Elizabeth Bishop Quotes

“If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.”

“all my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something.”

“Insomnia"


perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.”

“Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by.”

“Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)”

“Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together
in their sleep,

Close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.

Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.”

“Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?”

“Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed home and thought of here? Where should we be today?”

“Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.”

“From a magician's midnight sleeve
the radio-singers
distribute all their love-songs
over the dew-wet lawns.”

“Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?”

“The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing.”

“The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.”

“The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down”

“Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.”