by Sarah Ruhl
I’m really mad about my little daughter and feel as though I had been up to now lacking some prime faculty: eyesight, hearing, reason.
BISHOP
Miss Elsemore sounds terrifying. It’s funny how caring for helpless babies builds character.
You probably know all about the Pulitzer business … I was really surprised … It was very funny here—a reporter from O Globo shouting at me over the telephone, and I kept replying in a cool New Englandy way, “Thank you very much,” and he shouted again, “But dona Elizabetchy, don’t you understand? O Prémio Pulitzer!”
Well, one never knows about these things, or how one should feel about them. I am taking the money, or part of it, to buy a high-fidelity victrola.
LOWELL
I am so delighted by the Pulitzer. I was on the National Book Award committee and tried to get the prize given to you and/or Randall. Your chances were killed by Phyllis McGinley who thought you were serious or a woman or something.
I’ve read your poems many times. I think I read you with more interest than anyone now writing. I know I do, but I think I would even if it weren’t for personal reasons. I feel that I write only for you and Lizzie. I’m dedicating “Skunk Hour” to you. A skunk isn’t much of a present for a Lady Poet, but I’m a skunk in the poem.
She reads his poem aloud.
BISHOP
One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town.…
My mind’s not right.
LOWELL
A car radio bleats,
“Love, O careless Love.…” I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat.…
I myself am hell;
BISHOP
nobody’s here—
She puts down the poem.
LOWELL
We’ve talked over a lot of things together I’ve never mentioned to Elizabeth. If you ever feel like writing me privately (I don’t mean anything by this)—
She looks suspicious.
BISHOP
I don’t know why I haven’t been able to write to you sooner, really.
LOWELL
—you can address the letter c/o The Dept. of English, Boston University.
BISHOP
I don’t often get these letter-writing blocks, & particularly about my favorite correspondents.
LOWELL
I really glory in the memory of your visit and miss you terribly.
BISHOP
All the way down on our freighter I composed endless letters to you, full of profound new ideas, but they just evaporated into the ocean air.
So glad you liked the Purcell. I had intended to send you, for Christmas, “Dido & Aeneas,” but I wasn’t sure whether you had it or not.
Music plays, Purcell.
My idea is to wean you away from those French songs, because I think the English ones are so much better and so much more appropriate to us!
I’d be particularly charmed to have “Skunk Hour” dedicated to me. I started a poem to you and Marianne Moore two years ago, called “Letter to Two Friends.” It is rather light, though. Oh heavens, when does one begin to write the real poems? I certainly feel as if I never had. But of course I don’t feel that way about yours. They all seem real as real—and getting more so— They all have that sure feeling, as if you’d been in a stretch when everything and anything suddenly seemed material for poetry—or not material, seemed to be poetry. If only one could see everything that way all the time. It seems to me it’s the whole purpose of art—that rare feeling of control, illuminating—life is all right, for the time being.
And here I must confess that I am green with envy of your kind of assurance.
He lies down.
In some ways you are the luckiest poet I know!—in some ways not so lucky, either, of course. But it is hell to realize one has wasted half one’s talent through timidity that probably could have been overcome if anyone in one’s family had had a few grains of sense or education … Well, maybe it’s not too late!
He rubs his temples.
January 29th, I think—1958, I know
I began to worry a bit when I didn’t receive any answer to my two long letters to you before Christmas, then I heard that you’d been sick, so I wrote Elizabeth. I do hope and pray you are feeling yourself again. (Not that I pray very much, but I mean the intensity of hoping…)
Robert Lowell gets up.
LOWELL
Almost immediately after writing you my last letter, I wanted to write another taking it back. Elizabeth and I are happily back together … after the voyage to Somes Sound. It was rich in undramatic mishaps. We went ashore … Elizabeth had drunk a whole water tumbler of the martinis to which she is allergic. She sprawled on the fore-cabin and began to discuss sotto voce an amazingly frank and detailed reappraisal of our entire marriage. It went on for an hour and a half. She said that we were all leaving the next day for Boston where we would both go to doctors.
Now I spend long week-ends at home and will soon leave the hospital entirely. I am part of my family again, I love my family again.
I live in an interesting house at McLean’s Hospital, one which no man had entered since 1860; suddenly it was made co-ed. It was like entering some ancient deceased sultan’s seraglio. The man next to me is a Harvard Law professor. One day, he is all happiness, giving the plots of Trollope novels, and on another day, I hear cooing pigeon sounds, and if I listen carefully, the words: “Oh terror, TERROR!”
