dumbfoundry

[...] This kind of posthumous exposure always carries a certain risk for a poet, especially one whose reputation depends on a small, carefully edited, body of work. Philip Larkin, to name the most obvious example, is no better off for the flood of unfinished poems and juvenilia that has appeared since his death. Bishop was no less of a perfectionist – “Can you please forgive me”, she wrote to Marianne Moore, “and believe that it is really because I want to do something well that I don’t do it at all?” – and she would surely have recoiled from the idea of seeing her drafts, some of them little more than notes, between hard covers.

But thanks to the skill of its editing and the intelligence of its presentation, Edgar Allan Poe and the Jukebox can only increase our understanding of Bishop, and our admiration. [...]

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 1:41 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.