A New Read on Bishop

For a poet as anthologized as Elizabeth Bishop, it’s fair to say there’s a certain lack of serious criticism—or perhaps, critics thinking seriously—about her work, compared to the Modernists against whose influence she was writing. Eavan Boland reviews a new volume by Colm Tóibín that aims to begin closing the gulf. On Elizabeth Bishop is a thirteen-part book, approaching the poet as a radical transformer of language and an intellectual force, and leading a critical exploration of, as Boland describes it, the “eerie alloy of dark music coupled with a deceptive vernacular [that] was Bishop’s signature achievement.”