“against a dark”: EB journal, “Trip on the Amazon,” February 1960, p. 8, VC 55.2.
“authentic, post-Amazon”: WIA 315.
154 “I want to go back”: WIA 316.
“I . . . am living”: EB to Howard Moss, BNY 229.
read “all” the mail: EB to LS, February 21 [1960], VC 32.8.
“we think that”: EB to LS, February 28 [1960], VC 32.8.
“my dream”: EB to LS, February 22 [1960], VC 32.8.
“Love, love, love”: EB to LS, February 22 [1960], VC 32.8.
“Love and devotion”: EB to LS, February 28 [1960], VC 32.8.
“sticking up”: EB to LS, February 21 [1960], VC 32.8.
bought it from a boatman: See James Merrill, “Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979),” Collected Prose, ed. J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 233. Rosinha Leão’s somewhat different account of the acquisition confirms that it took place on the Amazon trip, rather than on the Rio Negro, where Merrill places the incident. REB 164–65.
155 “On the Amazon”: EAP 124–25. EB also wrote to RL about a poem called “January River” that she worked on at this time. She thought of giving her next book of poems that title: “there’s a poem of that name, or with that in it at least.” WIA 354. The editors of WIA identify “January River” as EB’s unfinished “On the Amazon.” WIA 354n. But “January River” was most likely an early title for “Brazil, January 1, 1502,” EB’s poem about the Portuguese landing on the coast of Brazil at what became the port of Rio de Janeiro (River of January). BP 89–90. EB refers to that poem as “the ‘January’ one” in correspondence with the New Yorker. BNY 218.
“everything seems nearer”: WIA 327.
“cleaning up the attic”: WIA 260.
“rumba rhythm”: WIA 346.
“Hidden, oh hidden”: EB, “Song for the Rainy Season,” BP 99.
“he can count”: EB, “Song for the Rainy Season,” BP 99.
156 “love will unexpectedly”: EB journal quoted in EBL 244.
“I always thought”: OA 367.
“It is marvellous”: EAP 44.
stanzas added: “I wrote stanzas one and four in one day and then worked on it all off and on for six years—heavens.” EB to MS, June 9, 1961, WU.
“without water”: EB, “Song for a Rainy Season,” BP 100.
157 “we are delightedly”: BNY 231–32.
“one of my greatest worries”: WIA 317.
“I don’t want to”: BNY 233.
Mrs. White conceded: The poem appeared as “Song for a Rainy Season” in the New Yorker, October 8, 1960, with no accompanying note situating the poem. When it was republished in Questions of Travel in 1965, EB changed the title to “Song for the Rainy Season” and added a detailed note locating the poem precisely: Sitio da Alcobaçinha, Fazenda Samambaia, Petrópolis.
“too damp”: EB to MS, “the day after Christmas” [1960], WU.
158 “twice as tall”: EB to MS, October 28, 1956, WU.
“Let Shakespeare”: BPPL 245.
“It rains and rains”: EB to MS, March 8 [1961], WU.
hair had gone gray: EB to MS, September 19, 1953, WU; “retired” from “society”: OA 271.
159 “darling baby”: EB to MS, February 9, 1961, WU.
“useful days”: EB postcard to MS, n.d. [before June 9, 1961], WU.
“big excitements”: EB to MS, February 9, 1961, WU.
“Chief Coordinatress”: OA 398.
“just the kind,” “macho”: EB to MS, February 9, 1961, WU.
160 “backyards”: EB to MS, July 26, 1964, WU.
“wonderful in action”: OA 393.
“doing something at last”: OA 397.
“everyone involved”: EB to MS, March 8 [1961], WU.
“semi-revolutions”: EB to MS, July 31, 1962, WU.
“anti-revolution revolution”: OA 309.
“very bloody”: OA 401.
“find herself in politics”: OA 397.
“a real old crook”: OA 401.
“We might even leave”: OA 401.
“as usual”: OA 401.
“strange”: OA 396.
“up & down life”: EB to MS, June 9, 1961, WU.
“the word for even”: WIA 164.
161 “beaches & mts.”: EB to MS, March 17, 1955, WU.
“awful but cheerful”: EB, “The Bight,” BP 59.
“Rio de Janeiro”: EB, “On the Railroad Named Delight,” BPPL 443.
“amazing first aid”: WIA 329.
“hates to be alone”: EB to MS, February 25, 1961, WU; more than once: “hates to be alone,” EB to MS, July 26, 1964, WU.
compile an “anthology”: EB to MS, January 7, 1963, WU.
“made her coffee”: EB to MS, February 25, 1961, WU.
