“‘Time to Plant Tears’: Elizabeth Bishop's Seminary of Tears,” in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 60, No. 4, November, 1995, pp. 69-87.

In the following essay, Powers-Beck discusses the influence of the poetry of George Herbert on Bishop's work.

The Stuart poet-divine George Herbert was one of Elizabeth Bishop's favorite poets and greatest influences: she read Herbert from age fourteen to the end of her life; she kept his poetry by her writing desk,¹ and usually travelled with it; she maintained a long friendship with the Herbert scholar Joseph Summers; she mentioned the poet frequently in her letters and interviews; early in her poetic career, she consciously imitated several of his verses; and at twenty-four, she dreamed of discussing prosody with Herbert and Marianne Moore, and recorded the dream in her notebook. The dream ended auspiciously with Herbert's promise to prove “useful” to Bishop, to which assurance of influence and patronage she...