Elizabeth Bishop
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“Sunny-Side Up”: EB to AM, March 23 or 24, 1971, VC 114.37.
“the most electrified”: OA 543.
240 “those nice satiny”: EB to AM, March 23, 1971, VC 114.36.
“nice & loud”: EB to AM, February 14, 1971, VC 114.32.
“Good-morning”: EB to AM, February 19, 1971, VC 114.32.
“the way you pull on”: EB to AM, March 23 again 8:30 PM, 1971, VC 114.36.
“the ladies”: EB to AM, March 23, 1971, VC 114.36.
“taken aback”: AM to EB, March 20, 1971, VC 116.14.
“I’m wrong in every way”: EB to AM, February 22, 1971, VC 114.33.
“you are much too young”: EB to AM, February 19, 1971, VC 114.32.
“beaux”: EB to AM, February 24, 1971, VC 114.34.
“indiscreet”: EB to AM, February 14, 1971, VC 114.32.
“all your electrical”: EB to AM, February 17, 1971, VC 114.32.
241 “Bob the Boring”: AM to EB, July 2, 1971, VC 116.20.
“For Always, Alice”: AM to EB, Feburary 22, 1971, VC 116.12.
“love—housefulls”: EB to AM, April 1, 1971, VC 115.1.
“best breakfast”: EB to AM, February 16, 1971, VC 114.32.
“two collapses”: EB to AM, March 22, 1971, VC 114.36.
242 “less neurotic”: EB to AM, March 23 or 24, 1971, VC 114.37.
“unreservedly”: AM to EB, March 2, 1971, VC 116.13.
“morbidly given to”: EB to AM, March 31, 1971, VC 114.40.
“things I can actively”: AM to EB, March 12, 1971, VC 116.14.
“the Ageds”: AM to EB, February 15, 1971, VC 116.10.
“our mutual past”: AM to EB, March 12, 1971, VC 116.14.
“vast difference in our ages”: EB to AM, March 31, 1971, VC 114.40.
“the same way”: EB to AM, February 20, 1971, VC 114.32.
“just plain grief”: EB to AM, March 31, 1971, VC 114.40.
“awful tail-spin”: EB to AM, March 19, 1971, VC 114.36.
“I’ll have to see you”: EB to AM, March 31, 1971, VC 114.40.
243 beach wrap: “your terry-cloth beach-wrapper,” EB to AM, July 9, 1971, VC 115.5.
“a nice beach”: OA 591.
“If Elizabeth lived here”: AM to EB, April 20, 1971, VC 116.17.
“blissful shock”: AM to EB, April 15, 1971, VC 116.7.
“the horrors set in”: EB to AM, March 23 or 24, 1971, VC 114.37.
“a successful blending”: Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works, 1921–1945 (New York: Free Press, 1975), 331.
“Lib Ladies”: EB to AM, March 23 or 24, 1971, VC 114.37.
“strongly upon the present”: Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation, 332.
244 “you seem to have”: EB to AM, March 23 or 24, 1971, VC 114.37.
“the subject of homosexual”: Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation, 331.
245 “SICK is the only”: EB to AM, March 23, 1973, VC 118.36. Tennessee Williams’s story was “The Inventory at Fontana Bella,” published in Playboy, March 1973, and collected in Williams’s Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (New York: New Directions, 1974), 21–29.
“rowed trip?”: EB to AM, March 23, 1973, VC 118.36.
“Yesterday as we”: EB to AM, March 23, 1973, VC 118.36.
“Writing (Advanced Course)”: Harvard University Catalogue, 1970–71.
These were the years: Harvard University Catalogues, 1949–50, 1951–52. Isabel G. MacCaffrey, a scholar of Milton and Spenser, became Harvard’s first female tenured professor of English literature, with an appointment in the Department of History and Literature, in July 1971. Formerly a professor at Bryn Mawr College, MacCaffrey had followed her husband, historian Wallace MacCaffrey, to Cambridge when he accepted a professorship at Harvard five years earlier. She taught at Tufts University in the interim.
246 Subject Matter, vote of the Harvard Corporation: Morton Bloomfield to EB, June 16, 1970, VC 40.8.
“Miss ________”: Harvard University Catalogue, 1970–71.
“the greatest feminine”: EBC 53.
“scholarly and significant”: MS to EB, November 3, 1971, WU. The Women Poets in English: An Anthology, ed. Ann Stanford (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972).
“Women’s Lib.”: EB to MS, November 7, 1971, WU; also published in BPPL 883–85.
247 “woman poet”: REB 329.
“the situation of woman”: EB to Adrienne Rich, April 25, 1973, Rich Papers, Series II, Folder 126, SL.
