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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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A luminous sunrise is colorfully depicted, with the sun's rays beaming against a foreground of ocean and swaying palm trees.

Postcard, Florida Sunrise

From Chapter 9

Postcard of a Florida sunrise sent by Bishop to Lloyd Frankenberg in March 1945. She sends it reluctantly, claiming it is the only one she has. (VC 29.8; Courtesy of Vassar College)

A small port is depicted with houses in the background and fishing boats and local inhabitants in the foreground.

Postcard, Majorca

From Chapter 9

Postcard of the town of Sóller in Majorca sent by Bishop to Frani Blough in May 1936. On the back she writes: “I’m sure this was much better than Martha’s Vineyard.” (VC 34.5; Courtesy of Vassar College)

This postcard of the Piazza di Spagna in Rome shows the Spanish Steps at its center and the Fontana della Barcaccia in the foreground.

Postcard, Piazza di Spagna

From Chapter 9

Postcard of the Piazza di Spagna sent by Bishop to Frani Blough in 1937. “Keats died at the house on the right,” she tells her friend. (VC 34.6; Courtesy of Vassar College)

The image shows three female tourists looking on as three male tourists help a fourth to kiss the Blarney stone.

Blarney Castle Postcard

From Chapter 9

Postcard of a group of tourists at Blarney Castle sent to Frani Blough in 1937 by Bishop, who turns the reverential scene of the ‘kissing of the stone’ into farce with her mocking message. (VC 34.6; Courtesy of Vassar College)

The image shows a boat entering the "Narrows" in St. John's, Newfoundland. Cliffs appear on the right and left of the narrow waterway.

Newfoundland Postcard

From Chapter 9

Postcard of Newfoundland with Bishop’s correction of the angles of the cliffs sent to Frani Blough in August 1932. “This place is far beyond my fondest dreams,” she writes. (VC 34.2; Courtesy of Vassar College)

A commercial street of Cos Cob, Connecticut is depicted in this postcard. Two cars are shown against a background of shops along the town's street.

Cos Cob postcard

From Chapter 9

Postcard of Cos Cob, a neighborhood in the town of Greenwich, Connecticut, sent by Bishop to Lloyd Frankenberg in May 1949. (VC 29.9; Courtesy of Vassar College)

The image depicts a car making its way along the new Oversea Highway. Palm trees appear on the right between the road and the ocean.

Overseas Highway, Key West

From Chapter 9

The Overseas Highway, a photograph from George Allan England’s 1929 article on Key West, titled “America’s Island of Felicity.”

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