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  3. Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive

Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive

Bethany Hicok
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  • Overview

  • Contents

In a life full of chaos and travel, Elizabeth Bishop managed to preserve and even partially catalog, a large collection—more than 3,500 pages of drafts of poems and prose, notebooks, memorabilia, artwork, hundreds of letters to major poets and writers, and thousands of books—now housed at Vassar College. Informed by archival theory and practice, as well as a deep appreciation of Bishop’s poetics, the collection charts new territory for teaching and reading American poetry at the intersection of the institutional archive, literary study, the liberal arts college, and the digital humanities. The fifteen essays in this collection use this archive as a subject, and, for the first time, argue for the critical importance of working with and describing original documents in order to understand the relationship between this most archival of poets and her own archive. This collection features a unique set of interdisciplinary scholars, archivists, translators, and poets, who approach the archive collaboratively and from multiple perspectives. The contributions explore remarkable new acquisitions, such as Bishop’s letters to her psychoanalyst, one of the most detailed psychosexual memoirs of any twentieth century poet and the exuberant correspondence with her final partner, Alice Methfessel, an important series of queer love letters of the 20th century. Lever Press’s digital environment allows the contributors to present some of the visual experience of the archive, such as Bishop’s extraordinary “multi-medial” and “multimodal” notebooks, in order to reveal aspects of the poet’s complex composition process.
  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Contents
  • List of Abbreviations
  • Member Institution Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Part I The Queer Archive
    • Chapter One. “Too Shy to Stop”
    • Chapter Two. Elizabeth Bishop’s Sanity
    • Chapter Three. Elizabeth Bishop’s Perspectives on Marriage
    • Chapter Four. “Keeping Up a Silent Conversation”
    • Chapter Five. Dear Elizabeth, Dear May
    • Chapter Six. Odd Job
  • Part II Travels: Scale, Location, Architecture, Archive
    • Chapter Seven. Elizabeth Bishop and Race in the Archive
    • Chapter Eight. “I miss all that bright, detailed flatness”
    • Chapter Nine. “All the untidy activity”
    • Chapter Ten. The Burglar of the Tower of Babel
    • Chapter Eleven. Elizabeth Bishop’s Geopoetics
  • Part III The Work in Progress
    • Chapter Twelve. The Archival Aviary: Elizabeth Bishop and Drama
    • Chapter Thirteen. Archival Animals
    • Chapter Fourteen. “Huge Crowd Pleased by New Models”
    • Chapter Fifteen. The Matter of Elizabeth Bishop’s Professionalism
  • Works Cited
  • List of Contributors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index
The complete proposal and manuscript of this work were subjected to a partly closed ("single-blind") review process. For more information, please see our Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines.
Citable Link
Published: 2020
Publisher: Lever Press
Copyright: 2020
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license
ISBN(s)
  • 978-1-64315-011-6 (paper)
  • 978-1-64315-012-3 (open access)
Subject
  • LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry
  • LITERARY CRITICISM / LGBT

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1971 letter from Frank Bidart to Elizabeth Bishop in which he tells her of his experience of reading "In the Waiting Room" as he eats his meal in the Hermit Hamburger.

Letter from Bidart to Bishop, 1971

From Chapter 1

Frank Bidart describes his first encounter with “In the Waiting Room.” Letter used by permission of Frank Bidart, © 2019. (VC 1.14; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Bishop's first typewritten draft of "In the Waiting Room" has extensive handwritten annotations.

First Draft of "In the Waiting Room"

From Chapter 1

Bishop's annotated first draft of "In the Waiting Room."

Draft of "Blue Postman" featuring the lines "I love you / for scientific reasons / the transference is perfect / I've given you my past / all".

"Blue Postman" notebook draft excerpt

From Chapter 2

An excerpt from a page of Bishop’s notebook with a draft of “Blue Postman.” (VC 75.3; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Notebook excerpt featuring lines from "Geographical Mirror" (GM) images and language that later appear in "Cape Breton" ('the little calf that bawls"). ""A Summer's Dream" ( "dwarfs, giants") and "At the Fishhouses" ("Description of the dark, icy, clear water"; "My idea of 'knowledge'"; "Half-drawn, half-flowing from a [canceled] great rocky breast").

Notebook excerpt with images used in "Cape Breton," " A Summer's Dream," and "At the Fishhouses."

From Chapter 2

Page from Bishop’s notebook featuring images that would later be used in “Cape Breton,” "A Summer's Dream," and "At the Fishhouses." (VC 75.3, p. 115; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Excerpt from letter to Dorothee Bowie in which Bishop comments on her guilt feelings about her mother's mental illness and death, the mental illnesses of Robert Lowell and Lota de Macedo Soares, and the 19th-century mental health reformer Dorothea Dix. She asserts to Bowie that "queer, drunk, and all the rest, I am sane."

