Dear Elizabeth

by Sarah Ruhl

  LOWELL

  Dear Elizabeth:

  (You must be called that; I’m called Cal, but I won’t explain why. None of the prototypes are flattering: Calvin, Caligula, Caliban, Calvin Coolidge…)

  I’m glad you wrote me, because it gives me an excuse to tell you how much I liked your New Yorker fish poem. Perhaps, it’s your best. Anyway, I felt very envious reading it.

  I question a little the word breast in the last four or five lines—a little too much in its context perhaps; but I’m probably wrong.

  She thinks he is wrong.

  P.S. I’d like to have you record your poems when you come here. I hope you’ll really come here this fall and we can go to the galleries and see the otters.

  Yours,

  Cal

  BISHOP

  Dear Cal,

  I think I’d rather see the otters than make recordings, but I am quite sure I’ll be there for a day or two, and I’d like to see you, recordings or no.

  P.S. I’ll have a canary with me …

  INTERLUDE

  Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop see each other in person.

  She carries a canary. She puts the canary down.

  She shakes Robert Lowell’s hand. She is nervous.

  It is strangely intimate reading a poem aloud for one other person.

  He puts on headphones and records her saying this poem into a microphone:

  BISHOP

  I caught a tremendous fish

  and held him beside the boat

  half out of water, with my hook

  fast in a corner of his mouth.

  He didn’t fight.

  He hadn’t fought at all …

  I stared and stared

  And victory filled up

  the little rented boat,

  from the pool of bilge

  where oil had spread a rainbow

  around the rusted engine

  to the bailer rusted orange,

  the sun-cracked thwarts,

  the oarlocks on their strings,

  the gunnels—until everything

  was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

  She looks at him.

  And I let the fish go.

  A moment.

  They part.

  LOWELL

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I’ve at last heard the records and some of them couldn’t be better—“Fish” and “Fish-Houses” are wonderful.

  Since your visit several weird people have shown up here. Major Dyer, who takes Ezra Pound ice-cream, was a colleague of Patton’s and teaches Margaret Truman fencing. And Mrs. Lowell Conger, a mystic and a relative who—but the language fails me, and anyway she’s gone back to California.

  Affectionately,

  Cal

  Elizabeth Bishop puts on a sun hat and sunglasses.

  BISHOP

  Dear Cal,

  It has been very pleasant at Hemingway’s house but I really couldn’t get to work at all of course and am just beginning. The swimming pool is wonderful—it lights up at night—I find that each underwater bulb is five times the voltage of the one bulb in the light house across the street, so the pool must be visible to Mars—it is wonderful to swim around in a sort of green fire, one’s friends look like luminous frogs.

  I received a very obscene letter in verse from Dylan Thomas—A Streetcar Named Desire is referred to as “A Truck Called Fuck.”

  I still think it would be nice if you could visit here sometime, maybe Christmas—if turtle soup can attract you …

  Affectionately yours,

  Elizabeth

  LOWELL

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I tried swimming—was nearly drowned and murdered by children with foot-flippers and helmets and a ferocious mother doing the crawl. Then came down with a cold.

  Had a fine week-end with William Carlos Williams. He took me to see his old Spanish mother—91, and was like a Dickens character patting her hands and making her laugh saying, “Mama, would you rather look at us or 20 beautiful blonds?”

  I heard Anaïs Nin read—pretty thin stuff, though not unattractive personally.

  Key West tempts me.

  BISHOP

  Happy New Year!

  I’m sorry not to have written before. I’ve been sick most of the last month—asthma—it doesn’t completely incapacitate one but is a nuisance. I am feeling much better, maybe the drugs, maybe two new hats, or maybe just getting away from my friends who are so full of solicitude.

  LOWELL

  So sorry to hear about your asthma—how I thank God that my imaginary asthma was cured by a chiropractor.

  Here’s my poem, in time I hope to cheer you.

  She reads his poem.

