A compelling portrait of a beloved poet from one of today's most acclaimed novelists In this book, novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences—the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that will intrigue readers interested in both Bishop and Tóibín. For Tóibín, the secret of Bishop's emotional power is in what she leaves unsaid. Exploring Bishop’s famous attention to detail, Tóibín describes how Bishop is able to convey great emotion indirectly, through precise descriptions of particular settings, objects, and events. He examines how Bishop’s attachment to the Nova Scotia of her childhood, despite her later life in Key West and Brazil, is related to her early loss of her parents—and how this connection finds echoes in Tóibín’s life as an Irish writer who has lived in Barcelona, New York, and elsewhere. Beautifully written and skillfully blending biography, literary appreciation, and descriptions of Tóibín’s travels to Bishop’s Nova Scotia, Key West, and Brazil, On Elizabeth Bishop provides a fresh and memorable look at a beloved poet even as it gives us a window into the mind of one of today’s most acclaimed novelists. "Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism" "Colm Tóibín – Winner of the 2017 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation" "Colm Tóibín, Inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame 2015" "One of The Guardian’s Best Books of 2015, selected by Blake Morrison" "One of The Guardian’s Best Books of 2015, selected by Nicci Gerrard" "One of The Guardian’s Readers’ Books of 2015" "One of the Irish Times 2015 Readers’ Books of the Year" "One of The New Yorker’s Twelve Books Related to Poems, 2015" "Tóibín's close readings of Bishop's poems in this deft suite of essays are admirably acute, but what's truly special is that Tóibín offers not only an elegant study of Bishop's achievements as a poet, but also a shadow account of his own development as a writer, and thus an incidental treatise on the ways writers affect one another's process." ---Joel Brouwer, New York Times Book Review "[The book's] pull on the reader is almost tidal . . . it's still impossible for a reader to resist getting sucked into the orbit of Robert Lowell, the rapaciously brilliant and royally messed-up literary lion whom Bishop considered her closest friend. The cat-and-mouse dynamic of Bishop and Lowell's correspondence remains, in Mr. Tóibín's telling, as riveting as a series on Netflix or HBO, and probably ought to become one." ---Jeff Gordinier, New York Times "It is not surprising to find, with Colm Tóibín's exquisite meditation On Elizabeth Bishop that the masterful Irish novelist is also a critic of considerable acuity. Tóibín's sensibility is superbly attuned to that of the formidable Bishop, a poet whose shadow over the crowded landscape of 20th-century American poetry grows longer with every passing year." ---Michael Lindgren, Washington Post "The Irish writer's valentine to the Canadian-American poet: a beautiful meditation on shyness, sex, art, and family." ---Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker "[A] wonderful book." ---Lavinia Greenlaw, The Telegraph "Tóibín's little book on Bishop is a writer's exercise in rechristening himself, a second time through with Bishop as his chaperone. The narrative draws us back to moments when the discovery of Bishop, and later of Thom Gunn, drew Tóibín forward. This is the kind of beautiful relay that great writers provide for each other, and it gives you hope that some young person somewhere who finds himself in a bind will pick this short book up and find in it not one, but two companions." ---Dan Chiasson, New York Review of Books "Bishop is a 20th-century U.S. master poet; Tóibín is an Irish fiction writer of today. You might wonder at this pairing. Well, none could pair comfortably with the uneasy, furtive Bishop. Turns out the two have much in common. . . . I just loved this: a writer so open about how his work and life touch another writer's. . . . Little books like this make the world better, teaching us much and inviting more." ---John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer "A deceptively little, sharp, brilliant book, in which Tóibín's understanding and excellent analysis are profound, up close and personal." ---Niall MacMonagle, Irish Times " On Elizabeth Bishop is an engaging introduction to her life and work, and also an essay on the importance of her work in [Tóibín's] life." ---Matthew Bevis, London Review of Books "How does a writer turn life into art? Novelist, poet and critic Colm Tóibín's brillian