Elizabeth Bishop American poet Date of Birth: 08.02.1911 Country: USA

Biography of Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop, an American poet, was born on February 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She grew up as the only child in her family, as her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight months old. Her mother, who suffered from mental illness, was institutionalized in 1916 and remained in a psychiatric hospital until her death in 1934.

During her childhood, Elizabeth lived with her grandparents on a farm in Nova Scotia, while her affluent paternal relatives became her legal guardians. However, the separation from her grandparents was difficult for her. After moving back to Worcester, the aspiring poet developed chronic asthma, which plagued her for the rest of her life.

In 1918, Bishop was sent to live with her maternal aunt, Mod Bumiller Shepherdson, and her husband George. Her aunt introduced her to the works of Victorian poets, including Thomas Carlyle and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Bishop's first poems were published in a student magazine during her school years.

In the fall of 1929, shortly before the stock market crash, Bishop enrolled in Vassar College with the intention of becoming a composer. However, she eventually switched her focus to English literature. In 1933, Bishop co-founded the rebellious literary magazine "Con Spirito," and the following year, she graduated from college.

One of the most influential figures in Elizabeth's life was the poet Marianne Moore, whom she met through a librarian at Vassar College in 1934. Moore took a keen interest in Bishop's work and convinced her to leave Cornell Medical School, where Bishop had enrolled after college, and move to New York City. Moore helped Bishop publish several poems in the anthology "Trial Balances," which featured works by little-known young poets.

With her inheritance from her late father, Bishop no longer had financial concerns and embarked on extensive travels, living in various cities and countries. Her love for exploration and travel often found expression in her poetry. In the mid-1930s, Elizabeth spent several years in France with her college friend Louise Crane. In 1938, Crane and Bishop bought a house in Key West, Florida, where Bishop became acquainted with Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, who had divorced Ernest Hemingway in 1940.

In 1951, Elizabeth set sail on a scholarship-funded trip around South America, sponsored by Bryn Mawr College. Upon arriving in Santos, Brazil, in November of the same year, she initially planned to stay for two weeks but ended up remaining in the country for fifteen years. She lived in Petropolis with the architect Lota de Macedo Soares, whose tumultuous relationship with Bishop led to scandals, drinking, and depression. Bishop, fascinated by languages and literature from Latin America, became influenced by Mexican poet Octavio Paz and translated his works, along with those of other Brazilian poets, into English. After Soares committed suicide in 1967, Bishop began spending more time in the United States.

Elizabeth Bishop was not interested in being labeled a "lesbian poet" or a "female poet." She refused to publish her work in exclusively women's anthologies that associated her with the feminist movement, which led some to view her as opposed to feminism. However, in an interview with "The Paris Review," Bishop stated that despite her desire to avoid publishing her poems in women's collections, she still considered herself a "fervent feminist" and wished to be judged based on her writing rather than her gender or sexual orientation. Unlike her famous contemporaries Robert Lowell and John Berryman, who incorporated explicit details from their personal lives into their poetry, Bishop tried to avoid such practices. She was known for her utmost restraint, inner strength, and a keen awareness of her enduring solitude in her works, which she masterfully expressed through various poetic forms.

Starting in the 1970s, Bishop began giving lectures at universities as her "poetic sources" began to dry up. She briefly taught at the University of Washington before spending seven years at Harvard University. Elizabeth often spent her summers at her cottage in North Haven, Maine. In 1971, she entered into a relationship with Alice Methfessel. Despite not being particularly prolific in her writing, Bishop noted that she started numerous projects after meeting Alice, most of which remained unfinished. Two years after the publication of her collection "Geography III," Bishop died from a brain aneurysm in her Boston apartment. She was buried in Worcester, and as per her will, Alice Methfessel became her literary executor.

The Brazilian film "Rare Flowers" (Flores Raras), released in 2013, tells the story of Elizabeth Bishop's life in Brazil with Lota de Macedo Soares.