Elizabeth Bishop's Brazil

the long version

When the American poet Elizabeth Bishop arrived in Brazil in 1951 at the age of forty, she had not planned to stay, but her love affair with the Brazilian aristocrat Lota de Macedo Soeares and with the country itself set her on another course, and Brazil became her home for nearly two decades. In this groundbreaking new study, Bethany Hicok offers Bishop's readers the most comprehensive study to date on the transformative impact of Brazil on the poet's life and art. Drawing on archival sources that include Bishop's unpublished travel writings and providing provocative new readings of the poetry, Elizabeth Bishop's Brazil is a long-overdue exploration of a pivotal phase in this great poet's life and work. -- from back cover.