C’s as failing grades: “C’s are failing grades for good students.” EB small notebook, College Teaching Notes, VC 71.6.
“an Irish boy”: OA 552.
older married student: Anne Hussey, REB 311.
248 “militant young lady”: BNY 353.
“try” to be more: EB to Adrienne Rich, April 25, 1973, Rich Papers, Series II, Folder 126, SL.
“refusing the terms”: W. W. Norton press release with text of speech, April 18, 1974, National Book Foundation archives.
“we found ourselves”: Adrienne Rich, “The Eye of the Outsider,” New Boston Review, June 1984.
249 “having TALKED”: EB to Adrienne Rich, February 3, 1973, Rich Papers, Series II, Folder 126, SL. By selecting de Chirico’s The Disquieting Muses for her postcard to Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth might have been offering an oblique commentary on Sylvia Plath’s well-known poem of the same title, her 1957 complaint against her mother. If so, Elizabeth’s intent may have been both whimsical and corrective. De Chirico’s painting represents the Greek muses Melpomene and Thalia (tragedy and comedy), with a shadowed Apollo looking on. In her poem, Plath had wrongly taken the figures in the painting to be three females, turning them into three fairy godmothers appointed by her mother; perhaps she’d confused the muses with the three fates of Greek myth. Elizabeth did not refer to the postcard image in her note except to say that the colors in the reproduction “are all wrong—shd. be more orange, I think.” Yet on the car ride, Elizabeth and Adrienne had discussed the “recent suicides in each of our lives” at a time when suicide among American poets was also rampant (Plath, Jarrell, Berryman, soon Anne Sexton). In apologizing for “having TALKED so much” about their twin losses, Elizabeth sent Adrienne a card depicting two sturdy, if outré, female literary figures, survivors who put Apollo in the shade.
“refusal of the self-destructiveness”: Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” College English 34, no. 1 (October 1972), 18.
“Much of woman’s”: Adrienne Rich, “Feminine Sensibility: A Forum,” Harvard Advocate, Winter 1973, 16. The Advocate excerpt was culled from several parts of Rich’s essay. The sentence beginning “Much of woman’s poetry” appears to have been written expressly for the Advocate, substituting for a sentence that concluded: “. . . until recently this female anger and this furious awareness of the Man’s power over her were not available materials to the female poet, who tended to write of Love as the source of her suffering, and to view that victimization by Love as an almost inevitable fate.” The following sentence on Moore and Bishop was not parenthetical in the essay. Rich, “When We Dead Awaken,” 19.
“Today, much poetry”: Rich, “Feminine Sensibility: A Forum,” 16.
“I don’t mind”: EB to Adrienne Rich, April 25, 1973, Rich Papers, Series II, Folder 126, SL. Although EB conceded Rich’s point that, along with Marianne Moore, she had “kept human sexual relations at a measured and chiselled distance in her poems,” EB expressed a different opinion to May Swenson, writing of Moore, “I’m afraid she never can face the tender passion.” BPPL 807.
250 “‘The only real”: Adrienne Rich, “The Phenomenology of Anger,” Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971–1972 (New York: Norton, 1973), 30. Rich italicized the quoted lines in later editions.
“I wonder what”: Marianne Moore, “Marriage,” The Poems of Marianne Moore, ed. Grace Schulman (New York: Penguin, 2005), 155; assigned “Marriage”: EB to Adrienne Rich, April 25, 1973, Rich Papers, Series II, Folder 126, S
L.
“Scotch-Canadian”: EB to AM, Tuesday, March 23, 1971, VC 114.36.
251 “Breakfast Song”: BP 327.
“Please, please don’t”: WIA 778.
“de-effervescing”: WIA 739.
252 “If only age could stop”: WIA 740.
“in spite of aches”: WIA 778.
“The three books”: WIA 704.
“word by word”: MS to EB, October 30, 1962, WU.
253 “I swear he has”: EB to MS, November 7, 1962, WU.
“One night you dreamed”: RL, “Water,” LP 321–22.
British edition: WIA 687n.
“the worst situation”: RL, “For Elizabeth Bishop 3. Letter with Poems for Letter with Poems,” LP 594.
“I may owe you”: WIA 687.
254 “faint blue glimmer”: RL, “For Elizabeth Bishop 3. Letter with Poems for Letter with Poems,” LP 594.
“does you honor”: WIA 687.
“Your last letter”: RL, “For Elizabeth Bishop 3. Letter with Poems for Letter with Poems,” LP 594.
“like being handed”: WIA 665.
“I am going to publish”: WIA 704.
“I have someone else”: WIA 681.
