This definitive collection gives us the full scope of a brilliant American poet. Elizabeth Bishop is one of America’s greatest writers, whose incisive artistry has inspired generations. Her body of work displays honesty and humor, grief and acceptance; she observes nature and human nature with patient accuracy. The poems often look outward—roving over the terrain of New England and Nova Scotia, where Bishop grew up, to Florida and Brazil, where she later lived—then move inward, to the intangible, exploring knowledge and perception, love and solitude, and the struggles of form to control chaos. Gathering every poem that Bishop herself saw into print, along with a selection of unfinished, posthumously published work, this landmark volume presents the magnificence of the poet’s oeuvre in its full breadth and depth.