BISHOP
McLean’s is a good place, I think. My mother stayed there once for a long time. However, I hope you don’t have to stay very long—the people are so fascinating I think one begins to find the usual world a bit dull by comparison.
My darling toucan died. It was all my fault. I used an insecticide the man in the store said was “inoffensive” to animals, and it killed him. There he lay, just like life only with his feet up in the air. I want to get another one, but Lota says we’re having a little vacation from toucans now.
I seem to be writing poems again at last—they are all such old poems, though, it’s like cleaning up the attic. Wishing I could start writing poetry all over again on another planet.
A planet comes down. She approaches it.
LOWELL
Such an age since I’ve heard from you. Your telegram was a joy, but I was grieved to think of the lost letter. Please write it again …
She gets on her planet.
BISHOP (composing on her planet)
Let Shakespeare & Milton
Stay at a Hilton—
I shall stay
At Chico Rei—
She shakes her head and tries again.
Marianne, loan me a noun!
Cal, please cable a verb!
Or simply propulse through the ether
some more powerful meter …
LOWELL
For Elizabeth Bishop 4:
Have you seen an inchworm crawl on a leaf,
cling to the very end, revolve in air,
feeling for something to reach to something? Do
you still hang your words in air, ten years
unfinished, glued to your notice board, with gaps
or empties for the unimaginable phrase—
unerring Muse who makes the casual perfect?
He looks up from his book. They look at each other.
He yells up to her on her planet.
On, Dear, with those painful, very large unfinished poems!
She writes a poem, “The Armadillo,” which she dedicates to Lowell.
BISHOP
For Robert Lowell:
This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
>
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it’s hard
to tell them from the stars—
planets, that is—the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars …
She gets off her planet.
I hope you aren’t thinking that I am a: dead b: annoyed. I’m neither; but I did have flu.
LOWELL
I am back from a month in the sanitarium …
BISHOP
I made up my mind to go to teach in the States. I don’t want to one bit, but need the money.
Lota hates having me go—very nice of her—but after a sad scene she is now resigned!
LOWELL
The day after tomorrow, I’ll be fifty, and Lizzie is arranging a party of almost thirty …
BISHOP
Well, now I know when your birthday is— Many happy returns. I minded being 35 very much, but haven’t been able to give a damn since—there are too many other things that one can do a little something about, possibly.
LOWELL
I seem to spend my life missing you!
BISHOP
Well, now I’m in New York. The plan is that as soon as Lota is well enough she will join me …
I went out this afternoon and again spotted you looking very unhappy, this time on the New York Review of Books … It is nice to be on the same continent with you again!
Found a lovely word—you probably know it—ALLELOMIMETIC. (Don’t DARE use it!)
SUBTITLE: Lota commits suicide.
Elizabeth Bishop looks up.
She falls over.
Lowell picks her up and steadies her.
LOWELL
It was a joy being with you, even in this sad time—all the more perhaps because the sorrow can be shared a little.
I feel for Lota, though I’ve no right to; a part of my life has fallen away, a part of my life in you.
I enclose a poem to you, the old Castine poem I could never finish. You may not like it, or what it says, but I hope you will.
The stage becomes the memory of sea and rock again, with no real water.
It was a Maine fishing town—
… Remember?
BISHOP
We sat on a slab of rock.
LOWELL
From this distance in time
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,
BISHOP
but it was only
the usual gray rock
turning the usual green
when drenched by the sea.
LOWELL
The sea drenched the rock
at our feet all day …
BISHOP
We wished our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock.
LOWELL
In the end,
the water was too cold for us.
The sea recedes.
BISHOP
Oh, thank you; thank you very much—you can really never know how much this has cheered me up and made me feel a bit like myself again.
I love my poem—and you, too, of course …
I have two minor questions, but, as usual, they have to do with my George-Washington-handicap. I can’t tell a lie even for art, apparently; it takes an awful effort or a sudden jolt to make me alter facts. Shouldn’t it be a lobster town, rather than fishing town …
He smiles. And revises, with a pencil.
My passion for accuracy may strike you as old-maidish—but since we do float on an unknown sea I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way very carefully; who knows what might depend on it?
LOWELL
I worry about you so and wish you’d come home.
