lost once, gone forever

I read "the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" to better appreciate Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Crusoe in England".

the original Crusoe was an optimistic depict of human growth, practically and spiritually, as Crusoe kept saying:

“I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed, rather than what I wanted : and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them ; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that he has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

with that, the "real" Crusoe came back to his homeland a wiser and nicer man. the book doubled as a moral teaching in addition to a fantastic thrill.

Bishop wanted no such nonsense.  yes Crusoe came back but England was more alien than home. and the dreadful island of "one kind of everything" then became home now that he could not return. things he held dearly in one were worthless and meaningless in the other. what was once sensational turned bland. Friday? well, he just died.

don't know anyone who could make life bleaker.

Crusoe in England

A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was reading   
where some ship saw an island being born:   
at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;   
and then a black fleck—basalt, probably—
rose in the mate’s binoculars
and caught on the horizon like a fly.
They named it. But my poor old island’s still   
un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.

Well, I had fifty-two
miserable, small volcanoes I could climb   
with a few slithery strides—
volcanoes dead as ash heaps.
I used to sit on the edge of the highest one   
and count the others standing up,
naked and leaden, with their heads blown off.   
I’d think that if they were the size   
I thought volcanoes should be, then I had   
become a giant;
and if I had become a giant,
I couldn’t bear to think what size   
the goats and turtles were,
or the gulls, or the overlapping rollers   
—a glittering hexagon of rollers   
closing and closing in, but never quite,   
glittering and glittering, though the sky   
was mostly overcast.

My island seemed to be
a sort of cloud-dump. All the hemisphere’s   
left-over clouds arrived and hung
above the craters—their parched throats   
were hot to touch.
Was that why it rained so much?
And why sometimes the whole place hissed?   
The turtles lumbered by, high-domed,   
hissing like teakettles.
(And I’d have given years, or taken a few,   
for any sort of kettle, of course.)
The folds of lava, running out to sea,
would hiss. I’d turn. And then they’d prove   
to be more turtles.
The beaches were all lava, variegated,   
black, red, and white, and gray;
the marbled colors made a fine display.   
And I had waterspouts. Oh,
half a dozen at a time, far out,
they’d come and go, advancing and retreating,   
their heads in cloud, their feet in moving patches   
of scuffed-up white.
Glass chimneys, flexible, attenuated,   
sacerdotal beings of glass ... I watched   
the water spiral up in them like smoke.   
Beautiful, yes, but not much company.

I often gave way to self-pity.
“Do I deserve this? I suppose I must.
I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Was there   
a moment when I actually chose this?
I don’t remember, but there could have been.”   
What’s wrong about self-pity, anyway?
With my legs dangling down familiarly   
over a crater’s edge, I told myself
“Pity should begin at home.” So the more   
pity I felt, the more I felt at home.

The sun set in the sea; the same odd sun   
rose from the sea,
and there was one of it and one of me.   
The island had one kind of everything:   
one tree snail, a bright violet-blue
with a thin shell, crept over everything,   
over the one variety of tree,
a sooty, scrub affair.
Snail shells lay under these in drifts   
and, at a distance,
you’d swear that they were beds of irises.   
There was one kind of berry, a dark red.   
I tried it, one by one, and hours apart.   
Sub-acid, and not bad, no ill effects;   
and so I made home-brew. I’d drink   
the awful, fizzy, stinging stuff
that went straight to my head
and play my home-made flute
(I think it had the weirdest scale on earth)   
and, dizzy, whoop and dance among the goats.   
Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?   
I felt a deep affection for
the smallest of my island industries.   
No, not exactly, since the smallest was   
a miserable philosophy.

Because I didn’t know enough.
Why didn’t I know enough of something?   
Greek drama or astronomy? The books   
I’d read were full of blanks;
the poems—well, I tried
reciting to my iris-beds,
“They flash upon that inward eye,
which is the bliss ...” The bliss of what?   
One of the first things that I did
when I got back was look it up.

The island smelled of goat and guano.   
The goats were white, so were the gulls,   
and both too tame, or else they thought   
I was a goat, too, or a gull.
Baa, baa, baa and shriek, shriek, shriek,
baa ... shriek ... baa ... I still can’t shake   
them from my ears; they’re hurting now.
The questioning shrieks, the equivocal replies   
over a ground of hissing rain
and hissing, ambulating turtles
got on my nerves.
When all the gulls flew up at once, they sounded
like a big tree in a strong wind, its leaves.   
I’d shut my eyes and think about a tree,   
an oak, say, with real shade, somewhere.   
I’d heard of cattle getting island-sick.   
I thought the goats were.
One billy-goat would stand on the volcano
I’d christened Mont d’Espoir or Mount Despair
(I’d time enough to play with names),   
and bleat and bleat, and sniff the air.   
I’d grab his beard and look at him.   
His pupils, horizontal, narrowed up
and expressed nothing, or a little malice.   
I got so tired of the very colors!   
One day I dyed a baby goat bright red   
with my red berries, just to see   
something a little different.
And then his mother wouldn’t recognize him.

Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I’d dream of things   
like slitting a baby’s throat, mistaking it   
for a baby goat. I’d have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities   
of islands, islands spawning islands,   
like frogs’ eggs turning into polliwogs   
of islands, knowing that I had to live   
on each and every one, eventually,   
for ages, registering their flora,   
their fauna, their geography.

Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it   
another minute longer, Friday came.   
(Accounts of that have everything all wrong.)   
Friday was nice.
Friday was nice, and we were friends.   
If only he had been a woman!
I wanted to propagate my kind,   
and so did he, I think, poor boy.
He’d pet the baby goats sometimes,
and race with them, or carry one around.   
—Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.

And then one day they came and took us off.

Now I live here, another island,
that doesn’t seem like one, but who decides?
My blood was full of them; my brain   
bred islands. But that archipelago
has petered out. I’m old.
I’m bored, too, drinking my real tea,   
surrounded by uninteresting lumber.
The knife there on the shelf—
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did I   
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain on the handle ...
Now it won’t look at me at all.   
The living soul has dribbled away.   
My eyes rest on it and pass on.

The local museum’s asked me to
leave everything to them:
the flute, the knife, the shrivelled shoes,
my shedding goatskin trousers
(moths have got in the fur),
the parasol that took me such a time   
remembering the way the ribs should go.
It still will work but, folded up,
looks like a plucked and skinny fowl.
How can anyone want such things?
—And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles
seventeen years ago come March.

A Lone Walk in the Age of Innocence and Brutality

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe 

by Daniel DeFoe

I am a little surprised by the poor writing - Guilliver's travels of the same time is a wonder - but the story is as eternal as it has been: survival of a castaway from the human society. on a lonely island far away. unforgettable, too, is the characterization of Crusoe and his Man Friday.

the only book Crusoe took (rescued from the shipwreck) was Bible, thus the constant moral musings, which were so out-of-date that they impressed me as being "cute", illuminating an era of innocence, or the lack of self-reflection, during whose time, people could capture, trade and use slaves as honorable good men. a hint of emerging moral relativism was evident, however, as Crusoe became reluctant to intervene with the natives' man-eating culture. the budding thought, however, evaporated immediately when he saw the next one to be butchered was a white. of note was Crousoe's condemnation, obviously common sentiment of the time, of Spanish slaughtering of natives - talk about moral relativism.

the ending was somewhat a surprise to me, too: his impossible passing through the snowing Northern mountains to get home. i wonder whether this was the first fantastic description of men fending off wolfpack attacks - so prevalent in fantasies both English and Chinese.

the reading makes one yearn for an idyllic time long gone, or never existed, a time long before Robinson Crusoe.

One Flower

A Mini Biography of Elizabeth Bishop  (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979)

young Elizabeth Bishop

There once lived a mysterious flower. She was intensely beautiful and vulnerable.  Her kind of beauty was ineffable and her lonely sadness irresistible.

A wayward traveler fell in love with her. And he loved her more than his life.  The flower welcomed the traveler. They had an enchanted time together. Then something happened. The lover died. The flower was grief-stricken. She could not live another day.

A second traveler arrived. Flower was nurtured back to health. To joy.  To ecstasy. They had an enchanted time together. Then something happened. The traveler died, too. Now the flower was devastated. Until....

Shortly afterwards, a third traveler trotted on the horizon....

It had never been a time of peace or affluence.  A war between angels and fallen angels raged on. A famine engulfed one country after another. The flower could not look that far.  She lived her days counting losses; she thrived in perpetual guilty laments. Which became her swan songs.

Well, that's the life and poetry of Elizabeth Bishop

------------------------------------------------------------
One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
------------------------------------------------------------

1. "Naturally born guilty"

Elizabeth's father died of some kind of kidney disease when she was only eight months old. mother never recovered from the shock and had been in and out of mental hospitals since. Elizabeth forever remembered those early years of anxiety, confusion and fear. The last time mother returned home from hospital was particularly nightmarish. that day mother tried to put on a new purple dress after years in black. somehow the dress was all wrong and she let out a horrifying scream. she was promptly sent back to the hospital. this time for good. Elizabeth was five. she would never see mother again. and the scream - was it what she heard "in the waiting room"?

living in mother's hometown in Nova Scotia was a happy Elizabeth however, with simple but loving grand parents, aunts, uncles and village kids. but grandpa in Massachusetts wanted his granddaughter to have a proper education only New England could provide. by age seven, Nova Scotia became the home she could not return.

