PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MUSIC AND LITERATURE Elizabeth Bishop and the Music of Literature Edited by Angus Cleghorn Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature Series Editors Paul Lumsden City Centre Campus MacEwan University Edmonton, AB, Canada Marco Katz Montiel Facultad de Letras Pontifical Catholic University of Chile Santiago, RM - Santiago, Chile This leading-edge series joins two disciplines in an exploration of how music and literature confront each other as dissonant antagonists while also functioning as consonant companions. By establishing a critical connection between literature and music, this series highlights the interaction between what we read and hear. Investigating the influence music has on narrative through history, theory, culture, or global perspectives provides a concrete framework for a seemingly abstract arena. Titles in the series, both mono- graphs and edited volumes, explore musical encounters in novels and poetry, considerations of the ways in which narratives appropriate musical structures, examinations of musical form and function, and studies of interactions with sound. Editorial Advisory Board: Frances R. Aparicio, Northwestern University, US Timothy Brennan, University of Minnesota, US Barbara Brinson Curiel, Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Humboldt State University, US Gary Burns, Northern Illinois University, US Peter Dayan, Word and Music Studies, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Shuhei Hosokawa, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Japan Javier F. León, Latin American Music Center of the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, US Marilyn G. Miller, Tulane University, US Robin Moore, University of Texas at Austin, US Nduka Otiono, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Canada Gerry Smyth, Liverpool John Moores University, England Jesús Tejada, Universitat de València, Spain Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel, Universidad del Valle, Colombia More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15596 Angus Cleghorn Editor Elizabeth Bishop and the Music of Literature Editor Angus Cleghorn Seneca College Toronto, ON, Canada Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature ISBN 978-3-030-33179-5 ISBN 978-3-030-33180-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33180-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Petr Bonek / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Elizabeth Bishop and the Grateful Dead (San Francisco, 1968–1969) by Jeffrey Harrison Whether she ever saw them perform we don’t know, but she did go to a Janis Joplin show, and Thom Gunn’s account of smoking a joint with her backstage at a group reading makes it easier to imagine her chatting with Jerry during a break (about Billie Holliday, or Baudelaire, or Blake) if not dancing in the aisles during one of the band’s already notoriously labyrinthine jams, like the one between “Dark Star” and “Saint Stephen” (a new song in their repertoire that season). He would have been twenty-six, she fifty-seven. She might have let it drop that Donovan wanted to record “The Burglar of Babylon,” he might have praised her trippy “Riverman,” but she probably wouldn’t have uttered the phrase she’d used in one of her unfinished essays to describe the music of a rock band she’d seen several times that year: a fucking machine— though that might have led to a flurry of wit or perhaps a killer rendition of “Love Light,” with Pigpen lewdly rapping, in the second set. Unlikely? Still, I’d like to think it happened— my favorite poet meeting my favorite band. Her partner then was in her twenties and had connections to the music scene. Also, in the year and a half she lived in San Francisco, the Dead gave over sixty-five performances so you’d think she’d have seen them once. Is that too much of a stretch? Well, this just in: five or so years later, on one of her trips up to her beloved Nova Scotia, Bishop brought as a present for her teenage cousin a copy of Europe ’72—a triple album gathered from live concerts—telling him the Grateful Dead was a band to know about … and also that it was okay to smoke pot. A cknowledgments Thanks to the Elizabeth Bishop Society and the American Literature Association for hosting two panels on “Voice, Tone, and Music” at the 2017 annual conference in Boston. Six papers formed the core of this book, which was developed with the encouragement of Palgrave Macmillan’s Allie Troyanos and external readers who provided valuable critical insights. Thomas Travisano and Jonathan Ellis provided helpful assistance in the book’s development. Thanks to Rachel Jacobe for her editorial work and to the authors of this book for their expertise and patience. I am grateful to Claire Moane and the School of English and Liberal Studies at Seneca College in Toronto for supporting my conference participation and collabo- rations with Bishop scholars. Thanks also to my family—Julie, Andrew, and Simon—for enabling study time and providing vital energies together. Let me not forget my parents and sisters, who shared a house of music. Elizabeth Bishop and the Grateful Dead was first published in The Yale Review, © Jeffrey Harrison. Used with permission of the author. Lisa Goldfarb’s chapter, “Music of the Sea: Elizabeth Bishop and Symbolist Poetics,” is based on a longer version of “Bishop and the Symbolists” in Chapter V of her book, Unexpected Affinities: Modern American Poetry and Symbolist Poetics, published by Sussex Academic Press. Goldfarb is grateful to the editor for acknowledging and agreeing to the publication of this current chapter. Thanks to Sussex Academic Press for permission. Quotations from the unpublished writings of Elizabeth Bishop are used with the permission of Archives and Special Collections, Vassar College Library. Excerpts of the unpublished notes are printed with permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, LLC on behalf of the Elizabeth Bishop Estate. vii c ontents 1 Introduction 1 Angus Cleghorn 2 “I am in Need of Music”: Elizabeth Bishop and the Energies of Sound and Song 7 Deryn Rees-Jones 3 Music of the Sea: Elizabeth Bishop and Symbolist Poetics 19 Lisa Goldfarb 4 The Rhythm of Syntax in Elizabeth Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses” 31 Yuki Tanaka 5 “Hearing Things”: Voice and Rhyme in the Poems of Elizabeth Bishop 41 Andrew Eastman 6 Causes for Excess: Elizabeth Bishop’s Eighty- Eight Exclamations 51 Christopher Spaide ix x CONTENTS 7 ‘A Very Important Violence of Tone’: Bishop’s ‘Roosters’ and Other Poems 65 Thomas Travisano 8 “Spontaneity occurs in a good attack”: Voice Control in Late Bishop 79 Angus Cleghorn 9 Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian Popular Music: From Anonymous Sambas to Contemporary Composers 89 Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins 10 ‘In Need of Music’: Musical Settings of Elizabeth Bishop 101 Lloyd Schwartz Works Cited 113 Index 117