  BISHOP

  I’ve read your poem. I like it more than I can say. In fact I can shed tears over it very easily & I hardly ever do that except over trash, frequently, & over something at the other extreme, very rarely. I think one weeps over two kinds of embarrassment—& this is so embarrassing in the right way one wants to read it without really looking at it directly. That damned celluloid bird …

  I made the mistake of reading it when I was working on a poem & it took me an hour or so to get back into my own metre. There are only about 3 words I’d take objection to, at my most carping—

  I’m going back to New York in April & hope to stop off in Washington to see a couple of friends—including you—will you be there then?

  LOWELL

  I’m delighted you liked my poem. I was afraid you’d find it violent and dry.

  I won’t mail you any more poems, if they take you from writing your own.

  How would August be for a visit? Do you think you might have room for my friend Carley? Her little boy is here now, an angelic child, I think, and I’m not soft on children.

  BISHOP

  I really feel you should struggle against your feeling about children, I suppose it’s better than drooling over them like Swinburne. But I’ve always loved the stories about Shelley going around Oxford peering into baby-carriages, and how he once said to a woman carrying a baby, “Madame, can your baby tell us anything of pre-existence?”

  LOWELL

  My feeling about babies is mostly a joke.

  At last my divorce is over. While I was in New York, I saw Jean—all very affectionate and natural, thank God.

  It’s funny at my age—all the rawness of learning, what I used to think should be done with by twenty-five. Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing. I suppose that’s what vocation means—at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I’m thankful, and call it good.

  BISHOP

  Thank you for your letter which did me a great deal of good.

  It’s very hot today, and I guess I must hike down to that so-called beach and get into that icy water for a while. Having just digested all the New York Times and some pretty awful clam-chowder, I don’t feel the slightest bit literary, just stupid. Or maybe it’s just too much solitude.

  Wiscasset is beautiful and dead as a door-nail. I think its heart beats twice a day when the train goes through.

  I think almost the last straw here is the hairdresser—a nice big hearty Maine girl. She told me: 1, that my hair “don’t feel like hair at all.” 2, I was turning gray practically “under her eyes.” And when I’d said, yes, I was an orphan, she said “Kind of awful, ain’t it, ploughing through life alone.” So now I can’t walk downstairs in the morning or upstairs at night without feeling I’m ploughing. There’s no place like New England.

  LOWELL

  I know the solitude that gets too much. It doesn’t drug me, but I get fantastic and uncivilized.

  Tell me how to get to your house. Are you sure one more visitor won’t be too many? In Maine your friends pour in like lava—hot from their cities. I’ll understand if you want a rest.

  P.S. There’s something haunting and nihilistic about your hair-dresser.

  They see each other in Maine.

&nb
sp; Suddenly the stage is full of water and a rock.

  They stand waist high in cold water, holding hands, looking out.

  A silence.

  She turns to him.

  BISHOP

  “When you write my epitaph, you must say I was the loneliest person who ever lived.”

  She starts laughing at herself.

  Suddenly it’s not funny.

  He stops laughing and touches her face.

  A moment.

  A SUBTITLE FLASHES:

  He thinks the question: Will you marry me?

  She thinks: What did you say?

  The gulls, the sea, and a wave almost engulf them.

  They come up for air.

  The water dries rapidly.

  Part Two: Come to Yaddo

  Bishop and Lowell back in their separate spaces, no hint of the sea.

  A SUBTITLE FLASHES: August 16, 1947.

  BISHOP

  Dear Cal,

  A commission for you. To find me a rich husband in Washington—one with lots of diamonds and absolutely no interest in the arts.

  LOWELL

  I’m having a form printed. Age, weight, income, interests, apathies, aversions, and a composite physical examination stamped by a notary.

  If you come to Yaddo, you’d find waiting … my first project for you: age: 41, weight: 155, hair: full black graying. He has lived for 20 years in a spic and span little white house with two aged servants tending lambs and reading Thoreau.

  Outs: He has gone mad once or twice (very stable at present); means small but adequate. I think we’ll use him as a decoy.