------------------------------------------------------------
First Death In Nova Scotia

In the cold, cold parlor
my mother laid out Arthur
beneath the chromographs:
Edward, Prince of Wales,
with Princess Alexandra,
and King George with Queen Mary.
Below them on the table
stood a stuffed loon
shot and stuffed by Uncle
Arthur, Arthur's father.

Since Uncle Arthur fired
a bullet into him,
he hadn't said a word.
He kept his own counsel
on his white, frozen lake,
the marble-topped table.
His breast was deep and white,
cold and caressable;
his eyes were red glass,
much to be desired.

"Come," said my mother,
"Come and say good-bye
to your little cousin Arthur."
I was lifted up and given
one lily of the valley
to put in Arthur's hand.
Arthur's coffin was
a little frosted cake,
and the red-eyed loon eyed it
from his white, frozen lake.

Arthur was very small.
He was all white, like a doll
that hadn't been painted yet.
Jack Frost had started to paint him
the way he always painted
the Maple Leaf (Forever).
He had just begun on his hair,
a few red strokes, and then
Jack Frost had dropped the brush
and left him white, forever.

The gracious royal couples
were warm in red and ermine;
their feet were well wrapped up
in the ladies' ermine trains.
They invited Arthur to be
the smallest page at court.
But how could Arthur go,
clutching his tiny lily,
with his eyes shut up so tight
and the roads deep in snow?
------------------------------------------------------------

2. "leaves' fossils"

grandpa's big mansion in Worcester Massachusetts was a miserable place for Elizabeth. she was constantly lonely, depressed and sick (she had asthma). it was so bad that she was sent to stay with the eldest sister of her mother's. In a poor Italian neighborhood of Boston. Elizabeth was grateful to be with aunt Maud and her collection of books - "Aunt Maud saved my life." This move would become the pattern of her life: forever hopping into homes of others'.

Elizabeth finally assumed resemblance of a normal kid's life when she attended High School and then Vassar College of Liberal Arts. her talent in writing was evident. she published frequently in student newspapers, and in her last couple of years at Vassar, appeared in national journals. besides literature, Elizabeth also took three years of piano classes - she would have majored in music had she not been terrified by obligatory recitals. she was very shy. the most momentous event in her college years was being introduced to poet Marianne Moore, who would become her mentor and life-time friend. after graduation, with the small trust fund left her by her father, Elizabeth was free to "work" as an aspiring writer/poet.

Bob Seaver appeared to be the only boy friend she'd more or less committed to. they met each other through a Vassar classmate of hers and had a "fitful" courtship. once the two of them spent joyful time together in Nantucket. She also visited his Pittsfield, MA, home now and then and was accepted by his parents. a few years after college, in early 1937, he proposed and she declined. the last thing she heard from him was a post card. "go to hell, Elizabeth." it said - days after he shot himself dead.

emotionally during the same years, Elizabeth seemed to be more fixated on Margaret Miller, her Vassar classmate, who was to become painter and art historian. her journals were full of Margaret, like this one:

"Margaret was as sweet as sherbet in her pink blouse today. her face had that soft look about it, as if she had slept an extra hour or two, and her eyes a clear original color that they blend for themselves out of several colors never in eyes before hers."

later in the same year Seaver committed suicide, Elizabeth and her friend Louise Crane embarked on their second European trip. they unexpectedly ran into Margaret Miller in UK and the three girls went to Paris together. one day, they took a ride in Louise's car to visit churches. to avoid a collision with an incoming car, Louise lost control, the car rolled and all three of them were thrown out. Elizabeth and Louise were unscratched, but Margaret lost her right forearm forever. "leaves' fossils" was how Bishop remembered it.

