SOURCE: Carlson-Bradley, Martha. “Lowell's ‘My Last Afternoon… ’as Bishop Model.” Concerning Poetry 19, (1986): 122-31.

In the following essay, Carlson-Bradley asserts that Robert Lowell's poem “My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow” served as an inspiration for Bishop's “First Death in Nova Scotia.”

In her “Statement for the English Memorial Service for Robert Lowell,” Elizabeth Bishop commented on her long-standing friendship with Lowell. Mentioning how they “took to each other immediately and were good friends for over thirty years,” Bishop also reveals that this relationship was “often kept alive through years of separation only through letters …”¹ Besides letters, the poets also sent each other manuscripts and commentary on their poetry; they made clear to one another what they discussed publically in interviews—the respect of each for the other's discipline, style, and opinions.² Though Lowell and Bishop recognized how dissimilar their poetry basically is, they nevertheless found themselves under the...