American Views Abroad

 
The late US poet Elizabeth Bishop has been discussed a lot recently because Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Bishop and edited by Alice Quinn has just been published. In the New York Review of Books Charles Simic, himself a poet, reviews this book and discusses Bishop's life and legacy. Simic reveals how Bishop 'was sure that most complicated experiences and ideas can be presented in the simplest possible way' and reveals how she 'could write a tough political poem without making a single, overt political statement.' Her poem The Armadillo follows with its first lines

This is the time of year
When almost every night
The frail, illegal fire ballons
appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

Simic writes: 'Has there ever been a more terrifying poem about the slaughter of innocents? If so, I can't recall it. ....We see what she sees and only grasp in the end how much all this is like the firebombing of cities.'

The entire The Armadillo and Simic's essay The Power of Reticence at www.nybooks.com/articles/18930.
- posted by Gloria @ 6:51 PM