------------------------------------------------------------

Elizabeth and Louise Crane. brbl-dl.library.yale.edu

Quai d'Orleans 
(later dedicated to Margaret)

Each barge on the river easily tows
a mighty wake,
a giant oak-leaf of gray lights
on duller gray;
and behind it real leaves are floating by,
down to the sea.
Mercury-veins on the giant leaves,
the ripples, make
for the sides of the quai, to extinguish themselves
against the walls
as softly as falling-stars come to their ends
at a point in the sky.
And throngs of small leaves, real leaves, trailing them,
go drifting by
to disappear as modesty, down the sea's
dissolving halls.
We stand as still as stones to watch
the leaves and ripples
while light and nervous water hold
their interview,
"If what we see could forget us half as easily,"
I want to tell you,
"as it does itself -- but for life we'll not be rid
of the leaves' fossils.
------------------------------------------------------------

3. "ELIZABETH KNOWS BEST."

in 1934, the year they were introduced by Fannie Borden, Vassar librarian and Moore's childhood friend, Elizabeth was 23 and  Marianne Moore 47.  Bishop fresh out of school, Moore already a well-published poet, not yet famous but well-connected.

Marianne lived in New York with her mother, the widowed Mrs.Moore, who was also her chief poetic critic.

mother&daughter immediately took Elizabeth under their wings.  Elizabeth would go visit their home, invite them out for dinner or take Marianne to circus or art shows.  they lived close enough for Marianne to occasionally take care of her cat when Elizabeth travelled.

and she did travel, even move around the world, all the time. before "arrival at Santos", Brazil, Elizabeth seemed not capable of staying in one place for long, especially not in New York. so she and Marianne also corresponded for almost 40 years. it started as Bishop being timid and looking upon Moore for professional guidance. Moore took the role of mentor and consistently recommended Bishop to editors, new poetry journals, or literary fellowships.  Then entered a phase in which Bishop would mail her drafted poems to Moore and mother&daughter would dutifully pore over them, providing ever detailed comments and editing.

in 1940, a critical point was reached. by then, Bishop had already written some of her finest and defining poems: "the map", "man-moth", "imaginary iceberg", etc, and grew mature and confident with their publication, while Moore and mother's critique had slowly turned possessive.  Bishop was being bothered by the brutal war going on in Europe. for once, she ventured out of her introspective musings and wrote a highly charged and expressive - but no less layered - poem called "roosters".  the Moore ladies were alarmed. with effort and sincerity, they completely revised and sanitized the poem (even changed the title "roosters" to "the cock", thinking the latter more classic.)

Elizabeth replied with a painfully nuanced letter, but the bare bone was  "I may sound like "ELIZABETH KNOWS BEST" and you are of course right; but I will stick to my version, thank you. by the way, may i keep yours, too? it's so interesting...."

thus abruptly her apprenticeship was terminated: no more poems to be mailed back and forth. it is remarkable, almost mystifying, that the friendship survived. the women continued to care for each other, Moore promoting Bishop here and there and Bishop showering love with chatty letters and gifts (and telling occasional jokes about the old maid to her more contemporary friends).

Moore won Pulitzer prize in 1951 and became a celebrity in her late years. Bishop got hers in 1956; her reputation seems to grow more after her death.

(Moore once wondered and asked Bishop about her influence on the latter (there was none the other way around).  others often point to the similarly accurate descriptive style as one. Bishop would only readily admit that Moore's poetry opened her eyes on subject matters (no more "love", "sorrow" poems). otherwise they couldn't be more different, she believed. reading too much into Bishop and not enough of Moore, I do agree with her).

------------------------------------------------------------

Marianne Moore

Roosters

At four o’clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock

just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo

off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,  
then one, with horrible insistence,

grates like a wet match  
from the broccoli patch,
flares, and all over town begins to catch.

Cries galore
come from the water-closet door,
from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor,

where in the blue blur  
their rustling wives admire,
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare

with stupid eyes
while from their beaks there rise  
the uncontrolled, traditional cries.

Deep from protruding chests  
in green-gold medals dressed,
planned to command and terrorize the rest,

the many wives  
who lead hens’ lives
of being courted and despised;

deep from raw throats  
a senseless order floats
all over town. A rooster gloats

over our beds
from rusty iron sheds
and fences made from old bedsteads,

over our churches
where the tin rooster perches,
over our little wooden northern houses,

making sallies
from all the muddy alleys,
marking out maps like Rand McNally’s:

glass-headed pins,
oil-golds and copper greens,  
anthracite blues, alizarins,

each one an active  
displacement in perspective;
each screaming, “This is where I live!”

Each screaming
“Get up! Stop dreaming!”  
Roosters, what are you projecting?

You, whom the Greeks elected
to shoot at on a post, who struggled  
when sacrificed, you whom they labeled

“Very combative ...”
what right have you to give  
commands and tell us how to live,

cry “Here!” and “Here!”  
and wake us here where are  
unwanted love, conceit and war?

The crown of red
set on your little head
is charged with all your fighting blood.

Yes, that excrescence
makes a most virile presence,
plus all that vulgar beauty of iridescence.

