraid, but including some comments on THE FISH, THE MAP, THE IMAGINARY ICEBERG, CHEMIN DE FER, THE COLDER THE AIR, LOVE LIES SLEEPING, CAPE BRETON, AT THE FISHHOUSES, ROOSTERS OVER 2000 ILLUSTRATIONS ETC. and a number of other poems. This looks like a grab-bag, I'm sure, but I am at last satisfied that I have a skeleton of a book. I am most grateful for your corrections and amendments. These I will write up in as finished a form as I now can and send along—so as to be sure to get nothing terribly wrong. You are quite right—I must have omitted
Helena Morley
in the sketch I sent you. An oversight, I admire it very much, especially because you seem to have
translated
it, not reinterpreted it. I am very dubious about most translations, although I don't mind out and out imitations like Robert Lowell's. There seems to be no pretense of accuracy there. On the other hand, Ben Belitt's translations of Neruda that I have been reading this week seem to me unreliable. Germanic and squashed, entirely out of keeping with the Spanish. Unfortunately, my Spanish is such that I need a pony if I am to read with any speed at all. I am glad you told me that you liked him. (Neruda, not Belitt) Although I never feel the violence in your poems that I do in his, nor the sensuality, there is a real affinity. Especially in the sea poems and in the ones about animals.