Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It

In this first full-length biography of Bishop (1911-1979) Millier provides readers with fresh insights as she traces Bishop's development as a poet from her childhood in Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. Bishop's father's death when she was eight months old was a double cataclysm: as well as taking her father from her, it damaged the mental health of her mother, who was institutionalized for most of the rest of her life. Millier, a professor of American literature and civilization at Middlebury College, stresses how Bishop's virtual orphanhood affected her later life and led her to develop a painful rootlessness. The story of Bishop's early career--her coming-of-age at Vassar College and the mentorship of Marianne Moore--is extraordinarily interesting, as are her better-known relationships with such literary figures as Robert Lowell. Millier neglects neither the tragic aspects of Bishop's life--most notably her alcoholism--nor the most personal, her homosexuality, approaching such subjects with compassion and respect. Although Millier acknowledges that ``we cannot know what Bishop thought,'' Millier's own psychological speculations creep in, and they are the weakest part of her work. This biography is, however, a major contribution to our understanding of Bishop. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar . )