Essay Bishop
The below essay is a final draft, and not a final copy; therefore, it does not have page numbers and cannot be quoted in future publications. The published version of the essay is in the following book available in print and online versions in the Seneca library: Elizabeth Bishop in the 21st Century: Reading the New Editions. Eds. Cleghorn, Hicok, Travisano. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, June 2012.
Part II (of the 4 part book with 17 essays by different people)
Crossing Continents: Self, Politics, Place
Bishop's "wiring fused": Bone Key and "Pleasure Seas"
Angus Cleghorn
Elizabeth Bishop's Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box and the Library of America edition of Bishop's poetry and prose provide readers with additional context enabling a richer understanding of her poetic project. Alice Quinn's compelling tour of previously unpublished archival material and her strong interpretive directions in the heavily-annotated notes let us color in, highlight and extend lines drawn in The Complete Poems. Some of those poetic lines include wires and cables, which are visible in Bishop's paintings, as published in William Benton's Exchanging Hats. If we consider the extensive presence of wires in the artwork alongside the copious, recently published poetic images of wires, we can observe vibrant innovation, especially in the material Bishop had planned for a Florida volume entitled Bone Key. The wires conduct electricity, as does The Juke-Box, both heating up her place. Florida warms Bishop after Europe: in this geographical shift, we can see Bishop relinquish stiff European statuary forms and begin to radiate in hotbeds of electric light. Also existing in this erotic awakening is a new approach to nature in the modern world. Instead of wires representing something anti-natural (modernity is often this sort of presence in her Nova Scotian poems, for example, when "The Moose" stares down the bus), the wires conduct energy into a future
Part II (of the 4 part book with 17 essays by different people)
Crossing Continents: Self, Politics, Place
Bishop's "wiring fused": Bone Key and "Pleasure Seas"
Angus Cleghorn
Elizabeth Bishop's Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box and the Library of America edition of Bishop's poetry and prose provide readers with additional context enabling a richer understanding of her poetic project. Alice Quinn's compelling tour of previously unpublished archival material and her strong interpretive directions in the heavily-annotated notes let us color in, highlight and extend lines drawn in The Complete Poems. Some of those poetic lines include wires and cables, which are visible in Bishop's paintings, as published in William Benton's Exchanging Hats. If we consider the extensive presence of wires in the artwork alongside the copious, recently published poetic images of wires, we can observe vibrant innovation, especially in the material Bishop had planned for a Florida volume entitled Bone Key. The wires conduct electricity, as does The Juke-Box, both heating up her place. Florida warms Bishop after Europe: in this geographical shift, we can see Bishop relinquish stiff European statuary forms and begin to radiate in hotbeds of electric light. Also existing in this erotic awakening is a new approach to nature in the modern world. Instead of wires representing something anti-natural (modernity is often this sort of presence in her Nova Scotian poems, for example, when "The Moose" stares down the bus), the wires conduct energy into a future