SOURCE: Sanger, Peter. “‘… and even spoke some Myself’: Elizabeth Bishop, Great Village and the Community of Imaginable Words.” Antigonish Review no. 91, (fall 1992): 53-62.

In the following essay, Sanger discusses the impact of linguistic patterns in Great Village, Nova Scotia on Bishop's poetry.

Part of this essay's title comes from an apparently causal, graceful passage in Bishop's memoir of Marianne Moore:

Happily ignorant of the poor Vassar girls before me who hadn't passed muster, I began to feel less nervous and even spoke some myself. I had what may have been an inspiration, I don't know—at any rate, I attribute my great good fortune in having known Marianne as a friend in part to it. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was making its spring visit to New York and I asked Miss Moore (we called each other “Miss” for over two years) if she would care to...