  Here is my starting list: Ted Roethke (only makes $6000 which doesn’t cover his drinking, but he has a genius for sponging) … My cousins Carlisle and Pearson Winslow, and my Uncle Cot. Really the best of all: 3 houses, a yacht, an income, absolutely no interest in the arts. He’s married at the moment to Aunt Sarah but he’s already divorced an actress and knows all the ropes.

  This is all I’ve been able to scare up for the first day, but things are in the saddle. You’ll make your headquarters here. With each candidate you’ll go on a moonlit paddle. We’ll see which one you would least know was in the house before five and is most entertaining after five.

  Ah me, back to life. I’ll write you a serious letter later. You were an angel to put up with all my imbecility and bad behavior. I’m almost a new man thanks to you—or is one ever?

  BISHOP

  I think you’ve done an enormous amount of ground-work … I must say I like the sound of the uncle best so far—in fact I’d settle for some form of dignified concubinage as long as it was guaranteed …

  Your room is now occupied by a very cheerful lady-water-colorist who transports a Yogurt-making machine around with her, and also the works of Mary Baker Eddy. I suppose I’m going to find out how she reconciles them, although I don’t want to.

  I do hope you had a good time in spite of all your troubles, because I did.

  They look at each other.

  I just hope I didn’t get too teasing and opinionated which I guess I’m apt to do with any encouragement at all.

  She looks away.

  I am alternately thinking of Yaddo & studying my freighter-trip booklets. Can you tell me how one applies to Yaddo?

  Affectionately yours,

  E.

  LOWELL

  New thoughts from E’s letter: Eliz. equals Betty, you might be called: Eliz, Liz, Lizzie, Betty, Bess, Bessy, Lizbeth or Lisbeth, Ba, Bee, Bet etc. But I guess I’ll stick to Elizabeth, though Lizbeth is tempting.

  I guess I’ve emphasized all the charms of Yaddo: large house, trees, space, economy and irresponsibility. Perhaps, you should combine your alternatives—try Yaddo, and if it becomes oppressive, fly away on a freighter.

  I did enjoy Stonington.

  Apologies for this flood of letters … Somehow I feel myself again, as I haven’t for months, except for bits of Stonington.

  During the heat, I’ve been living on one solid meal, and a detestable thing in blunderbuss glasses, called “orange drink.”

  I’m feeling fine except:

  Thirty-one

  Nothing done

  keeps going through my head; and I hate to think of packing.

  P.S. Next year if our books were done and we had the cash, wouldn’t you like to try Italy? The imagination roars with possibilities and inducements.

  BISHOP

  I sang that song you sing to myself when I was twenty-one, and thirty-one, and I suppose I’ll sing it at forty-one. For the meantime I guess my refrain is:

  thirty-seven

  & far from heaven.

  I think you said a while ago that I’d “laugh you to scorn” over some conversation you & I had about how to protect oneself against solitude—but indeed I wouldn’t. That’s just the kind of “suffering” I’m most at home with & helpless about, I’m afraid, and what with 2 days of fog and alarmingly low tides I’ve really got it bad & think I’ll write you a note before I go out & eat some mackerel.

  She looks at a plate of mackerel.

  She pushes it aside.

  Instead, she takes a sip of red wine.

  She puts that aside.

  She produces a bottle of whiskey.

  If I have any money, & if nothing out of the ordinary happens personally, or nothing ordinary, like a war, happens impersonally—I’d like to go to Italy very much. Oh and I think I’ll go to Bard for that week-end—will you?

  LOWELL

  My Bard letter had the phrase: We expect poets like Bishop and what’s his name? Yeah, I’m going.

  I now have—let me boast—53 stanzas, over 800 lines and am working harder & more steadily than ever in my life. Now shut up about yourself, Cal!

  Write some more poems—there are so few in the world now.

  A SUBTITLE FLASHES: Bard

  INTERLUDE

  Bard.

  They see each other.

  They embrace.

  Music.

  They toast each other with whiskey.

  They dance.

  He is suddenly falling-down drunk.

  She covers him with a sheet.

  He grabs for her hand.

  She holds it for a moment.

