Prose

Elizabeth Bishop's prose is not nearly as well known as her poetry, but she was a dazzling and compelling prose writer too, as the publication of her letters has shown. Her stories are often on the borderline of memoir, and vice versa. From her college days, she could find the most astonishing yet thoroughly apt metaphors to illuminate her ideas. This volume-edited by the poet, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, and Bishop scholar Lloyd Schwartz-includes virtually all her published shorter prose pieces and a number of prose works not published until after her death. Here are her famous as well as her lesser-known stories, crucial memoirs, literary and travel essays, book reviews, and-for the first time-her original draft of Brazil, the Time/Life volume she repudiated in its published version, and the correspondence between Bishop and the poet Anne Stevenson, the author of the first book-length volume devoted to Bishop.

Editor's Note

STORIES AND MEMOIRS
The Baptism
The Sea and Its Shore
In Prison
Gregorio Valdes, 1879-1939
Mercedes Hospital
The Farmer's Children
The Housekeeper
Gwendolyn
In the Village
Primer Class
The Country Mouse
The U.S.A. School of Writing
A Trip to Vigia
Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore
To the Botequim & Back
Memories of Uncle Neddy
Brazil

ESSAYS, REVIEWS, AND TRIBUTES
As We Like It: Miss Moore and the Delight of Imitation
Review of Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks
Review of XAIPE: 71 Poems by E. E. Cummings
Love from Emily
Review of The Riddle of Emily Dickinson
What the Young Man Said to the Psalmist
The Manipulation of Mirrors
Introduction to The Diary of "Helena Morley"
A New Capital, Aldous Huxley, and Some Indians
"I Was But Just Awake"
Robert Lowell's Life Studies
"Writing poetry is an unnatural act..."
Some Notes on Robert Lowell
A Sentimental Tribute
Flannery O'Connor: 1925-1964
On the Railroad Named Delight
Gallery Note for Wesley Wehr
An Inadequate Tribute
Introduction to An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry
A Brief Reminiscence and a Brief Tribute

TRANSLATIONS
From The Diary of "Helena Morley"
Stories by Clarice Lispector The Smallest Woman in the World
A Hen
Marmosets
Correspondence with Anne Stevenson, 1963-1965

APPENDIX: EARLY PROSE
On Being Alone
A Mouse and Mice
The Thumb
Then Came the Poor
From "Time's Andromedas"
Gerard Manley Hopkins: Notes on Timing in His Poetry
The Last Animal
Dimensions for a Novel

Notes on the Texts
Index