“sick of cooking”: EB to MS, day after Christmas [1960], WU.
162 “go down and heat up”: OA 326.
“get busy cooking”: OA 397.
“seemed to have one hand”: MS to EB, October 28, 1955, WU.
“fear it could”: BNY 234.
“You are about the only”: WIA 331.
“their Republican readers”: BNY xxxvii.
“several poems”: OA 357.
“almost ready”: WIA 353.
163 “Sandpiper”: BP 129; compare herself: “Laureate’s Words of Acceptance,” on receipt of Neustadt International Prize for Literature, April 9, 1976, World Literature Today, Winter 1977, 12.
164 “finical”: EB, “Sandpiper,” BP 129.
“bitter telephone fights”: OA 404.
“Radcliffe girl”: EB to MS, May 15, 1962, WU.
“attack of pathological”: RL, “Near the Unbalanced Aquarium,” LPR 346.
five breakdowns: WIA 303.
“very dangerous”: EB to MS, January 7, 1963, WU.
tearing off his clothes: Jeffrey Meyers, Robert Lowell in Love (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 82; accompanied by a doctor: Ian Hamilton, Robert Lowell: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1982), 303.
“the knot inside”: WIA 295.
“psych-a”: WIA 303.
165 “the seemingly dispassionate”: LL 491.
“the most natural”: EBC 99.
“think I may be able”: WIA 303.
Calling it an “elegy”: WIA 380.
“about snow”: WIA 260.
resemblance to an earlier: RL did compare “First Death in Nova Scotia” favorably to John Crowe Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” and Ben Jonson’s “On Salathiel Pavy.” WIA 380.
“a little frosted cake”: EB, “First Death in Nova Scotia,” BP 124–25.
rattled it off: OA 83; “heaping field”: James Russell Lowell, “The First Snow-Fall,” The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., Riverside Press, 1890), 350.
166 “immortal”: WIA 380.
the most “distrait”: EB postcard to MS, n.d. [after December 12, 1962], WU.
“I have been minding”: WIA 439.
“lost in admiration”: OA 398.
“shrieking”: EB to MS, November 10, 1965, WU.
167 Time offered $9,000: OA 400.
“material possessions”: EB to MS, February 24 [1962], WU.
“homesick”: EB to MS, January 22 [1962], WU.
“I can’t see or hear”: EB to MS, December 27, 1961, WU.
“so blue-eyed”: OA 404.
“fight with LIFE”: EB to MS, February 24 [1962], WU.
“ghastly ‘slanting’”: EB to MS, April 10 [1962], WU.
168 “that blasted book”: EB to MS, April 10 [1962], WU.
“Groups and Individuals”: EB, “Brazil,” BPR 230.
“A Changing Social Scene”: EB, Brazil (New York: Time Inc., 1962), 113.
“marriage at seventeen”: EB, “Brazil,” BPR 235.
“LIFE-slicked”: OA 413.
“customary”: EB, Brazil, 117.
“I have n
o confidence”: EB to MS, Valentine’s Day [1962], WU.
“I’ve never seen”: WIA 259.
“what I like”: EB to MS, January 7, 1963, WU.
“if I can”: EB to MS, February 2, 1962, WU.
169 Clarice Lispector: “She is better than J. L. Borges—who is good, but not all that good!” EB to Ilsa and Kit Barker [writer and artist, friends from Yaddo], October 29, 1962, quoted in Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 257.
“Practicing Poets”: EB to MS, March 5, 1963, WU.
“I can’t write”: EB to MS, October 3, 1963, WU.
“Work’s the thing”: OA 276.
“set-fire-works-sex-pieces”: WIA 506.
“foreign woman”: Mary McCarthy, The Group (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1963), 369.
“This woman”: McCarthy, The Group, 370.
“the convention”: McCarthy, The Group, 371.
“not to think”: McCarthy, The Group, 372.
170 “short sandy-haired”: McCarthy, The Group, 100.
“Mary lets her off,” “I was not”: EB to MS, October 3, 1963, WU.
“I’m thankful”: EB to MS, November 11, 1963, WU.
resemblance to Margaret Miller: OA 614n.
“stocky”: McCarthy, The Group, 369.
carbon copy: In a letter to EB that she never received, McCarthy claimed the resemblance to Lota was unintentional; the letter was written in Paris and dated three weeks after EB’s death. OA 614.
eighteen-hour days: EB to MS, November 10, 1965, WU.
except to sleep and shout: EB to MS, May 22, 1963, WU.
“I admire her gall”: EB to MS, October 3, 1963, WU.
