Elizabeth Bishop Research Paper

Elizabeth Bishop was born February 8, 1911 and died October 6, 1979. Elizabeth grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts with her grandparents. She lost both of her parents at only eight months old. Elizabeth lost her father to Bright 's disease; a disease that causes inflammation of the kidneys. Elizabeth 's mother had a mental breakdown when Elizabeth’s father had passed away and was admitted into a mental hospital. Elizabeth never saw her mother after that- leaving her to be raised by her father’s parents. After college, Elizabeth spent much of her time traveling Europe and Africa then decided to settle in Key West, Florida. These travels can be seen reflected in her first book North and South published in 1946. New York 1941, Bishop met Lota

Soon after in November 1952, they both moved to Brazil. Bishop suffered from times of depression, asthma, alcoholism, and became more depressed when Lota de Macedo Soares committed suicide while on their trip to visit New York. Also, some depression was from her poetry 's slow pace before the suicide. A lot of Elizabeth’s work is a reflection of her and her life on her experiences and feelings about life. Through her life she did not write many poems. However, she was widely admired and influential to many and continues to be even today. In one of her poems, “Sestina,” a granddaughter and her grandmother are sitting in the kitchen together. The grandmother is making tea and tidying up, while the granddaughter is drawing with her crayons. There is grief and sorrow throughout the story until the end when hope and happiness are introduced. In the first stanza, the granddaughter and the grandmother in the kitchen the grandmother is crying. The grandmother is trying not to cry and talks to the grand daughter while holding back the tears. In the second stanza, rain is beating on the roof and this is compared to

While in the waiting room, she realizes she is the only child and starts to read a National Geographic. The articles are naked women, a dead man “slung on a pole,” and a volcanic eruption and what she reads upsets her. She hears her Aunt give a tiny cry of pain and then realizes that she too is doing the same. She contemplates if her and her Aunt are the same, if she is the same as other people as well. She imagines both her and her Aunt falling. She has to try and come herself down by telling herself she is almost seven and that she is Elizabeth. In the end, she describes the waiting room as bright and too hot. When Elizabeth lost her father, she had a lot of trouble coping with going to live with her grandparents. Elizabeth states “I felt myself aging,” she recalled, “Even dying. I was bored and lonely with Grandma, my silent grandpa, the dinners alone…. At night I lay blinking my flashlight off and on, crying.” This left Elizabeth unsure of her life on who she was or who she was suppose to be. She was moved by the mystery of self identity and what her place was suppose to be in the