Elizabeth Bishop made the difficult genre of descriptive poetry look easy. Armed with her adroit phrasing and vivid vocabulary, she explored subjects like encountering animals and childhood memories.
Unlike her literary contemporaries, Bishop avoided the poetic practice of intimate admissions about her private life. She was a discreet artist who understood the deep resonance a suggestion can engender in a reader as opposed to an overt statement. Deemed one of the most gifted American poets of the last century, Bishop often rejected requests to be included in all-female anthologies and seldom spoke about her lesbian relationships. In her later years, she was chastised by activists for her reticence with regards to feminism and LGBT rights, but her perceived insouciance towards these issues was not an indifference to social progress, it was her putting emphasis on the inherent effectiveness and originality of her work.
