SOURCE: Shetley, Vernon. “On Elizabeth Bishop.” Raritan 14, no. 3 (winter 1995): 151-63.

In the following essay, Shetley examines One Art: Letters against the surge of interest in Bishop's life and work.

Elizabeth Bishop apparently urged most of her correspondents to hold on to her letters, though more out of a desire that they get a good price when they sold them, than out of a sense of writerly pride. Part of the charm of her letters is their unselfconsciousness; vividly and memorably written as they are, they seem throughout offhand, spontaneous, the writing of a woman who had no sense of posterity looking over her shoulder. Poetry, for Bishop, was different; though her poems, too, often give an impression of casualness and spontaneity, we know that she was a perfectionist, often working on a poem for years before considering it finished. She promised, in 1956, to send her Aunt Grace a...