Summer Reading with April Bernard! Elizabeth Bishop, An Invitation

Hello, everyone on Book Post. I’ll be sharing some thoughts about Elizabeth Bishop’s poems this August, hoping that you’ll read along with me and share your insights, as well.

I’ve chosen three poems for each of the four weeks I’ll be posting, moving roughly chronologically through the poet’s life and geography: From her childhood in Nova Scotia (“The Map,” “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance,” “At the Fishhouses”) to her young adulthood in Key West (“Little Exercise,” “The Fish,” “Roosters,”); then to Brazil (“Questions of Travel,” “Filling Station,” “The Armadillo”); and finally, to Boston and Cape Cod (“Crusoe in England,” “Poem,”“Sonnet”). All of these are poems that I have lived with, and learned from, for my entire writing life; and, in my years as a teacher, I have also found Bishop’s work to be the very definition of exemplary. How to end a poem? How to manage line-breaks in free verse? How to engage the reader? How to see, how to describe, how to manage the perfect metaphor? Where, and how, is the music made?

Even if you have never written a poem yourself, or never wanted to, the examination of what a poet is doing, technically, can vastly expand your delight as a reader. Bishop’s poems consistently make us see, and feel, the wonders around us—as we, like the poet, gaze out from the prison of consciousness to the liberating shock of the natural world. 

Well, anyway, that’s how she makes me feel. Join me, won’t you?

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Book Post free and paid subscribers will receive installments of Summer Reading in their in-boxes each Sunday in August. Click on “comment” to join the conversation here on our web site.

Order Elizabeth Bishop’s Poems from Book Post bookselling partner Northshire Bookstore. Book Post subscribers receive a discount code for the book by email.

April Bernard is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently The World Behind the World. She is also author of the novels Pirate Jenny and Miss Fuller. She has written for Book Post on Colette, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hilary Mantel, Patricia Highsmith, Wallace Stevens, Janet Malcolm, and Angela Carter, among others.

Reading Schedule
For August 4
“The Map”
“Over 2000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance”
“At the Fishouses”

For August 11
“Little Exercise”
“The Fish”
“Roosters”

For August 18
“Questions of Travel”
“The Armadillo”
”Santarém”

For August 25
“Crusoe in England”
“Poem”
“Sonnet”

Farewell conversation!
Join April and Book Post editor Ann Kjellberg in a virtual conversation looking back on our month of Bishop, hosted by our bookselling partner, Northshire Bookstore, on August 29 at 6 pm. Sign up here.

Let us know if you have questions and we so look forward to seeing you here in the comments!

Image: Fritz Petzholdt, View of a Town on a Steep Hill (detail) (between 1823 and 1838)