BISHOP
Well, you are right to worry about me, only please DON’T!—I am pretty worried about myself. I am trying to sell the house, go through all the books, papers, letters—about 3,000 or more books here … meanwhile it is too damned lonely and disagreeable and I have not been able to work. There are endless interruptions, noise, confusion, thefts. I really love my house and would like to stay in it, if—if—if things were different. The very thought of all the packing makes me sick—and then, where to go? How to live? I miss Lota more every day of my life.
The stage darkens.
He sends her a lantern on a pulley.
Have you ever gone through caves?—I did once, in Mexico, and hated it … Finally, after hours of stumbling along, one sees daylight ahead—a faint blue glimmer—and it never looked so wonderful before. That’s what I feel as though I were waiting for now—just the faintest glimmer that I’m going to get out of this somehow, alive. Meanwhile—your letter has helped tremendously—like being handed a lantern.
She takes the lantern.
Now I must pack an overnight bag and try to lock up this too unlockable house and try not to think of what will be missing when I get back—it gets to be a sort of game: what goes next? Or, how many things can you count that are missing in this room? How many beginning with A? With B?
She looks for something underneath a pile of papers.
She throws the papers on the floor.
She looks wildly for something.
She finds it.
It is a poem that she wrote, “One Art.”
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like
LOWELL
(Write it!)
BISHOP
like disaster.
Part Two: Art just isn’t worth that much
They age somehow.
SUBTITLE: 1970
LOWELL
Dearest Elizabeth,
Lizzie and I have more or less separated, though as good-naturedly as such things can be. I have someone else. And the future looks cheerful, but who at our age can ever tell?
My “someone” is Caroline Citkowitz. She is 39, has published stories in the London Magazine, has three very pretty daughters, and was once married to Freud’s grandson, Lucian. What a bare list, but how can I make the introduction? She is very beautiful and saw me through my sickness with wonderful kindness. I suppose I shouldn’t forget Harriet and Lizzie, anyway I can’t.
BISHOP
I am glad the lady is beautiful; that really cheers one a lot.
LOWELL
The child will be born in October. We have three little girls, and this strangely makes the arrival of another much less disturbing …
BISHOP
I think it is nice that it is a little boy—the possibilities were limited, of course, but a change is interesting …
He walks over and hands her a manuscript.
LOWELL
Read Dolphin when you have leisure. I am going to publish, and don’t want advice, except for yours. Lizzie won’t like it.
Bishop reads The Dolphin.
She looks disapp
roving.
She puts the book down, hard.
BISHOP
I’ve re-read The Dolphin a good many times now … Please believe that I think it is wonderful poetry. It is also honest poetry—almost. I have one tremendous and awful BUT.
If you were any other poet I can think of I certainly wouldn’t attempt to say anything at all; I wouldn’t think it was worth it. But because it is you, and a great poem (I’ve never used the word “great” before), and I love you a lot—I feel I must tell you what I really think.
Don’t be alarmed. Here is a quotation from dear little Hardy: “What should certainly be protested against, in cases where there is no authorization, is the mixing of fact and fiction in unknown proportions. Infinite mischief would lie in that.”
I’m sure my point is only too plain … Lizzie is not dead—but there is a “mixture of fact & fiction,” and you have changed her letters. That is “infinite mischief,” I think. One can use one’s life as material—one does, anyway—but these letters—aren’t you violating a trust? IF you were given permission—IF you hadn’t changed them … But art just isn’t worth that much. I keep remembering Hopkins’ marvelous letter about the idea of a “gentleman” being the highest thing ever conceived—higher than a “Christian” even, certainly than a poet. It is not being “gentle” to use personal letters that way—it’s cruel.
In general, I deplore the “confessional”—however, when you wrote LIFE STUDIES perhaps it was a necessary movement, and it helped make poetry more real, fresh and immediate. But now—ye gods—anything goes, and I am so sick of poems about the students’ mothers & fathers and sex-lives and so on.
I can’t bear to have anything you write tell what we’re really like in 1972 … perhaps it’s as simple as that. DOLPHIN is marvelous—no doubt about that—I’ll write you all the things I like sometime!
LOWELL
Let me write you right away … my first scattered impressions—my thanks. Most of your reservations seem likely to be right and useful. I am talking about your brief line to line objections—
BISHOP
I was so relieved to get your letter—I was awfully afraid I’d been crude, rude … However, I think you’ve misunderstood me a little.
LOWELL
I did not see Lizzie’s letters as slander, but as sympathetic, though necessarily awful for her to read. I took out the worst things written against me, so as not to seem self-pitying. I could say the letters are cut, doctored, part fiction …