Now in mid-air
by twos they fight each other.  
Down comes a first flame-feather,

and one is flying,
with raging heroism defying  
even the sensation of dying.

And one has fallen,
but still above the town
his torn-out, bloodied feathers drift down;

and what he sung
no matter. He is flung
on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung

with his dead wives  
with open, bloody eyes,
while those metallic feathers oxidize.


St. Peter’s sin
was worse than that of Magdalen  
whose sin was of the flesh alone;

of spirit, Peter’s,
falling, beneath the flares,
among the “servants and officers.”

Old holy sculpture  
could set it all together
in one small scene, past and future:

Christ stands amazed,  
Peter, two fingers raised
to surprised lips, both as if dazed.

But in between
a little cock is seen
carved on a dim column in the travertine,

explained by gallus canit;
flet Petrus underneath it.
There is inescapable hope, the pivot;

yes, and there Peter’s tears  
run down our chanticleer’s  
sides and gem his spurs.

Tear-encrusted thick  
as a medieval relic
he waits. Poor Peter, heart-sick,

still cannot guess
those cock-a-doodles yet might bless,
his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness,

a new weathervane  
on basilica and barn,
and that outside the Lateran

there would always be
a bronze cock on a porphyry
pillar so the people and the Pope might see

that even the Prince
of the Apostles long since
had been forgiven, and to convince

all the assembly
that “Deny deny deny”
is not all the roosters cry.

In the morning
a low light is floating
in the backyard, and gilding

from underneath
the broccoli, leaf by leaf;
how could the night have come to grief?

gilding the tiny  
floating swallow’s belly
and lines of pink cloud in the sky,

the day’s preamble
like wandering lines in marble.
The cocks are now almost inaudible.

The sun climbs in,  
following “to see the end,”  
faithful as enemy, or friend.
------------------------------------------------------------

4. "It's marvelous to wake up together."

1940s were transitional years for Elizabeth.  she seemed to be exploring and accepting her sexuality; she traveled far and wide but couldn't settle down. relationships were made and unmade.  home was where she was not.

for the relatively long stretch of years, Elizabeth lived in Key West.  she and Louise Crane bought a house there. soon afterwards, however, the exceedingly wealthy Louise abandoned Key West altogether. Elizabeth moved in with Marjorie Stevens to her place. While at Key West, she also developed intimate friendship with Pauline, ex-wife of Hemingway's, and her two sisters. For a couple of years, Elizabeth dated Tom Wanning - her last attempt to establish a "normal" relationship.

the two most important figures in Bishop's life made their entrances in 40's, too, but their stories had to wait.

Marjorie was wife of a navy man before she became Elizabeth's earnest and loyal care-giver. she worked to support Elizabeth, watched over her diet and drink, and accompanied her in a long trip to Mexico.  Bishop was content for a few years, grew agitated and finally agonized in indecision during her stay in New York in early 1946. to help her make up her mind, Marjorie wrote to ask Elizabeth not to come back to Key West again. she then obliged to destroy all the letters Elizabeth wrote her (while Elizabeth kept her letters by Marjorie).

it's not evident what the deep affection was, but Marjorie was one of many who had doted on Elizabeth. she seems to be the ultimate feminine ideal everyone would rush to love, to care and to protect.

Anaphora is a poem subtly alluding to their life together. Bishop dedicated it to Marjorie after her death in 1959.

------------------------------------------------------------
Anaphora

Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
'Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed? ' Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
   instantly, instantly falls
   victim of long intrigue,
   assuming memory and mortal
   mortal fatigue.

More slowly falling into sight
and showering into stippled faces,
darkening, condensing all his light;
in spite of all the dreaming
squandered upon him with that look,
suffers our uses and abuses,
sinks through the drift of bodies,
sinks through the drift of classes
to evening to the beggar in the park
who, weary, without lamp or book
   prepares stupendous studies:
   the fiery event
   of every day in endless
   endless assent.
------------------------------------------------------------

5. "battered and shiny like the moon"

bishop took a freighter to Brazil at the end of 1950, with a vague idea: go around the world and write about it, too.  it was half planned with a scholarship grant and half dreamed - she had always wanted to go to South America.

arriving in Rio de Janeiro, Elizabeth was greeted by Mary Morse, an old Bostonian friend, and her lover Maria Carlota Costallat de Macedo Soares (Lota). she saw them a few years earlier in New York and got an invitation. Lota immediately offered their Rio apartment to Elizabeth to "stay as long as you want". and days became months and months became years.

to Elizabeth, Lota must be like Louise Crane and Marjorie Stevens combined: a Louise with Marjorie's dedication or a Marjorie with Louise's wealth.  added to that was Lota's big heart, artistic talent and enormous energy.  Lota was from a wealthy and politically-connected aristocratic family in Brazil. she owned lands, properties and arrays of servants. she was also a self-taught architect. when Elizabeth arrived, she was busy designing and building a large house for Mary and herself in Petropolis, a city 60 miles from Rio.

with the shift of her affection, the original "Fazenda Samambaia" (the Giant Fern Farm) house became Elizabeth's with a specially added studio near a waterfall. Mary got another house built for her down the road.

