Please click on this link to read "The Map"
The Map by Elizabeth Bishop
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Elizabeth Bishop - Her influence on contemporary poets
What Elizabeth Bishop Could Not Know
by Afaa M. Weaver
Black women keep secrets tied up in hankies
they stuff in their bras, secrets of how their necks
are connected to their spines in the precise gyration
of a jelly sweetened in nights they had to keep
to themselves, nights prowlers came in to change
the faces of their children, secrets like the good
googa mooga laughter they do with each other
when something affirms their suspicions, when
their eyes are made the prayerbooks of fate crafted
in the wisdom that knows there is no north or south
in black wandering, searching the new land, a song
they wrestle from black men, the broken ones
who had to be shown where and how to stand,
how to respect pain and the way it governs itself,
secrets, things made out of generations and not kept
in the glass selections of an old juke box.
by Afaa M. Weaver
Black women keep secrets tied up in hankies
they stuff in their bras, secrets of how their necks
are connected to their spines in the precise gyration
of a jelly sweetened in nights they had to keep
to themselves, nights prowlers came in to change
the faces of their children, secrets like the good
googa mooga laughter they do with each other
when something affirms their suspicions, when
their eyes are made the prayerbooks of fate crafted
in the wisdom that knows there is no north or south
in black wandering, searching the new land, a song
they wrestle from black men, the broken ones
who had to be shown where and how to stand,
how to respect pain and the way it governs itself,
secrets, things made out of generations and not kept
in the glass selections of an old juke box.
References for this project
Biespiel, D. (2010, December 26). High praise for Elizabeth Bishop’s artistry and humanity. The Oregonian.
Bishop, E. 1983). The complete poems 1927-1979. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bishop, E. (1994). One art: Elizabeth Bishop letters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bishop, E. (2011). Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chiasson, D. (2008, November 3). Works on paper: the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/11/03/081103crbo_books_chiasson
Duckett, R. (2011, February 4). Poet Elizabeth Bishop’s quiet strength remembered on her 100th anniversary. Telegram & Gazette.
Ebberson, L. Elizabeth Bishop’s poetic voice: Reconciling influences. Valparaiso Poetry Review: contemporary poetry and poetics. www.valpo.edu/vpr/ebbersonessaybishop
Ellis, J. Elizabeth Bishop and Modern American Poetry. Retrieved February 18, 2011
Elizabeth Bishop. (http://www.poemhunter.com/elizabeth-bishop/biography/)
Elizabeth Bishop. (http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/7)
Goldensohn, L. (1992). Elizabeth Bishop: The biography of a poetry. New York: Columbia University Press.
Graham, V. (1995, Winter). Modern American Poetry” on “At the Fishhouses”. The Explicator, 53(2).
Millier, B. (1993). Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the memory of it. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Moore, M. (1988). Complete Poems. New York: Macmillian Publishing Co.
O’Rourke, M. (2006, June 13). Casual perfection: Why did the publication of Elizabeth Bishop’s drafts cause an uproar? Slate: The highbrow: examining culture and the arts. http://www.slate.com/id/2143626/
Quinn, A. (Ed.). (2006). Edgar Allen Poe & the Juke-Box: Uncollected poems, drafts, and fragments by Elizabeth Bishop. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Schwartz, L. (2007). Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘new’ poems. Retrieved from Poets.org on February 17, 2011
Spires, E. (1981) Interviews: Elizabeth Bishop, The art of poetry No. 27. the Paris Review, 80 (Summer).
Timpane, J. (2011, February 9). Centenary celebration for poet Elizabeth Bishop. The Philadelphia Inquirer. www.bellinghamherald.com
Travisano, T., & Hamilton, S. (Eds). (2008). Words in Air: The complete correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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