Chapter 33 - Criticism and Reviews

Summary

In letters to friends and in interviews later in life, Elizabeth Bishop repeatedly made clear her low opinion of critical writing. At the same time, much of her own criticism and review work is audacious, original and witty, particularly the long essays she completed as an undergraduate student at Vassar. She also admired the work of contemporary poet-critics like William Empson and Randall Jarrell and once pitched for the job as poetry reviewer of The New Yorker. Close analysis of her own prose and poetry demonstrates the extent to which her own writing was itself a form of informal criticism. She engaged with and incorporated the ideas and words of literary critics into her poetry throughout her career, rebuffing reductive assessments of her writing as “calm” and “modest.”