Centenary celebration for poet Elizabeth Bishop

Her letters to him might be the most revealing things she ever wrote. Her verse is famous for resisting the confessional urge, but in these letters she praises and damns other poets (she hated the Beats), speaks at length about her poems and fears, and repeatedly expresses her fierce love for Lowell, her friend and fellow poet: "Please let us not have falling-outs!"

At one time, his reputation overshadowed hers. But when feminism hit the English departments, that changed rapidly. Today, she and Lowell generally are considered at least equals.

Like many people, I associate my discovery of Elizabeth Bishop with the day I came to poetry. In my little local library, on a deserted 1968 afternoon, I happened upon "The Fish" - and "The Man-Moth":

He emerges

from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks

and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.

I could not stop reading. I ransacked the (very few) poetry books on the shelves for more Bishop.

"The Man-Moth" was Schwartz's first Bishop, too. He was sitting on the floor, he says, "but if I'd been in a chair, I would have fallen off."

Then he speaks for thousands of readers and writers about their first Bishop, their next Bishop, the Elizabeth Bishop of their lives:

"It was one of the greatest things I'd heard in my whole life."