One Art - by Elizabeth Bishop (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>From several thousand letters, written over fifty years - from 1928, when she was seventeen, to the day of her death, in Boston in 1979 - Robert Giroux has selected over five hundred and has written a detailed and informative introduction. <i>One Art</i> takes us behind Bishop's formal sophistication and reserve, displaying to the full the gift for friendship, the striving for perfection, and the passionate, questing, rigorous spirit that made her a great poet.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> From the Back Cover </b></p></br></br>This collection is a magnificent confirmation of Lowell's prediction. From several thousand letters, written over fifty years - from 1928 when she was seventeen (and already a poet) to the day of her death, in Boston in 1979 - Robert Giroux, her editor during her lifetime, has selected over 500 and has written a detailed and informative introduction. In one sense, Elizabeth Bishop's letters constitute her autobiography, including the story of her love for Lota Soares in Brazil, which ended with Lota's tragic suicide fifteen years later. They also record her intense relationships with her early mentor Marianne Moore and later with Robert Lowell. For Bishop, letter-writing was a joy and a necessity, an embodiment of the links between people, but also a facet of her art, conjuring the world in words. Some letters are carefully composed, elegant in style; some are spontaneous and witty, alive with unexpected detail; some contain poems sent as gifts; others are cries from the heart. Sometimes she ponders on her childhood, on her struggle to create, or to resist drink, but more often she responds fully and vividly to the immediate moment, the color of the sky, the books she has been reading, the friend she misses, the meal she is cooking, the toucan or cat she is observing, the room she is painting in a "Harlequinade" pattern of big colored diamonds. One Art takes us behind Bishop's formal sophistication and reserve, displaying to the full the gift for friendship, the striving for perfection, and the passionate, questing, rigorous spirit that made her a great poet.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>"A remarkable collection . . . True magic." --<i>Richard Locke, The Wall Street Journal</i> <p/>"What a touching and pleasing book . . . Bishop's letters are keys to her art and her life." --<i>Margo Jefferson, The New York Times</i> <p/>"These letters, funny, touching, and occasionally harrowing, remind us that this great poet was a remarkable woman as well. Don't miss them." --<i>Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World</i> <p/>"The compiler of [this volume], Robert Giroux, was Bishop's editor and close friend. His abiding affection for her and his skillful editorial hand are everywhere at work here, from his eloquent introduction to his deft arrangement and excisions. Mr. Giroux has had a long and distinguished career in service to literature; this volume--which he probably considered a labor of love--may well prove to be his most valuable contribution . . . One Art does not quite substitute for an autobiography; there are too many important facts missing. Instead, it stands as a sort of golden treasury, to be gone through in one enthralled reading and then browsed in ever after." --<i>J. D. McClatchy, The New York Times Book Review</i> <p/>"The publication of Elizabeth Bishop's selected letters is a historic event, a bit like discovering a new planet or watching a bustling continent emerge, glossy and triumphant, from the black ocean . . . Let us celebrate the appearance of this extraordinary, this quite exceptional and wonderful work." --<i>Tom Paulin, The Times Literary Supplement</i></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><p><b>Elizabeth Bishop</b> (1911-79) won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.</p>
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