  She takes her hand away.

  He grabs it again.

  He snores.

  She replaces her hand with a wrapped present and flees.

  BISHOP

  I am so sorry …

  LOWELL

  No! My apologies!

  BISHOP

  I’ll explain it all when I see you—if I can, that is.

  LOWELL

  This is a before-breakfast letter—I’m sure this practice isn’t habit-forming.

  BISHOP

  I want to hear all that took place after I vanished, and to make my apologies in person—

  LOWELL

  I’ve been fingering & weighing and wondering about my present—what happens if you open presents before Christmas?

  But I wish you’d come instead.

  Bishop sits down with a plate of food and pushes it aside.

  She takes a sip of wine.

  She pushes it away.

  She produces a bottle of whiskey.

  An emotional last meeting with Pound: “Cal, god go with you, if you like the company.”

  Why don’t you come for a visit?

  Do try to come and spend the night; there’s a good morning train—then we can have a fine long evening!

  Someone takes away Bishop’s wine and whiskey.

  She looks at them wistfully.

  She then produces a bottle of rubbing alcohol and takes a sip.

  But I wish you’d come not for a day, but for the winter. Or summer: I’ll settle for that. I’m a bit aghast when I think of how long I’ll be on this damned poem. Is anything worth so much work and isolation? Anyhow I wish you weren’t so far away.

  Elizabeth Bishop throws up.

  A final shot. Look, please, when you are sick
tell me, so I won’t worry!

  Love & Merry Christmas,

  Cal

  Bishop dumps the remainder of the rubbing alcohol in the garbage, puts on sunglasses, and moves to Key West.

  Sad old-fashioned Christmas music, the kind that plays in a store and makes you want to jump off a bridge.

  BISHOP

  A postcard:

  I have found an absolutely beautiful apartment in Key West—when somebody says “beautiful” about Key West you should really take it with a grain of salt until you’ve seen it for yourself—in general it is really awful & the “beauty” is just the light or something equally perverse.

  LOWELL

  Now: no number of ingenious postcards is the equivalent of a letter; so really I’ve written you more than you’ve me. But I will stock up on what Saratoga has & send them at brief frantic intervals—each one ending “let me hear from you.”

  Now something I can’t tell anyone else. Yesterday Peter Taylor called mostly to warn me that I mustn’t pay much attention to his brother-in-law (who is arriving here in ten days). I: “Elizabeth Hardwick is arriving on the same day.” Peter: “She’s dangerous for you too.” I: “Maybe I can interest them in each other.” Peter: “Cal, that would be the most blessed thing in the world for you.”

  Now be a good girl and come to Yaddo.

  She looks skeptical about the “good girl” part.

  I miss you,

  Cal

  BISHOP

  I’m afraid I overdid the postcards a little …

  P.S. I forgot to comment on Elizabeth Hardwick’s arrival—take care.

  LOWELL

  This is on your letter and two “Manhattans on rocks” but I do want to write you.

  The essential: do come to Yaddo (I’m so lonely) this summer. No, I’m not trying to force your hand.

  In a few hours: Miss Hardwick.

  BISHOP

  All right—I think I shall write to Mrs. Ames right away about Yaddo; tell me what you think would be a good month. July?

  LOWELL

  Come here in July! There’s a little Catholic girl named Flannery O’Connor here now—a real writer, I think. Very moral (in your sense) and witty—whom I’m sure you’d like.

  Yaddo has brightened up with Elizabeth Hardwick. Miss Elizabeth is full of talk and high-spirits. For hours last night the nice Yaddonians (Flannery, James, Eliz. and I) read Lardner (just sick from laughing) and drank burgundy. A great discovery—you don’t get tight or have hangovers and it costs $2.00 a gallon.

  I was just making my bed (if you could call it “making”) when I became aware of a dull burning smell. “God, I must have left my cigarette burning.” I rush into my other room; no cigarette. I feel in my pocket. There, a lighted cigarette in holder consuming a damp piece of Kleenex. The pocket was also stuffed with kitchen matches. Oh my!