 Elizabeth Bishop was born in
Worcester, MA in 1911 and her father died when she was only 8 months old
and her mother was institutionalized for mental problems 5 years
later. Her mother remained in the mental hospital until her death in
1934 and she and Elizabeth were never reunited. The orphaned Elizabeth
was taken in by her maternal grandparents at their farm in Nova Scotia.
Thereafter, she was moved about between Nova Scotia and Massachusetts
among members of both her mother's and father's families. It was an aunt
who first introduced her to the Victorian poets, among them Alfred Lord
Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. She attended high school in Massachusetts where her first
poems were published in a school magazine by her friend, Frani Blough.
After high school, she entered Vassar College in 1929,
just before the crash of the stock market, where she studied music,
wanting to become a composer, but later changed her major to English
because of her fear of performing in public and her passion for writing.
Elizabeth was not totally dependent on her writing for income because
her father who had been a successful builder left her some money. She
traveled extensively, visiting and living in many different countries, a
few years in France and much longer in South America, 15 years in
Brazil alone. Her writing often reflects the places she lived and the
people she came to know. Elizabeth Bishop died in Boston in 1979 at 88 years of age.- Axis of Logic (Photo: Alice Helen Methfessel, courtesy of Frank Bidart) Source of the poem: Elizabeth Bishop. The Complete Poems 1927-1979 publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York |