Elizabeth did not care about Brazil but loved this living arrangement: Lota taking care of large concerns and servants waiting upon daily needs - in an "atmosphere of uncritical affection".  it reminded her of her childhood in Nova Scotia, which she was finally able to scrutinize and write about.  strangest thing. having to settle all the way down in the South to re-connect with her Northern root.

some ten years passed in peace and happiness. Elizabeth became Aunt of a growing household: another grandchild from Lota's stepson (she adopted the polio-stricken boy on a whim when she was buying a dog from a family); another daughter Mary adopted; sons and daughters of servants; cats and dogs.

living such an idyllic life, Bishop was not any more productive, but her second poetry book in almost 10 years, a combination of her first one (a thin volume) with a few new poems (very few), was published and won her the Pulitzer prize in 1956.  she became known in US and Brazil.

1960s were chaotic times for Brazil. Lota became heavily involved in The political up-downs and was given the power, unfairly, to design a park, modeling on the Central Park in NY, on Rio's large landfill. her enormous energy finally found an outlet, through fierce political and every other fights, and eventually drained in bringing out her beautiful dream. In the now called Parque do Flamengo, Lota is not acknowledged.

Elizabeth tagged along between Rio and Petropolis, lost her patience, and side-tracked to Ouro Preto 300 miles away. there she had a brief affair with Lilli Correia de Araujo, an old friend of theirs and local lesbian celebrity. the affair was brief but so intense that Elizabeth impulsively bought a rundown house across the street:

Dear Lilli, I liked this view,
I also liked to visit you,
but scarcely could prolong my stay,
so bought the house across the way:
number twenty-eight. Now you
must visit me and see my view.

Lota became suspicious and tried to intervene, but this was only the first step Bishop took to move away from Lota and Brazil. In 1966, despite Lota's protest, she took the English Department chair, vacated by poet Ted Roethke, of University of Washington in Seattle. with no experience and no interest in teaching, Elizabeth nonetheless survived the year and even had another affair, this time with Suzanne Bowen, a young woman student half her age.

back in Brazil was a long nightmare. deception and guilt on Elizabeth's side; wrath and desperation on Lota's. the confrontation rose to white heat when Lota intercepted a letter from Suzanne Bowen (all other letters were carefully addressed to Lilli and then relayed to Elizabeth by phone). among terrible fights, they broke up, reconciled and then broke up again.

On July 3, 1967, Elizabeth flew to New York. On Sept 19, Lota showed up, too, with gifts for Elizabeth's friends. They had a "peaceful and affectionate" night together. Early in the morning, Elizabeth found Lota passed out with drug overdose.

Lota left Bishop their Rio properties and Mary Samambaia. Also in her will was this quotation from Voltaire: if there is a god of love, he will forgive me.

this poem recorded the happier time of their life together:

------------------------------------------------------------

Lota Soares

The Shampoo      

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens.  For Time is
nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
-- Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
------------------------------------------------------------

6. "I seem to spend my life missing you."

Bishop's first slim poetry book in 1946 received largely positive reviews; but it was hard to match what Robert Lowell had to say - he already compared her to Kafka. he followed his words up with a life-long devotion and helped her whenever and wherever, recommending Elizabeth for Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, Harvard professorship, awards, travel grants...he even made Harvard pay Bishop extra when he sold their correspondences to the university.

Lowell was regarded as the last public poet of America. six years younger than Elizabeth, his first book, also published in 1946, earned him the Pulitzer Prize. in contrast to Bishop, Lowell was exceedingly prolific, conjuring up poems and critical reviews as if catching rabbits from the thin air: another stanza, another, and another... he also taught students at Harvard, advised the Congress in DC, lectured the public around the country and connected with poets in every corner...equally visible was his frequent, almost regular, residence in the Mclean Hospital for mental breakdowns...he is the very image of a poet as a poet is thought to be. handsome, too, with an air of loss or wonderment.

