“Elizabeth Bishop's Social Conscience,” in English Literary History, Vol. 62, No. 2, Summer, 1995, pp. 467-86.

In the following essay, Longenbach explores Bishop's interest in social issues, particularly women's rights and feminism.

In “Contradictions: Tracking Poems,” the long sequence that makes up the second half of Your Native Land, Your Life, Adrienne Rich meditates on Elizabeth Bishop's late villanelle, “One Art”:

acts of parting trying to let go without giving up yes Elizabeth a city here a village there a sister, comrade, cat and more no art to this but anger.(1) 

“The art of losing isn't hard to master,” Bishop said, and Rich's response to the line cuts two ways. On the one hand, she admires Bishop's artistry, feeling that she herself has not mastered the art—“only badly-done exercises.” On the other hand, Rich is uncomfortable with Bishop's reticence, preferring the anger of the badly-done to the artistry of a...