“commercial success”: WIA 495.
“What DOES California”: WIA 480.
“recipes for living”: Laura Archera Huxley, You Are Not the Target (New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1963), table of contents.
171 “craving for a good”: EB to MS, December 12, 1964, WU.
“no escape”: EB to MS, July 2, 1963, WU.
“self-preservation’s”: EB to MS, December 12, 1964, WU.
“whether I’m there”: EB to MS, March 24, 1963, WU.
“I don’t mind”: EB to MS, September 19, 1953, WU.
“I scarcely seem”: EB to MS, May 22, 1963, WU.
“We’re all silent”: EB to MS, August 27, 1963, WU.
“This isn’t my world”: WIA 531.
“I feel like”: WIA 350.
172 “capsula”: WIA 415.
“golpe”: WIA 515.
spent every night: EB to MS, August 4, 1963, WU.
“awful brown slime”: EB to LS, July 7 [1964], VC 118.49.
“scared to death”: EB to MS, October 3, 1963, WU.
“rest home”: EB to MS, October 3, 1963, WU.
“great low pink”: EB to MS, October 27, 1964, WU. EB hadn’t known that the Flamengo (Flemish) district of Rio was named for a Dutch sea captain, Olivier van Noort, who’d attempted to invade the Portuguese settlement in the colonial era, and not for the elegant shorebird, called “flamingo” in both English and Portuguese. In Spanish, which EB had studied in Mexico, flamengo means “flamingo.”
a “real” revolution: EB to MS, April 8, 1964, WU.
173 “acutely anxious”: EB to LS [June 30, 1964], VC 118.48.
“YE GODS”: EB to LS, June 25 [1964], VC 118.48.
“Oh so many poets”: WIA 547.
“I wish you were”: EB to LS, June 29 [1964], VC 118.48.
“GORGEOUS”: EB to LS, July 10, 1964, letter #16B, VC 118.50.
“light as a feather”: EB to LS, June 24 [1964], VC 118.48.
“excellent for ladies’ use”: EB to LS, July 7 [1964], VC 118.49.
“a thousand”: LS to EB [June 15, 1964], English translation by Carmen L. Oliveira, VC 114.18.
Antabuse twice a week: EB to LS, July 3 [1964], VC 118.49.
“my love”: LS to EB [June 21, 1964], English translation by Carmen L. Oliveira, VC 114.20.
“slow boat”: EB to MS, May 5 [1964], WU.
“I am dying”: WIA 549.
“back to the Brazilian”: WIA 546.
“minha querida”: EB to LS, July 15 [1964], VC 118.50.
“inferiorities”: LS to EB, Morning Sunday [June 21, 1964], VC 114.20.
174 “near-canonisation”: Edward Lucie-Smith, “No Jokes in Portuguese,” Sunday Times (London), July 26, 1964, photo by Erich Auerbach.
“Dear, my compass”: EAP 140. I have inserted an em dash at the start of the final quatrain, which is the way EB punctuated the poem in her handwritten version, not reproduced in EAP. Lloyd Schwartz email to the author, March 19, 2016. See also Lloyd Schwartz, “Annals of Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil,” New Yorker, September 30, 1991, 86.
175 marked a star: EB to LA, Friday Thursday AM [1965], p. 23a, VC 112.3.
“reluctant”: EB to LA, January 18 [1966], VC 112.4.
small notebook: EB notebook, Ouro Prêto 1961–1965, VC 73.5.
“good old”: OA 332.
“If happiness”: Charles Berg and Clifford Allen, The Problem of Homosexuality (New York: Citadel Press, 1958), 53.
176 “psychological deviation”: Berg and Allen, The Problem of Homosexuality, 52.
“we make such a fuss”: Berg and Allen, The Problem of Homosexuality, 115.
“psychopathology”: Berg and Allen, The Problem of Homosexuality, 151–53.
“The socially accepted”: Wilhelm Reich quoted in Berg and Allen, The Problem of Homosexuality, 124.
wrote out the lines by hand: See Schwartz, “Annals of Poetry,” 86. EB’s typed copy, also illustrated, is reproduced in facsimile in EAP 140.
“My dear Aurora Borealis”: EB to LA, April 9 [1965], VC 112.2.
“Darling Lilli”: numerous letters from EB to LA, VC 112.2 and 112.3.
“The more I give you”: Luís de Camões, quoted in translation in George Monteiro, Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil and After: A Poetic Career Transformed (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 2012), 15.
177 “killing herself with work”: BNY 278.
“mean abandoning Lota”: EB to MS, January 26, 1965, WU.
“THE Baroque town”: WIA 218.