255 “I couldn’t bear”: WIA 752.
“My Dolphin”: RL, “Dolphin,” LP 708.
“my fresh wife”: WIA 712.
“Mermaid”: LP 665.
“Poetry has got to be”: REB 377.
“magnificent”: WIA 707–8.
“I think of you”: RL, “Marriage,” LP 656.
256 “made up,” “art just isn’t”: WIA 709, 708.
“the revelation”: WIA 714.
“milder”: WIA 715.
“I love you so much”: WIA 707.
“Who can want”: WIA 715.
“you’ve changed them”: WIA 716.
“delighted” to accept: WIA 725.
“our Frankie”: WIA 731.
“gone over for about”: WIA 735.
“every single day”: WIA 696.
“Please, please don’t let”: WIA 730.
257 “We (you & I)”: WIA 733.
“think of herself”: WIA 740.
“We dread the telephone”: WIA 752.
“We all have irreparable”: WIA 753.
“short, sad poem”: BNY 354.
“the weird man”: OA 583.
258 “Still dark”: EB, “Five Flights Up,” BP 203.
“my ridiculous gloom”: OA 582.
259 “just too sad”: EB to Loren MacIver, January 1, 1974, VC 31.6.
Two days later: “Stillman,” January 3, 1974, entry, EB datebook, 1973–74, VC 120.4.
260 “started out as a sort of joke”: WIA 767.
“intramural”: BNY 361.
“thinking with one’s”: EB to MS, September 6, 1955, WU; BPPL 809.
“It was cold”: EB, “The End of March,” BP 199–200.
261 “The whole Boston waterfront”: OA 578.
“verandah”: OA 578.
262 possibly hastened by drink: EB to Pearl Kazin Bell, November 28, 1953. “My father died at about the same age [as Dylan Thomas]—previous drinking was supposed to have had something to do with it, too—but I really don’t know much about it and I was a few months old at the time.” VC 24.3.
“homesickness”: EB to AM, July 2, 1971, 6 PM, VC 115.4.
263 “our faces froze”: EB, “The End of March,” BP 200.
“my version”: BNY 360.
“I will arise and go”: William Butler Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume One: The Poems, ed. Richard Finnerman (New York: Scribner, 1997), 35.
“hermit-type”: EB to AM, February 16, 1971, VC 114.32.
“in the deep”: Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume One: The Poems, 35.
264 “I’d be a wreck”: EB to AM, April 24, 1973, VC 118.37.
“pep-up cheer-up pills”: WIA 798.
“my age and physical”: EB to AM, February 21, 1971, VC 114.32.
“no breasts”: EB to AM, March 23, 1971, again 8:30 PM, VC 114.36.
“brave & sensible”: EB to AM, February 22, 1971, VC 114.33.
“my mind closes up”: EB to AM, March 26, 1971, VC 114.39.
“long-procrastinated”: BNY 355.
“insipid”: REB 276.
265 “Gave up on this”: EB draft for Sylvia Plath’s Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950–1963, ed. Aurelia Schober Plath (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), VC 54.20.
Erik Erikson–style: AM to EB, March 3, 1971, VC 116.13.
“much too good”: EB to AM, March 28, 1971, Sunday again, VC 114.39.
“Being extremely interested”: EB to AM, May 6, 1971, VC 115.2.
“imagine that just”: EB to AM, March 28, 1971, Sunday again, VC 114.39.
“Woms. Lib.”: EB to AM, February 21, 1971, VC 114.32.
“almost too good”: BNHJ 12.
“magnificent views”: BNY 360.
“one general store”: OA 587.
266 “a haven for”: BNY 360.
“bags and bags”: BNY 360.
“pretty certain”: BNHJ 15, 14.
“at least A’s”: BNHJ 18.
267 “cast into gloom”: OA 597.
“fifty-one American”: Richard Howard, ed., Preferences (New York: Viking, 1974).
tore her photo out: Lloyd Schwartz recalls, “I was visiting her the day her copy of Richard Howard’s coffee-table anthology Preferences arrived. . . . She excused herself, went into her bedroom, and tore the page with the photograph out of the book.” Schwartz, “Elizabeth Bishop: Sonnet,” Atlantic Online, March 29, 2000. http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/poetry/soundings/bishop.htm.
“I want now”: BNHJ 12.
“Late Sleepers”: BNHJ 20–21.
268 “sailing trip”: BNHJ 22.
“one of the trustees”: EB to AM, May 6, 1971, VC 115.2.
“on the condition”: AM to EB [May 15, 1971], VC 116.19.
“Could I be suffering”: AM to EB, July 15, 1972, VC 116.28.
