Words in Air

November 15, 2008
Letter writing has a longstanding, highly regarded reputation for personal revelation, as exemplified by this collection of the vivid, spirited, spontaneous letters of poets Elizabeth Bishop (191179) and Robert Lowell (191777). Their letters over three decades explore both their outer public and their private inner lives. Yet neither strives to create literary expression in the letters; instead, readers clearly see the give and take of real friendship. Authenticity is ever presentand is especially pointed when either poet is making an observation on the poetry of the other. Their connectionin spite of disappointments, differences, and bouts of depressionwas never in jeopardy. In one letter, Bishop comments that Lowell sounds lively as a cricket. The reading world should offer up a chorus of lively cricket sounds, a singing of hosannas for the poetry of Bishop and Lowell that benefited immensely from their shared life through lettersand also for the letters alone. They remain fresh and memorable after 30 years of enduring wit and wisdom. Recommended for public and academic libraries.Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 25, 2008
Bishop and Lowell were two of the major poets of postwar America. From the time they met in 1947 at a party thrown by their mutual friend and poet, Randall Jarrell, through the end of Lowell’s life in 1977, the pair—who saw each other rarely but considered themselves intimate friends—maintained a steady correspondence about literature and their turbulent lives and their own complicated, at times flirtatious friendship. Lowell was manic-depressive and embroiled in two volatile marriages, while Bishop also suffered depression and more than her share of loss, including the suicide of her longtime lover. Many of their now famous letters, previously available in separate volumes, appear here in one volume, their exchanges preserved in the order they were sent and received. Throughout this momentous volume, transcendence comes to these two often troubled writers through the shared experience of art that brought them together and sustained them: “If only one could see everything that way all the time!,” writes Bishop in 1957, “that rare feeling of control, illumination—life is
all right, for the time being.” 13 b&w photos.