Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters (Library of America) [Hardcover]

This carefully edited book collects much of Bishop's poetry and prose--fiction, memoir, reportage, reviews--between two covers for the first time, and that is all for the good.

The best introduction to Bishop's work, however, is still "The Complete Poems, 1927 - 1979," supplemented by the best pieces in "The Collected Prose" (1984), edited by Robert Giroux, who is also co-editor of the present Library of America book and editor of "One Art" (1994), the mammoth selection of Bishop's letters. The earlier editions of her poems and prose were published in an era when editors still respected Bishop's excellent judgment about which of her poems and prose pieces should appear in print. Bishop was her own best editor, and I don't think the publication of so many of her abortive poems serves her particularly well.

My main criticism of this book has to do with the "Letters" section. As with the Library of America edition of Flannery O'Connor's writing, this selection offers letters not available in "One Art" (or in O'Connor's case, "The Habit of Being"); but the Library of America edition does not supersede "One Art" because it offers fewer letters in total. Both O'Connor and Bishop were epistolary geniuses on the level of Keats and Hopkins and we deserve editions of their letters that aspire to comprehensiveness. There is a new edition of Bishop's correspondence with Lowell on the way, but what about her letters to Marianne Moore, May Swenson, and other friends with whom she had significant correspondences?

I suppose ardent readers of Bishop's letters are supposed to photocopy the letters published in this Library of America edition and stick them in "One Art" in order to have all of the in-print Bishop letters (which are a fraction of the letters she actually wrote) in one place. I am happy to do this, but aren't Library of America editions supposed to collect ALL of a writer's most important work in one or more volumes? I would rather have Bishop's poems and non-epistolary prose in one Library of America volume, and a more complete edition of her letters in another, even if the letters book were longer in coming. The Library of America edition of Hart Crane, another epistolary genius, is comprised mostly of letters, in part (I suspect) because the editor had a new edition of Crane's letters to select from. (In fact the same person edited both Crane books).

Giroux refers to his "files of Elizabeth's vast correspondence" (p. 944). When will these files become available to the rest of us in the form of a "Collected Letters of Elizabeth Bishop," which would no doubt be a multi-volume work, or even an expanded edition of "One Art"? The latter book, as far as I can tell, is not mentioned at all in this Library of America edition--why not? Has Giroux decided to "disappear" his own wonderful edition of Bishop's letters?

I suspect this Library of America edition of Bishop was rushed to press in order to capitalize on all the recent attention paid to Alice Quinn's selection of Bishop's unpublished poems, and the attention that is about to be paid to the forthcoming Bishop/Lowell correspondence. Why not wait a few more years until the shape of the Bishop canon is a bit clearer to publish an apparently definitive volume such as the present Library of America book? Quinn is currently editing Bishop's notebooks and journals, which promise to be fascinating, but which this Library of America book does not excerpt at all.

Bishop herself was a voracious reader of other writer's letters and journals, and she even taught a course in epistolary writing at Harvard in the early 1970s. I wish editors and publishers would take a cue from Bishop's own interest in letter-writing and publish more of her letters. As anyone who has read "One Art" or the letters published in this Library of America edition knows, Bishop's letters are the ultimate pleasure reading. A bigger edition of her letters would probably not supplant the latest Dan Brown book on the best-seller lists, but there is a larger market for it than one might suppose.

For my money, this book beats out Bishop's "Collected Poems" (from Farrar Sraus & Giroux) or any of the other separate volumes of Bishop's writing (be it letters, prose, etc.). In this volume you not only get all of her collected and uncollected poems, but there's also a very generous selection of her letters and prose. So for all but the most hardcore Bishop fans, this one volume should satisfy most of their Bishop-reading needs. Also, as with all of Library of America's books, this volume is a very handsome edition in hardcover with a very professional binding that will last much longer than any of Bishop's cheaper, soft-cover editions. In addition, I greatly prefer this edition's typography to the above-mentioned "Collected Poems."

Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters is the Library of America's compilation of the works of twentieth century poet and author Elizabeth Bishop - including all her published poetic translations, an extensive selection of her unpublished poems and drafts of poems, several not previously collected, and of course, all the poetry published in her lifetime. Non-poetry writings range from her stories and reminiscences to travel writings, literary essays, and statements, even a number of pieces published for the first time. The absolute definitive compilation of Elizabeth Bishop's works, highly recommended especially for public and college library collections.