posted on 05 Feb 2025

On Elizabeth Bishop by Colm Tóibín

If, like me you’ve had the chance to see and hear Colm Tóibín talk about his writing and those writers he admires, you’ll know just how important words and the use of language is to him. He admires those who also cherish words and use them skilfully and creatively and gives a special place to those who use them with precision – his love for writers like Henry James and Thomas Mann is well documented and was an inspiration for his novels The Master and The Magician, which place those writers at their respective heart.

Tóibín is also an insightful and very readable literary critic and his book, On Elizabeth Bishop, originally published in 2015, has been re-released in a beautifully produced pocket-sized paperback by Princeton University Press. Could the American poet have a better, more sympathetic and perhaps more unconventional champion than Tóibín? 

I say unconventional because this is 200 pages that blends academic appreciation of the poet with the author’s own autobiography and what we end up with  is Elizabeth Bishop filtered through the lens of Tóibín’s own development as a writer. That’s not to say that the book foregoes some of the more conventional textual analysis – Tóibín is excellent and very readable in his analysis of specific poems – but the journey into Bishop’s work is also a journey into understanding why she has had such an influence on him.

In many ways, Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979) is very much a poet’s poet. Tóibín helps us to understand why she was such an important figure in the development of 20th century poetry but for many more casual readers and lovers of poetry in a non-academic context, Bishop may well be a great unknown. Part of the reason for this is the surface ‘ordinariness’ of her writing that almost wilfully refuses to announce its presence. Indeed, Tóibín spends some time explaining why that seeming ordinariness is in fact extraordinary and is at pains to demonstrate how the poet’s work is all about precision – specifically, the precise use of language.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Bishop wanted nothing to do with what might be called ‘confessional’ poetry in which the poet’s private life and deep emotional conflicts informed the writing. Instead, she wanted to be true to the observed external world and to let the verity of her observations lead the reader into some deeper truths. It may indeed be this seeming reticence to parade details of her personal life across the pages of her poetry that has led to her work often being overlooked when people reference the great poets of the mid and later 20th century.

But that doesn’t mean that Bishop’s life wasn’t often turbulent and exciting – she was a lesbian in a time when that was socially unacceptable and her decision to effectively relocate to Brazil for 15 years or so with her then lover, Lota (Maria Carlota) de Macedo Soares, led her to being a significant figure in the development of poetry in that country.

Bishop was also very close to the poet Robert Lowell and both considered the other to be their closest and best friend. This allows Tóibín to also consider the influence of other poets on Bishop (and, of course, on him). I personally found the section that deals with the relationship between Bishop and one of my own favourites, Thom Gunn, especially intriguing.

Although this book will, naturally, be of prime interest to students of US and British literature, Tóibín is such a brilliant writer that less academically inclined readers with a passion for poetry will also find this a really engaging, terrific read.

Available now, you’ll be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will be happy to order you a copy if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Terry Potter

February 2025