“strange assortment”: EB to MS, May 21, 1965, WU.
“do all kinds of things”: EB to MS, February 24, 1962, WU.
“hard hands”: EB to LA, November 18 [1965], VC 112.3.
“my dearest blue eyed”: EB to LA, June 17 [1965], VC 112.2.
178 “Tell me”: EB to LA, Sunday 13 [1965], p. 4, VC 112.2.
“small water-fall”: EB to MS, May 21, 1965, WU.
“a single iron pipe”: EB, “Under the Window: Ouro Prêto,” BP 175–76.
“simple” talk: EB, “Under the Window: Ouro Prêto,” BP 175–76.
“Women!”: EB to MS, February 9, 1961, WU.
“Somebody loves us all”: EB, “Filling Station,” BP 126.
179 “The seven ages”: EB, “Under the Window: Ouro Prêto,” BP 176.
“I feel human”: EB to LA, June 17 [1965], VC 112.2.
“full of poetry”: EB to LA, “Sunday 13” [1965], VC 112.2.
“all kinds of bits”: EB to LA, June 22–25 [1965], VC 112.3.
“I wake up frightened”: EB to LA, July 2 [1954], VC 112.3.
“split personality”: EB to LA, June 22–25 [1965], VC 112.3.
180 “my lovely hot”: EB to LA, July 2 [1965], VC 112.3.
“my appletree”: EB to LA, “Sunday 13” [1965], VC 112.2.
“who gives everything”: EB to LA, June 17 [1965], VC 112.2.
“dear danish pastry”: EB to LA, “Sunday 13” [1965], VC 112.2.
“hideously guilty”: EB to LA, June 22–25 [1965], VC 112.3.
“studying”: EB to LA, Friday Thursday AM [1965], VC 112.3.
“We speak of shipwrecks”: EB notebook, 1962–64, VC 73.6.
“Oh white”: EB, �
�Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle,” EAP 180.
“abrupt and rude”: OA 446.
“violent . . . manner”: OA 450.
“bossy”: OA 446.
studied Thomas Hardy’s: OA 434.
“Here is the ancient floor”: Thomas Hardy, “The Self Un-Seeing,” The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, ed. James Gibson (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 166.
181 “finally came”: EB to MS, November 10, 1965, WU.
secret plan: EB to LA, January 18 [1966], VC 112.4.
“is always very happy”: OA 359.
15 percent contractor’s fee: EB to LA, Saturday Morning [October 8, 1966], VC 112.5.
“big old-fashioned”: EB to MS, May 21, 1965, WU.
“it is almost”: BNY 281.
182 “and it makes me feel”: EB to LA, November 12 [1965], VC 112.3.
“not just a fling”: EB to LA, November 18 [1965], VC 112.3.
“fat round pigs”: EB to LA, Monday afternoon [November? 1965], p. 21a, VC 112.3.
“lavishly run kitchen”: EB to LA, June 22–25 [1965], VC 112.3.
183 “nice and big”: EB to LA, January 1 [1966], VC 112.4.
diet pills: EB to LA, November 18 [1965], VC 112.3; Metrecal: EB to LA, Thursday 25th [1965], p. 8, VC 112.2; Danish Coffee flavor: EB to LA, February 21, 1966, VC 112.4.
“both my grandmothers”: WIA 594.
“pretty thin”: BNY 281.
“cool, eely”: “Poetry in English,” Time, March 9, 1962, quoted in EBL 334.
“some of the finest”: “The Passing Strange,” Time, December 24, 1965.
“one of the shining”: reviews of Questions of Travel quoted in EBL 373.
“loves it when I”: EB to LA, November 12 [1965], VC 112.3.
“feeling too many things”: WIA 505.
“gumboils”: EB to MS, November 10, 1965, WU.
“now she’s had a taste”: OA 438.
“soothing presence”: EB to LA, June 22 [1965], VC 112.3.
“great comfort”: EB to MS, November 10, 1965, WU.
184 “accident of an unconscious-suicide”: WIA 593.
“determined . . . that I am”: EB to LA, June 22 [1965], VC 112.3.
“some of the Lost World”: OA 434–35.
“passive forever”: EB to LA, November 12 [1965], VC 112.3.
“make a fool”: EB to LA, November 12 [1965], VC 112.3.
“keeps telling me”: EB to LA, December 14 [1965], VC 112.3.
“sad scene”: WIA 595.
“the courage to make”: EB to LA, November 12 [1965], VC 112.3.
185 “get some”: EB to LA, December 31, 1965, VC 112.3.
Elizabeth Bishop Page 39
