Xmas Present

A splendid volume of "Words In Air" is now in my hands. Edited by Thomas Travisano and Saskia it contains the entire correspondence of two great American poets - Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop.

At just over 800 pages long, this hard back edition is thoughtfully annotated and brings together three decades of correspondence that reveals the innermost secrets of the authors. Namely, they suffer from procrastination, uncertainty, and inner doubt just as much as the rest of us.

Both of them are flawed; she was an alcoholic, he suffered from well publicised bipolar breakdowns. Yet out of these events came poetry of immense power; the detail in Lowell's work grips you. The lime and cool earth of Uncle Devereux is real, I can feel and smell the softness of the lime, the cool gritty feel of freshly dug earth, portents of death and a reflection of his Uncle's state.

Bishop is relentless in critiquing everything she reads, and not afraid to criticise Lowell. In her time, Bishop's work was underestimated and different from Lowell's. The crossing of letters, some of them poetic in their own right, is like watching a long running tennis point where the athleticism of the two players makes it impossible to turn away.

I'll post a full review when I get through the book, so that will be mid January I hope. In the meantime I'll be back online buying copies of Lord Weary's Castle, EB's complete poems and rereading Life Studies to fill in the blanks when they discuss each others works.