Poems

January 17, 2011
To celebrate the centennial of the birth of Bishop (1911–1979), FSG is releasing three landmark volumes of her writing in one month—new editions of her poems and prose, plus her complete correspondence with her editors at the New Yorker. Poems includes the complete text of what is for many a lifelong bedside companion, the 1983 Complete Poems, plus selections from the drafts and poems in progress from Bishop's archive, first published as Edgar Allan Poe and the Jukebox. Especially in the years since her death, Bishop has become one of America's most beloved poets, known for her careful and deceptively layered descriptions ("I looked into his eyes/ which were far larger than mine/ but shallower, and yellowed,/ the irises backed and packed/ with tarnished tinfoil," she famously says of a just-caught fish), and this new edition is the most loving treatment of her poetic output, the best place to start and perhaps all one needs in the end. (This title is also available with Prose as a hardcover boxed set, $75, ISBN 978-0-374-12558-5.)