Introduction

Abstract

Spaces form chambers for Elizabeth Bishop’s music. Sounds reverberate from the pages of Bishop’s poetry, often overtly displaying their sound patterns to readers, while simultaneously intoning external soundscapes. The chapters in this volume meticulously display Bishop’s virtuosity with transforming traditional poetic and musical forms into her own innovative adaptations fitting contemporary experience. Seemingly natural voices become our own in poems that also register dissonances of others. This leads readers to consider cultural conflicts, exclamations both humorous and violent, that ask us to reconsider our contextual living conditions. Beyond playful interrogations of how linguistic sounds define us and what we know, Bishop provides a fluid range of tones to explore difference. Her poetic music from European and North American traditions extends to twentieth-century Brazilian genres. Furthermore, her literature’s musical settings have inspired diverse scores by twentieth-century composers and current songwriters around the globe.