three marriages and who knows how many other encounters. but Elizabeth was the love of his life. or the "great might have been". or the one he must "write entirely for". and write they did. to "dearest Elizabeth" and "dearest Cal". in some five hundred letters. letters beyond friendship. letters of love - Platonic love - with its exclusivity, tension, mutual admiration, trust and care. they served as muse and literary critic to each other. and they watched over each other through artistic triumphs and moral failures.

most of their actual meetings were disastrous, if not disasters. Lowell simply could not behave properly in the presence of Elizabeth. she was the very trigger of another breakdown or the timing was always wrong.

but etched in Lowell's heart was that one sunny day in 1948 when he and Elizabeth were alone - their respective partners at the time left together - for one day on the shore in Stonington, Maine. after a long swimming and an "awful" New England dinner, Elizabeth said, jokingly, "When you write my epitaph, you must say I was the loneliest person who ever lived." that was the moment he knew - "just a matter of time" - that he would propose to her.

he never did. he wrote "Water":

------------------------------------------------------------

Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

Water

Robert Lowell

It was a Maine lobster town—
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands,

and left dozens of bleak
white frame houses stuck
like oyster shells
on a hill of rock,

and below us, the sea lapped
the raw little match-stick
mazes of a weir,
where the fish for bait were trapped.

Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
>From this distance in time
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,

but it was only
the usual gray rock
turning the usual green
when drenched by the sea.

The sea drenched the rock
at our feet all day,
and kept tearing away
flake after flake.

One night you dreamed
you were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile,
and trying to pull
off the barnacles with your hands.

We wished our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water was too cold for us.
------------------------------------------------------------

twenty-nine years later, Elizabeth lived across that water in North Haven, Maine. she loved it there and entertained her friends in the summer. Robert wanted to come, but she said no. if only she could have known -- Lowell died suddenly of heart attack on Sept 12, 1977.

------------------------------------------------------------
North Haven

In Memoriam: Robert Lowell

I can make out the rigging of a schooner
a mile off; I can count
the new cones on the spruce. It is so still
the pale bay wears a milky skin; the sky
no clouds except for one long, carded horse1s tail.

The islands haven't shifted since last summer,
even if I like to pretend they have--
drifting, in a dreamy sort of way,
a little north, a little south, or sidewise--
and that they1re free within the blue frontiers of bay.

This month our favorite one is full of flowers:
buttercups, red clover, purple vetch,
hackweed still burning, daisies pied, eyebright,
the fragrant bedstraw's incandescent stars,
and more, returned, to paint the meadows with delight.

The goldfinches are back, or others like them,
and the white-throated sparrow's five-note song,
pleading and pleading, brings tears to the eyes.
Nature repeats herself, or almost does:
repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.

Years ago, you told me it was here
(in 1932?) you first "discovered girls"
and learned to sail, and learned to kiss.
You had "such fun," you said, that classic summer.
("Fun"--it always seemed to leave you at a loss...)

You left North Haven, anchored in its rock,
afloat in mystic blue...And now--you've left
for good. You can't derange, or rearrange,
your poems again. (But the sparrows can their song.)
The words won't change again. Sad friend, you cannot change.
------------------------------------------------------------

7. "Your eyes are awfully blue"

Elizabeth found Brazil after Lota's death a different place - "the atmosphere of uncritical affection" had turned into critical disdain. even her letters to Lota were lost, allegedly burnt by Mary Morse. no time to dip into her own guilty conscience, Elizabeth moved to San Francisco one month later. she was joined by Suzanne Bowen, her one time student in Seattle, who was by then divorced with a baby boy.  in 1967, Elizabeth was 56 and Suzanne 25.

but San Francisco was the forefront of a changing America in late 60s. Elizabeth found herself to have migrated from a foreign country to an alien land. she counted on Suzanne as her practical and cultural assistant while providing the latter financial support. Suzanne did all that and more. she prepared and designed Bishop's "Complete Poems", updated from the earlier "Questions of Travel" (1965) of poems and translations from her Brazil years. it was published in 1969 and won her the National Book Award.

with much trouble, she Elizabeth sold Lota's Rio properties and channelled the money to renovate her Ouro Preto house. when she started to dream in Portuguese, the two moved there to give Brazil another try.

the house was in a dire unfinished condition.  nothing - money, materials or labor - could be accounted for. Lilli was the evident scapegoat. the rest of the town despised them. isolated in a hostile place, Elizabeth and Suzanne were both out of their elements and began in-fight. when the house finally became beautiful as Elizabeth had envisioned, their relationship was irreparable.  then Elizabeth did something utterly selfish - she had Suzanne thrown into a hospital for a perceived "nervous breakdown". she might have really believed that Suzanne required professional help, but Elizabeth had no desire to ever see her again.

