Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

This has been my bedtime reading for a month now and what a lovely way to end the day. They lived apart, continents apart, but close in spirit. Their letters are gossipy, smart, unguarded, critical of each others' work, supportive through triumphs and awful trials. They say things to each other that they never would have voiced aloud. (Sometimes they get catty, and mostly they are right.) As their careers progress, you follow a poem by poem progression. The letters made me aware of the extent to which their poems were written in response to the work of the other, and the importance of their prose and translation to the poems for which they are now famous. It's a nice book too, a good design, and a fine thing in hand. My only complaint is that the footnotes (which are fascinating) are printed in a tiny font that's almost too small for my tired eyes.

I may be regarded as prejudiced but I have long followed the life and poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. This book not only solidified by love of her work but extended it.

This correspondence is one long (nearly a thousand pages) love letter between two of the best poets of their generation. Both Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were personally tortured by their demons (her was alcohol, his was manic-depression) and failed relationships. Though never lovers, their's was a marriage of the minds via the mail for thirty years. It is helpful, though not vital, that the reader be acquainted with their poetry -- the letters have more meaning and one can understand the fuss they had with their written creations. This definiative collection of their letters is a biography of their adult lives.