“RSVP,” in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXIV, No. 10, June 9, 1977, pp. 29-30.

In the following essay, Wood reviews Geography III, calling Bishop “a nearly impeccable poet.”

Elizabeth Bishop's poetry is full of invitations. Look, it says; watch; think; listen. Yet it is never bullying. These are invitations, not instructions, and when they begin to sound bossy, a note of parody usually creeps in. The poet impersonates a schoolmistress embarrassed by her hectoring authority:

Now can you see the monument? It is of wood built somewhat like a box. No. Built like several boxes in descending sizes one above the other … It is the beginning of a painting, a piece of sculpture, or poem, or monument, and all of wood. Watch it closely. 

One of the most brilliant, as well as the most representative, of Elizabeth Bishop's poems is called “Little Exercise,” and it invites us to...