Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T06:12:58.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Conventions of Closeness: Realism and the Creative Friendship of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Abstract

While it has been productive to consider the creative friendship of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell as grounded in a “shared experience of outsider-hood,” their correspondence and the poems they inspired each other to write reveal a shared attraction to conventional imagery of communal belonging—national allegiance, heterosexual domesticity, and nostalgia for the classical realism of nineteenth-century novels. Bishop and Lowell were a queer couple for many reasons, but I argue that their conflation of conventionality and social critique resonates strongly with recent theories of counterculture in reflecting the possibility—often taken to be a nightmare of lyric poets—that one's inner life is inhabited and shaped by another.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Axelrod, Steven Gould. “Elizabeth Bishop and Containment Policy.” American Literature 75.4 (2003): 843–67. Print.Google Scholar
Bell, Vereen M. Robert Lowell: Nihilist as Hero. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bersani, Leo. “Sociality and Sexuality.” Critical Inquiry 26.4 (2000): 641–56. Print.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “The Armadillo.” Bishop, Complete Poems 103–04.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “Cape Breton.” Bishop, Complete Poems 6768.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. The Complete Poems, 1927–1979. New York: Farrar, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “Crusoe in England.” Bishop, Complete Poems 162–66.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “The End of March.” Bishop, Complete Poems 179–80.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “From Trollope's Journal.” Bishop, Complete Poems 132.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “Lowell Reminiscences.” App. 2. Travisano with Hamilton 809–11.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “Night City.” Bishop, Complete Poems 167–68.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “North Haven.” Bishop, Complete Poems 188–89.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. One Art: Letters. Ed. Giroux, Robert. New York: Farrar, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “The Prodigal.” Bishop, Complete Poems 71.Google Scholar
Bishop, Elizabeth. “Syllables.” Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments. Ed. Quinn, Alice. New York: Farrar, 2006. 101. Print.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. Foreword. Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art. Ed. Schwartz, Lloyd and Estess, Sybil P. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1983. ix–xi. Print.Google Scholar
Breslin, Paul. The Psycho-political Muse: American Poetry since the Fifties. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Crandall, Emily. “Gertrude and Her Boys: Collaborative Friendship, Masculine Styles, and Queer Affairs in the Modern World.” Diss. U of Michigan, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Davidson, Michael. Guys like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lee. “The Geography of Gender: Elizabeth Bishop's ‘In the Waiting Room.‘Contemporary Literature 26.2 (1985): 179–96. Print.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Erkkila, Betsy. “Dickinson and Rich: Toward a Theory of Female Poetic Influence.” American Literature 56.4 (1984): 541–59. Print.Google Scholar
Erkkila, Betsy. “Elizabeth Bishop, Modernism, and the Left.” American Literary History 8.2 (1996): 284310. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erkkila, Betsy. The Wicked Sisters: Women Poets, Literary History, and Discord. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Fliegelman, Jay. Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolt against Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800. New York: Cambridge UP, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Galvin, Mary E. Queer Poetics: Five Modernist Women Writers. Westport: Greenwood, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Print.Google Scholar
Glavey, Brian. “Dazzling Estrangement: Modernism, Queer Ekphrasis, and the Spatial Form of Nightwood.” PMLA 124.3 (2009): 749–63. Print.Google Scholar
Hammer, Langdon. “Useless Concentration: Life and Work in Elizabeth Bishop's Letters and Poems.” American Literary History 9.1 (1997): 162–80. Print.Google Scholar
Herrmann, Anne. Queering the Moderns: Poses/Portraits/Performances. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hovey, Jaime. A Thousand Words: Portraiture, Style, and Queer Modernism. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Jarrell, Randall. Poetry and the Age. New York: Knopf, 1953. Print.Google Scholar
Kalstone, David. Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. New York: Farrar, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Koestenbaum, Wayne. Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Laird, Holly. “‘A Hand Spills from the Book's Threshold’: Coauthorship's Readers.” PMLA 116.2 (2001): 344–53. Print.Google Scholar
Laird, Holly. Women Coauthors. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Lamos, Colleen. Deviant Modernism: Sexual and Textual Errancy in T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. New York: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Pericles. Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel. New York: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Love, Heather, et al. “Cluster on Queer Modernism.” PMLA 124.3 (2009): 744816. Print.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “At the Indian Killer's Grave.” Lowell, Collected Poems 5658.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. Collected Poems. Ed. Bidart, Frank and Gewanter, David. New York: Farrar, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. Collected Prose. Ed. Giroux, Robert. New York: Farrar, 1979. Print.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “For the Union Dead.” Lowell, Collected Poems 376–78.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. The Letters of Robert Lowell. Ed. Hamilton, Saskia. New York: Farrar, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “Mr. Edwards and the Spider.” Lowell, Collected Poems 5960.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “91 Revere Street.” Lowell, Collected Poems 121–50.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “The Old Flame.” Lowell, Collected Poems 323–24.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “On ‘Skunk Hour.‘” Lowell, Collected Prose 225–29.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “Skunk Hour.” Lowell, Collected Poems 191–92.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “Thomas, Bishop, and Williams.” Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art. Ed. Schwartz, Lloyd and Estess, Sybil P. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1983. 186–89. Print.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “T. S. Eliot.” Lowell, Collected Prose 4552.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “Waking Early Sunday Morning.” Lowell, Collected Poems 383–86.Google Scholar
Lowell, Robert. “Water.” Lowell, Collected Poems 321–22.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel: A Historicophilosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. Trans. Bostock, Anna. Cambridge: MIT P, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Madden, Ed. Tiresian Poetics: Modernism, Sexuality, Voice, 1888–2001. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Masten, Jeffrey. Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
McDonald, Russell. “Modernism and Cross-Gender Collaboration: W. B. Yeats, Marianne Moore, and D. H. Lawrence.” Diss. U of Michigan, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Partridge, Elise. “‘But We Must Notice’: Lowell's Harvard Classes on Berryman, Bishop, and Jarrell.” Jarrell, Bishop, Lowell, and Co.: Middle-Generation Poets in Context. Ed. Ferguson, Suzanne. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2003. 303–12. Print.Google Scholar
Perloff, Marjorie G. The Poetic Art of Robert Lowell. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1973. Print.Google Scholar
Pickard, Zachariah. “The Morality of Aesthetic Action: Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, and the Politics of Poetry.” American Literature 79 (2007): 393411. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rich, Adrienne. “The Eye of the Outsider: The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.” Boston Review 8.2 (1983): 16. Print.Google Scholar
Roman, Camille. Elizabeth Bishop's World War II–Cold War View. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.” Introduction. Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction. Ed. Sedgwick, . Durham: Duke UP, 1997. 137. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thurston, Michael. “Robert Lowell's Monumental Vision: History, Form, and the Cultural Work of Postwar American Lyric.” American Literary History 12.1–2 (2000): 79112. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Travisano, Thomas J. Midcentury Quartet: Bishop, Lowell, Jarrell, Berryman, and the Making of a Postmodern Aesthetic. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Travisano, Thomas J., with Hamilton, Saskia, eds. Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. New York: Farrar, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Vendler, Helen. “The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop.” Critical Inquiry 13.4 (1987): 825–38. Print.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Whidden, Seth. “On Poetry and Collaboration in the Nineteenth Century.” French Forum 32.1–2 (2007): 7388. Print.Google Scholar
Williamson, Alan. Pity the Monsters: The Political Vision of Robert Lowell. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974. Print.Google Scholar