A solemn gem. Since both author and subject are, for me, the apex-hero-acme-superlative in their genre I had high hopes. Tóibín balances close-reading, biography, and context (historical and literary) with the appreciative understatement of a working writer. Writing about poems is inherently difficult. Tóibín echos some of Bishop's methods (exacting sound and rhythm, withholding parts of the self, layered shifting tone), allowing him a beautiful efficiency. For anyone who reads Elizabeth Bishop (and EVERYONE MUST! read Elizabeth Bishop) this could be the first or last supplementary book. ( )

This is a beautifully written appreciation of Elizabeth Bishop’s understated poetry. Bishop is a poet that Tóibín has read intensely since he was a teenager, a key influence upon his own poetry and prose along with a few other significant writers. The care with which he reads her work and her life speaks to his respect for her gifts as well as how much reading her has given him. Indeed, some of the most affecting passages here are Tóibín writing frankly about his own life and development as a writer.

Bishop’s published output was relatively small. It was, however, painstakingly crafted, some poems more than a decade in the making. Tóibín also draws upon her work that has emerged since her death in 1979. He clarifies matters through appeal to biographical details of Bishop’s life which did not become well-known outside her circle of close friends until after her death. Although she disavowed confessional poetry, Tóibín sees much revealed in the gaps between the published words, in what was not said.

Tóibín explores connections to the poetry of Thom Gunn (another life-long influence on Tóibín’s writing), Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore and Anne Sexton. All of which is illuminating. To see the direct impact of these poets on each other through critiques of early drafts which prompted changes in poems, to complimentary imitations of each other’s forms, to the wary critical distance they sometimes maintained. It is fascinating. Especially as seen through the eyes of such a sensitive reader as Tóibín.

Highly recommended. ( )

Colm Toibin's On Elizabeth Bishop is not a long book but the subject matter is dense in the way good poetry and good writing about poetry is always dense, so it was a read slowly and savor book. It's basically a mix of the author's own personal relationship to Bishop's poetry as he came into his own literary voice, and also a close reading of some of the poems that meant the most to him. His almost line by line response to "Roosters" -- which he returns to again and again throughout the book -- is just great. I would recommend reading with a copy of her collected poetry to hand, unless you are the kind of person who has memorized all her important poems -- I'm not -- Toibin discusses the poems but never reproduces them in their entirety for the reader. I did have a copy of Bishop's One Art by my side while I was reading. That helped.

The chapter called "Grief and Reason," which wanders ruminating between the works of Thomas Gunn, Bishop, James Balwind, Gary Sniyder, Robert Lowell and even Randall Jarrell, also really stuck with me for its quiet intensity:

In many of the statements Gunn and Bishop made in their poems, there is a great reticence. It was the reticence that hit me when I first read their poems, and still hits me, with considerable emotional force. I found something in the space between the words, in the hovering between tones at the end of stanzas, at the end of poems themselves, in the elegance, in the watchfulness and use of the solitary figure either speaking or being described, which made me sit up are realize that something important was being hidden and something equally important was being said.

In any case, I am always a sucker for books about what draws people to a book or an author, so I was highly disposed to like Toibin's wandering thoughts of a literary touchstone writer. But there is much to absorb in this short work -- about Bishop, certainly, but also about reading and reading poetry, about the art of finding the right words, or choosing to let silence speak, about how identity, place, even history permeate even the quietest art almost without our being able to stop it. It is also a fascinating exploration of writers talking to writers -- of how they drive each other further and forward in their craft and their work via these small micro conversations that happen in letters back and forth or in the way they review and revise and respond to each other's poetry. You can't shake the feeling, as an outsider, that the end total is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. It's a little bit magic.