Rebecca+Beachley

Elizabeth Bishop


 * 1) Elizabeth Bishop was not interested in taking English as her major in college.
 * 2) Elizabeth was originally a major in music composition and piano in college.
 * 3) She transferred to English and was forced to stay in that class for the rest of college.
 * 4) Elizabeth wrote a poem and showed her professor and was made to publish her poem " The Fish".
 * 5) She did a project in college where she researched the essential outsider hood and lesbian identity.
 * 6) People and other poets did not agree with this project, it laid groundwork down for other women poems.
 * 7) People had never thought Bishop was going to be a sensual and sexual writer.
 * 8) she was very gifted when it came to writing and creating poems.
 * 9) Critics and readers often discover forgotten or undervalued poets through the praise and recommendation of their more famous friends. For most of Bishop’s life, readers heard of her through Moore.
 * 10) North and South was her first book of poems, lots of poems where ecstatically reviewed.
 * 11) She had lived in Brazil for many years and she only communicated with colleagues and friends by letter.
 * 12) Her poetry is almost all about her travels.
 * 13) She explains about how she moved from France,Spain,North Africa, Ireland and Italy.
 * 14) In her poems, she explains how when she traveled all around the world, how the scenery from different countries and states impacted her life and what about the scenery made her write.
 * 15) She wrote only 101 poems.
 * 16) Her last book "Geography 3", after it had been published she was noticed as a major force in literature.
 * 17) She was awarded Fellowship or Academy of American poets in 1966-1979
 * 18) Elizabeth had a lot of problems while traveling the world and writing poetry.
 * 19) Some of Elizabeth's problems were she was an alcoholic, she suffered from chronic depression, and she had terrible asthma.
 * 20) Although her writing went a long way with her having these conditions, she was never a prolific writer.
 * 21) Sometimes when she would drink alcohol she would drink just so she could write a poem for her book.
 * 22) Her book "Questions of Travel" when it was published, it included 20 new brilliant poems.
 * 23) She had won the National Book Award in 1969.
 * 24) In 1945, Bishop was invited by an editor at Houghton Mifflin to submit a book-length manuscript for that publisher's first annual Poetry Prize Fellowship.
 * 25) Elizabeth made and extended visit to New York to visit her friend Lotta, and look at the city to find things to write about.
 * 26) Her father passed away before she was one years old and her mother was put in an metal asylum when she was younger.
 * 27) Her life was very rough from the age 8-10 because thats when she was going through all of the mother troubles and she was taken by her grand parents and she was then taken to an all girls school.
 * 28) Elizabeth had traveled all around the world for poetry and just to adventure.
 * 29) She went to college to study music composition and piano, but her writing skill was so great, she transferred to English.
 * 30) her mother suffered from nervous breakdowns.
 * 31) In 1918, Elizabeth Bishop moved to the South Boston area with Maud and George Shepherdson. She was much happier with her new surroundings, and slowly began to regain her health.
 * 32) She spent summers in Nova Scotia and attended Camp Chequesset on Cape Cod.
 * 33) Maud's love of literature, influenced her to write her own poetry,
 * 34) She met Marianne Moore, on the front steps of Vassar library in 1934, and they became life long friends.
 * 35) Marianne showed Elizabeth how to write and how to pick a pace and subject top write about
 * 36) She also showed Elizabeth how to express her feelings.

Resources used: http://www.poemhunter.com/elizabeth-bishop/biography/ http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/7 http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Library/Archives/WAuthors/bishop/bio.html