Stephen Knight, The Independent on Sunday

Christmas Books Special


One of the most influential American poets of the past 50 years, Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79) has a new volume out; a famous perfectionist who allowed little into print, she would probably be surprised. Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box is a careful assemblage of drafts, fragments and unpublished poems presumably aimed at Bishop fans and poetry anoraks. Newcomers to her work would not see what the fuss is about, for all the inventiveness and nimble versification of this disjecta membra; a number of pieces crumble away or have too many lacunae to be truly satisfying. The book's front cover misleadingly refers to "uncollected'' poems (that is, work published somewhere other than in a book). Not only does this not seem to be the case, but 12 pieces, including the title poem, were entirely crossed out by Bishop. That she did not destroy her notebooks is no licence to ignore her scrupulousness, so this volume is something of a guilty pleasure. Disconcertingly, three poems from the book have already found their way into a new anthology of love poetry.