Excerpt from 1970 Bishop letter to Dorothee Bowie

From Chapter 2

A passage from Bishop’s June 14, 1970 letter to Dorothee Bowie. (VC 27.5; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Image shows beginning of story called "The River-Rat." At top right, Bishop inscribes the following in blue ink: "Collaboration by Pauline H. & me one hot summer in K.W.--not very good!" The phrase not very good is underlined.

Excerpt from "River Rat" draft

From Chapter 3

Part of the first page of the second draft of Bishop’s unpublished short story "The River-Rat."

Selection of a typed letter from Elizabeth Bishop to Alice Methfessel, with many messy handwritten collections.

Typed letter from Bishop to Methfessel

From Chapter 4

Bishop’s typed letters to Methfessel are full of corrections, additions, and postscripts; the “messier” quality of these letters reveals a level of openness and spontaneity that Bishop had with few, if any, of her other correspondents. (Bishop to Methfessel, February 16, 1971, VC 114.32; Courtesy of Vassar College)

A colorful kitten sticker at the top of a letter from Elizabeth Bishop to Alice Methfessel with the typed words "Yucky, isn't it?" alongside.

Bishop letter to Methfessel with "yucky" sticker

From Chapter 4

Stickers like the one at the top of this letter are an untranscribable element of the love letters that convey an understanding of the correspondents’ playfulness and tenderness. In a typical move, Bishop self-consciously comments on the sentimentality of the sticker with “yucky, isn’t it?” (Bishop to Methfessel, 11 Feb 1971, VC 114.29; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Swenson uses a series of repeated tight squiggles to represent the switchbacks on the Riviera corniches.

Squiggle from Swenson letter to Bishop

From Chapter 5

From a letter, handwritten while traveling in France. Swenson includes a minutely drawn representation of the switchbacks on the Riviera corniches.

Typewritten draft of prose poem "The Fairy Toll-Taker."

Draft page of "The Fairy Toll-Taker"

From Chapter 6

Draft of “The Fairy Toll-Taker,” recto. (VC 53.1; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Typewritten draft of prose poem "The Fairy Toll-Taker."

Draft page of "The Fairy Toll-Taker"

From Chapter 6

Draft of “The Fairy Toll-Taker,” recto. (VC 53.1; Courtesy of Vassar College)

A notebook page from Bishop's transcriptions of blues lyrics of the 1930s and 40s where she copied lines from Blind Boy Fuller's 1936 "Evil Hearted Woman." Bishop places several question marks in this rendering, betraying a halting confidence about words and phrases.

Notebook Page with "Evil Hearted Woman"

From Chapter 7

Bishop copied “Evil Hearted Woman” by Blind Boy Fuller into her notebook. (VC 74.12.1; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Page from guide to Ouro Prêto, with Bishop's remark on the English translation.

Bishop Comments in a Book by Ruas

From Chapter 10

Bishop’s snide comment on the pages in English in Ruas’s Conhecendo Ouro Prêto. (Vassar, Grille F2651 .O9 R82 1952)

Manuscript page from Bishop's partial translation of Bernard Malamud's short story "The Magic Barrel," with corrections made by another hand.

Partial Translation, Malamud

From Chapter 10

Portion of Bishop's partial translation manuscript of Bernard Malamud's "The Magic Barrel," showing corrections in another hand. (VC 73.7; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Detail from page of Bishop's notebook containing her draft translation of Alice Dayrell Brant's _The Diary of 'Helena Morley'_.

Excerpt of Draft, "Helena Morley" translation

From Chapter 10

From the handwritten draft of Bishop’s translation of The Diary of “Helena Morley,” ms p. 90. (VC 72.4; Courtesy of Vassar College)

Photo of revised draft of Gallery Note.

Draft "Gallery Note" for Wesley Wehr

From Chapter 11

Bishop’s revised draft of “Gallery Note” reflects her efforts to capture a geologically precise analogy for Wehr’s artwork. (VC 53.8; Courtesy of Vassar College; this note was published as “Wesley Wehr” in Pr352-353 and in PPL469-70; in the archival note, Bishop wrote lonelinesses, which has been incorrectly transcribed as loneliness in both published versions.)

Image shows draft of "The Museum."

Draft of "The Museum"

From Chapter 11

One can see Bishop trying to jimmy her lines into place, but the insistence on the liveliness of the light—its ability to damage materials over time—is worth noting. (VC 75.3; Courtesy of Vassar College; transcribed by Quinn on p. 72 of EAP)

Marginal sketches from notebook including figure in bird costume.

Bishop's sketches for The Birds

From Chapter 12

Bishop includes a short series of marginal sketches alongside her translated song from The Birds, including figures in costume.

Manuscript page with handwritten edits.

"Prince Mannerly" excerpt of draft

From Chapter 12

Bishop's manuscript version of "Prince Mannerly" references Francesca's nativity amidst its description and includes suggestions for performance of a work she originally entitled "Winsome."

Manuscript draft including reference to Calder, sketch of scene.

"His Proper Tear" excerpt of draft

From Chapter 12

Bishop's earlier draft of "His Proper Tear" shows an opening poem from Fletcher, a penciled revision of the title, and her note regarding Calder's mobiles.

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