SOURCE: Travisano, Thomas. “The Elizabeth Bishop Phenomenon.” New Literary History 26, no. 4 (autumn 1995): 903-30.

In the following essay, Travisano examines the sudden rise in the critical opinion of Bishop as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century.

In a 1955 review of “The Year in Poetry” for Harper's, Randall Jarrell composed a notice of Elizabeth Bishop's latest book that would prove prophetic in more ways than one. He began:

Sometimes when I can't go to sleep at night I see the family of the future. Dressed in three-toned shorts-and-shirt sets of disposable Papersilk, they sit before the television wall of their apartment, only their eyes moving. After I've looked a while I always see—otherwise I'd die—a pigheaded soul over in the corner with a book; only his eyes are moving, but in them there is a different look.

Usually it's Homer he's holding—this week...