Elizabeth Bishop

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this first full-length biography of Bishop (1911-1979) Millier provides readers with fresh insights as she traces Bishop's development as a poet from her childhood in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. Bishop's father's death when she was eight months old was a double cataclysm: as well as taking her father from her, it damaged the mental health of her mother, who was institutionalized for most of the rest of her life. Millier, a professor of American literature and civilization at Middlebury College, stresses how Bishop's virtual orphanhood affected her later life and led her to develop a painful rootlessness. The story of Bishop's early career--her coming-of-age at Vassar College and the mentorship of Marianne Moore--is extraordinarily interesting, as are her better-known relationships with such literary figures as Robert Lowell. Millier neglects neither the tragic aspects of Bishop's life--most notably her alcoholism--nor the most personal, her homosexuality, approaching such subjects with compassion and respect. Although Millier acknowledges that ``we cannot know what Bishop thought,'' Millier's own psychological speculations creep in, and they are the weakest part of her work. This biography is, however, a major contribution to our understanding of Bishop. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar . )

Donna Seaman

Millier's intent in writing about the poet Elizabeth Bishop was to elucidate how her "poems were written and why they turned out the way they did." This literary mission inspired a wonderfully fleet, intelligent, and unintrusive yet revealing portrait of this famously private artist. Bishop, the descendant of sea captains and missionaries, was a displaced person right from the start. Her father died before she was a year old, triggering mental illness and long-term hospitalization for her mother and a lifelong habit of travel and restlessness for Bishop, who was handed off from one relative to another in her youth. A precocious, curly-haired, and tomboyish girl, she was writing by the age of eight and, according to her freshman English professor at Vassar, was "doomed to be a poet." Shy and discreet, Bishop suffered from asthma, alcoholism, and, until her 40s, confusion over her sexual identity. Millier tracks Bishop's literary development with great delicacy and intuition. She illuminates Bishop's relationship with her mentor Marianne Moore, her tricky friendship with Robert Lowell, and the effect of place, especially Brazil and hippie-filled San Francisco, on her peace of mind and creativity. Millier's sensitivity extends to her depictions of Bishop's relationships with various strong-willed and nurturing women.