92Y Video: The Correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell
In her first letter to Robert Lowell, dated May 12, 1947, Elizabeth Bishop wrote, “I was supposed to read, too, up at the YMHA Saturday evening but couldn’t make it, and I hope my absence was a help rather than a hindrance.” While the poets never shared an evening at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center, the recently published Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell makes clear that they shared much during their 30-year friendship. And in a dramatic presentation of their letters and some of their poems on Monday night, Tony-nominated actors Kate Burton and Michael Cumpsty brought that friendship to life. “Almost every selection,” wrote The New Yorker in their review, “captured some measure of perfection.”
More than that, though, they are examples of letter-writing as a peculiar and essential art form. Just as Bishop and Lowell taught courses in poetry, so, too, could they have taught courses in correspondence—in how to perfectly combine irony and sincerity; gossip and critical thinking; and good cheer and sorrow to form an elegant epistle.
Above, enjoy a clip of an exchange between the two poets late in their lives, as they reminisce about when they were young and newly acquainted.
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