“Just knowing you”: AM to EB, March 22, 1973, VC 116.29.
269 “best”: AM to EB, February 1, February 7, February 9, 1971, VC 116.9 and more.
“Please forgive me”: EB to AM, April 24, 1973, VC 118.37.
“—To have no personal”: BNHJ 24.
added to the list: BNHJ 12.
270 “between us & the water”: BNHJ 25–26.
“Frank gets the books”: EB to AM, June 25, 1975, VC 118.38.
“Dearest Alice”: EB to AM, October 8, 1975, VC 118.39.
“Letter to N.Y.”: BP 78.
271 “I want you to be”: EB to AM, October 8, 1975, VC 118.39.
“the only ‘family’”: EB to AM, October 8, 1975, VC 118.39.
“ruby-like”: OA 591.
“attached”: EB to AM, January 16, 1976, VC 118.41.
272 “With best wishes”: EB, in “Self-Portraits” from the collection of Burt Britton, Antaeus 23, Autumn 1976, 87.
moss agate: EB to AM, July 7, 1972, VC 115.14.
273 “I wish I’d been able”: EB to AM, October 8, 1975, VC 118.39.
“How to Lose Things”: EB, “One Art,” draft 1, EAP back matter, unpaginated.
“one and only”: BNY 378.
“The art of losing”: EB, “One Art,” draft 2, EAP back matter, unpaginated.
“None of these”: EB, “One Art,” BP 198.
274 “My losses haven’t been”: EB, “One Art,” draft 11, EAP back matter, unpaginated.
“pure emotion”: EBC 66.
“—Even losing you”: EB, “One Art,” BP 198.
“Upsetting and sad”: BNY 373.
“it makes everyone weep”: BNY 378.
received another “blow”: EB to AM, December 18, 1975, VC 118.40.
275 calling to check on her: EB to AB, December 24, 1975, VC 23.8.
“Since I’ll be taking”: EB to AM, Decembe
r 18, 1975, VC 118.40.
“away from it all”: OA 602.
“too cold and windy”: OA 603.
“It’s cold for here”: EB to Robert Fitzgerald, December 24, 1975, Robert Fitzgerald Papers, Box 4, Folder 131, YCAL.
“another really bad”: EB to Robert Fitzgerald, December 5, 1975, Robert Fitzgerald Papers, Box 4, Folder 131, YCAL.
“handsome”: EB to Robert Fitzgerald, January 12, 1976, Robert Fitzgerald Papers, Box 4, Folder 131, YCAL.
“WORK”: OA 603.
276 “the friend I am so”: EB to AB, December 24, 1975, VC 23.8.
“accident of an unconscious”: WIA 593.
“Oh dear, oh dear”: BNY 364.
“to pass quite out”: EB to AM, April 2, 1971, 10:30 AM, VC 115.1.
“stupendous thunderstorm”: EB to AM, February 21, 1971, VC 114.32.
“not ok”: AM to EB, March 2, 1971, VC 116.13.
“decrepitude”: EB to AM, May 6, 1971, VC 115.2.
“I think this was”: OA 595.
277 “My Last Poem”: BP 241.
fighting an impulse: REB 333.
rushed her to the hospital: There are conflicting accounts of this day. In EBL, Brett Millier mentions a hospital stay connected with the overdose. EBL 525. In REB, Louise Crane’s caretaker, A. L. Francis, recalls that EB was left to sleep it off. REB 334.
“having behaved”: EB to AB, January 16, 1976, quoted in EBL 515.
“an awful fool”: OA 604.
“ox-like power”: LL 495.
“made of iron”: EB to AM, March 31, 1971, VC 114.40.
“more cheerful”: OA 602.
“Postscript”: EB to AM, December 18, 1975, VC 118.40.
“you’ll talk to me”: EB to AM, January 16, 1976, VC 118.41.
“I DO want you”: EB to AM, January 15, 1976, VC 118.41.
she’d cried over his memoir: EB to Robert Fitzgerald, February 23, 1976, Robert Fitzgerald Papers, Box 4, Folder 131, YCAL.
278 “promised everything”: Lloyd Schwartz interview with the author, January 8, 2016.
“Ancients”: AM to EB, May 29, 1976, VC 116.32.
“I like being”: AM to EB, June 10 [1976], VC 116.32.
“very smart”: BNY 380.
“a scared elderly”: OA 535.
“lacked ‘reality’”: EB to AM, March 25?, 1971, VC 114.38.
279 “the more polite”: EB teaching observations, December 1976, VC 71.7.
“two really witty”: BNY 380.
“scared to death”: EB to AM, Sunday again—noon [March 28, 1971], VC 114.39.