‘Preternaturally Observant, Detached but Compassionate’: Dana Gioia on Elizabeth Bishop

“One hundred years after her birth … [she] is admired in every critical camp – from feminists to formalists – who agree on little else. … Bishop is, for the time being at least, the most popular woman poet in American literature after Emily Dickinson. … What makes her pre-eminence particularly remarkable is that she wrote so little.”