Elizabeth Bishop Quotes & Sayings

How - I didn't know any
word for it - how "unlikely" ...
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't? — Elizabeth Bishop

[Marianne Moore] once remarked, after a visit to her brother and his family, that the state of being married and having children had one enormous advantage: One never has to worry about whether one is doing the right thing or not. There isn't time. One is always having to go to the market or drive the children somewhere. There isn't time to wonder 'Is this right or isn't it? — Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seemed filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster — Elizabeth Bishop

What childishness is it that while there's breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around? — Elizabeth Bishop

I've never written the things I'd like to write that I've admired all my life. Maybe one never does. — Elizabeth Bishop

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house. — Elizabeth Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. — Elizabeth Bishop

Someone loves us all. — Elizabeth Bishop

Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" (1917)
Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to
make the stone
stony
. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are
perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects
"unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception
because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
Art
is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important. — Elizabeth Bishop

Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors. — Elizabeth Bishop

All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful. — Elizabeth Bishop

What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration. — Elizabeth Bishop

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm? — Elizabeth Bishop

I HATED the Salinger story. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it? — Elizabeth Bishop

Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers. — Elizabeth Bishop

A sentence in Auden's Airman's Journal has always seemed very profound to me
I
haven't the book here so I can't quote it exactly, but something about time and space and
how 'geography is a thousand times more important to modern man than history'
I
always like to feel where I am geographically all the time, on the map,
but maybe that
is something else again. — Elizabeth Bishop

Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible. — Elizabeth Bishop

Should we have stayed home and thought of here? — Elizabeth Bishop

I am overcome by my own amazing sloth ... Can you please forgive me and believe that it is really because I want to do something well that I don't do it at all? — Elizabeth Bishop

Insomnia"


perhaps she's a daytime sleeper. — Elizabeth Bishop

Ports are necessities, like postage stamps or soap, but they seldom seem to care what impressions they make. — Elizabeth Bishop

The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. — Elizabeth Bishop

Sometimes it seemsas though only intelligent people are stupid enough to fall in love & only stupid people are intelligent enough to let themselves be loved. — Elizabeth Bishop

Bishop on "A Miracle for Breakfast" and Sestina Technique
It seems to me that there are two ways possible for a sestina. One is to use unusual words
as terminations, in which case they would have to be used differently as often as
possible - as you say, "change of scale." That would make a very highly seasoned kind of
poem. And the other way is to use as colorless words as possible - like Sidney, so that it
becomes less of a trick and more of a natural theme and variations. I guess I have tried to
do both at once. — Elizabeth Bishop

Lullaby For the Cat
Minnow, go to sleep and dream,
Close your great big eyes;
Round your bed Events prepare
The pleasantest surprise.
Darling Minnow, drop that frown,
Just cooperate,
Not a kitten shall be drowned
In the Marxist State.
Joy and Love will both be yours,
Minnow, don't be glum.
Happy days are coming soon
Sleep, and let them come ... — Elizabeth Bishop

The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored. — Elizabeth Bishop

Since we do float on an unknown sea, I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way carefully; who knows what may depend on it? — Elizabeth Bishop

I leave a lovely opalescent ribbon: I know this. — Elizabeth Bishop

Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by. — Elizabeth Bishop

The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing. — Elizabeth Bishop

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn form the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown. — Elizabeth Bishop

Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs
no regular hours, so many temptations! — Elizabeth Bishop

All my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something. — Elizabeth Bishop

Well, the cat is flourishing and gets more spoiled and more beautiful every day. His whiskers measure, from tip to tip, including his mouth and nose, of course, ten inches, pure white whale bone. — Elizabeth Bishop

Screen porch in a tree. — Elizabeth Bishop

Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down — Elizabeth Bishop

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. — Elizabeth Bishop

It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, seabirds in ones or twos. The rackety, icy, offshore wind numbed our faces on one side; disrupted the formation of a lone flight of Canada geese; and blew back the low, inaudible rollers in upright, steely mist. — Elizabeth Bishop

Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare. — Elizabeth Bishop

Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [ ... ], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world? — Elizabeth Bishop

Democracy in the contemporary world demands, among other things, an educated and informed people. — Elizabeth Bishop

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy. — Elizabeth Bishop

You are you and you are going to be YOU forever. — Elizabeth Bishop

Everything only connected by "and" and "and. — Elizabeth Bishop

Something needn't be large to be good. — Elizabeth Bishop

I am sorry for people who can't write letters. But I suspect also that you and I ... love to write them because it's kind of like working without really doing it. — Elizabeth Bishop

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
esso - so - so - so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all. — Elizabeth Bishop

There are some people whom we envy not because they are rich or handsome or successful, although they may be all or any of these, but because everything they are or do seems to be all of a piece, so that even if they wanted to they could not be or do otherwise. — Elizabeth Bishop

Even losing you (a joking voice, a gesture/ I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident/ the art of losing's not too hard to master/ though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. — Elizabeth Bishop

If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one - and the same goes for paintings. — Elizabeth Bishop

But he sleeps on the top of his mast
with his eyes closed tight.
The gull inquired into his dream,
which was, I must not fall.
The spangled sea below wants me to fall.
It is hard as diamonds; it wants to destroy us all. — Elizabeth Bishop

...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do.. — Elizabeth Bishop

And as to experience-well, think how little some good poets have had, or how much some bad ones have. — Elizabeth Bishop

One has to commit a painting,' said Degas,
'the way one commits a crime. — Elizabeth Bishop

Sleeping on the Ceiling
It is so peaceful on the ceiling!
It is the Place de la Concorde.
The little crystal chandelier
is off, the fountain is in the dark.
Not a soul is in the park.
Below, where the wallpaper is peeling,
the Jardin des Plantes has locked its gates.
Those photographs are animals.
The mighty flowers and foliage rustle;
under the leaves the insects tunnel.
We must go under the wallpaper
to meet the insect-gladiator,
to battle with a net and trident,
and leave the fountain and the square.
But oh, that we could sleep up there ... — Elizabeth Bishop

Bishop on "At the Fishhouses"
At the last minute, after I'd had a chance to do a little research in Cape Breton, I found
I'd said codfish scales once when it should have been herring scales. I hope they
corrected it all right.
2
Quite a few lines of "At the Fishhouses" came to me in a dream, and the scene - which
was real enough, I'd recently been there - but the old man and the conversation, etc.,
were all in a later dream — Elizabeth Bishop

Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.) — Elizabeth Bishop

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free. — Elizabeth Bishop

Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things
like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it
for a baby goat. I'd have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities
of islands, islands spawning islands,
like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to live
on each and every one, eventually,
for ages, registering their flora,
their fauna, their geography. — Elizabeth Bishop

I was made at right angles to the world
and I see it so. I can only see it so. — Elizabeth Bishop

Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together
in their sleep,
Close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.
Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes. — Elizabeth Bishop

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky! — Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too? — Elizabeth Bishop

I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen. — Elizabeth Bishop

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well
into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me. — Elizabeth Bishop

I never knew him. We both knew this place,
apparently, this literal small backwater,
looked at it long enough to memorize it,
our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,
or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).
Our visions coincided--'visions' is
too serious a word--our looks, two looks:
art 'copying from life' and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?
Life and the memory of it cramped,
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail
--the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese. — Elizabeth Bishop