Lowell secured a Harvard position for Bishop to get "out of here alive". so after almost sixty years, Elizabeth came home. alone. old. asthmatic, alcoholic, and depressed....

things almost immediately started to look up. Elizabeth met Alice Methfessell, the twenty-six years old housing assistant at Harvard. simply put, Alice was a Suzanne without complications.  in Bishop's more affectionate words, she had "awfully blue eyes",  "joking voice", "funny face". Elizabeth was finally secure and fairly happy, even able to work and write poems again. those poems became part of her last book "Geography III", published in 1976.

the really Suzanne also came to Boston, showing up at Bishop's classes or apartment. fearful of becoming the "villain in a melodrama", Elizabeth assisted her college application and paid part of the tuition (with bitterness). Suzanne later became a medical doctor.

the constant fear Elizabeth had now was losing Alice and living an old miserable life alone. the only time Alice seemed to drift away triggered such a panic that led to the writing of her most widely-read poem "One Art".  the "disaster" was averted as Alice broke her engagement and accompanied Elizabeth loyally till her sudden death, of cerebral aneurysm, at the age of 68.

a less Bishop-like, more "confessional" style love poem was found in her notebook after her death.

------------------------------------------------------------
Breakfast Song

My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue.
I kiss your funny face,
your coffee-flavored mouth.
Last night I slept with you.
Today I love you so
how can I bear to go
(as soon I must, I know)
to bed with ugly death
in that cold, filthy place,
to sleep there without you,
without the easy breath
and nightlong, limblong warmth
I've grown accustomed to?
—Nobody wants to die;
tell me it is a lie!
But no, I know it's true.
It's just the common case;
there's nothing one can do.
My love, my saving grace,
your eyes are awfully blue
early and instant blue.
------------------------------------------------------------

8. "flying wherever"

in the last couple of years before her death, Elizabeth planned to bring a closure to her life with Lota. Only a sketch of an intended book-length "Elegy" was done, which would have included Lota's "reticence and pride", her "heroism, brave & young", her "beautiful colored skin", "the gestures (which said you didn't have)", her "courage to the last, or almost to the last - "; "regret and guilt, the nighttime horrors", "WASTE".... (from Brett Miller)

Bishop published many of her poems in New Yorker, which had a first refusal contract with her. this sonnet was submitted over one year earlier, but was not published until three weeks after her death. it was not the last poem she wrote but sounded just like a final review for her life. and no one could say more or better.

------------------------------------------------------------

Sonnet

Caught -- the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.

Freed -- the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!
------------------------------------------------------------

9. a few words on Bishop's poems

at the beginning it was the rhythmic ebb and flow of words. mostly beautifully done. so i could read on, simply enjoying that.

then i saw the meticulous details described with patience. what stood out, what so unlike others' poems, however, was that those details impressed me as strange, unfamiliar and unsettling. to the point that i had had much difficulty to relate to or comprehend them right away. "moose" is less so, but "at the fish houses" is a good example. to have a contrast, i even re-read a couple of times "stopping at the woods on a snowy night. to remind me what accessibility is. then i started to appreciate her complexity, her attempt to convey what is non-obvious, uncertain, drifting or mysterious in her mind. it is that which directed her eyes to certain specifics in nature or life.

another aspect is her refrain from resolution. even "moose", which is a relatively simpler piece. the sudden appearance of her was the cause for exclamation - yes - but it was only whispered. then she was passed off.

at the end of "fish houses", she says,

"it is like what we imagine knowledge to be", instead of "it is like what knowledge to be".

it's like nothing is certain and everything has a shadow for her. and then she wanted to capture only THAT!

and in her her short "sonnet", i was caught by her "flying everywhere" and thought it would have to be flying "high" "up" or "no more" for any given poet.

here is what Harold Bloom has to say:

She is so meticulous and so original that she tends to be both under-read and rather weakly misread. Most frequently she is praised for her "eyes," as though she were a master of optics. But her actual achievement is to see what cannot quite be seen, and to say what cannot quite be said.

I think I understand her.
------------------------------------------------------

References

1. Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of it by Brett C. Miller, 1993
2. Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: an Oral Biography by Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau, 1994
3. Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell by David Kalstone, 1989
4. Elizabeth Bishop (Bloom's Major Poets) by Harold Bloom, 2002
5. Words in Air: the Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell by Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton, 2010
6. Online essayshttp://baihua.org/face/bxh.gifThere once lived a mysterious flower. She was intensely beautiful and vulnerable.  Her kind of beauty was ineffable and her lonely sadness irresistible.