Dana Gioia on Elizabeth Bishop
 

It's Bishop's centennary year, and there will be lots of articles. Here's one from the Wall Street Journal.

Note how polite the first commenter turned when he discovered that the Dana G. wasn't a woman but a man.

Gioia's piece is excellent, apart from the copyediting lapse. Made me want to read Bishop's prose, though not the New Yorker correspondence--please, no, anything but that!

Thanks for this, Maryann! I enjoyed it very much.

I love her description of e.e. cummings - "the famous man of little letters". Very funny!

Cally

It may be obvious to some (I haven't read the article) but to those who don't know, Dana studied with Elizabeth Bishop at one point.

Thanks for pointing that out, Janice. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone looking for the comments. Sheesh unbelievable.

It's a good article, glad to have read it, but the business of writing closet poems grates on my nerves. As if the only way to be a successful poet as a lesbian is to keep the whole thing out of sight.

"One hundred years after her birth in Worcester, Mass., in 1911, Elizabeth Bishop stands as the most highly regarded American poet of the second-half of the 20th century. She is admired in every critical camp—from feminists to formalists—who agree on little else. Her work also attracts a wide general readership. Taught and studied in high schools and universities, Bishop is, for the time being at least, the most popular woman poet in American literature after Emily Dickinson."

It might be possible to compose a more idiotic and self-important paragraph on the subject of 20th century American poetry. But it would take some doing.

I don't know, Chris, there's a pretty big spectrum defined by feminists, on the one hand, and formalists on the other. Have you ever known a formalist who was also a feminist? It's remarkable indeed that they can join together in their common admiration of Elizabeth Bishop.

My favorite part of the article, though, is when he says "A small inheritance from her father gave Bishop a freedom few artists enjoy. She never had to work regularly." An interesting use of the word "small," don't you think?

Roger, I have to report that most of the participants on the Formalista listserve were pretty indignant about that pairing, as the majority of us are both feminist and formalist. Several people remarked that Gioia had let his love of alliteration get the better of his judgment.

That's a charitable view of things, Maryann. The term "free verse" would have allowed for the same alliteration.

Yes, I agree that people were trying to be charitable. Nobody was happy with the expression, although nobody disagrees that Bishop is admired by poets all over the stylistic and political map.

No question that Bishop's poetry is widely admired, and deservedly so. But when Gioia brushes aside innumerable other candidates to declare her "the most highly regarded American poet of the second-half of the 20th century" and "the most popular woman poet in American literature after Emily Dickinson" (never mind his airy, dismissive generalization about a feminist/formalist dichotomy that he invented for his own rhetorical purposes), he's not really talking about Bishop at all. He's talking about his own status, his own authority to issue literary fatwas. It's kind of yucky when a mediocre mind battens onto a great one.

Gosh, that's quite a fatwa, Chris. Someone writes a celebratory piece on a poet's 100th anniversary in a major journalistic venue, and it's all about him? The article is much more likely to set people reading Bishop's poetry than Gioia's own critical essays. If you disagree with his opinions on Bishop, please give your reasons rather than unsubstantiated character analysis.

Oh, c'mon, Bill. You really can't see what a grandiose jackass Gioia is being here? There are no other viable candidates for "most highly regarded" American poet of the last half century? Or for "most popular" American woman poet of the last century plus? In the time it takes to read this post, everybody here can compose a mental list of a dozen or more strong contenders. Even if we might eventually vote for Bishop in either category, Gioia makes a pretty shallow and obnoxious campaign manager.

I think "most popular" was the oddest thing he said. Does he mean book sales? I'd guess that Plath sold more books, though I may be wrong, yet I'm sure that Jewel did. And if it's not book sales, then how is he measuring popularity? Number of prom invitations?

Chris, I just don't see the payoff in knocking Gioia on this. Everyone has his or her list, as you say, but the celebration of Bishop's 100th isn't necessarily the occasion to argue about it. How about starting a separate thread, My favorite poet from 1950-2000...? I'll put in my one cent.