Dear Elizabeth
Page 5
BISHOP
My point was that one can’t mix fact & fiction— What I have objected to in your use of the letters is that I think you’ve changed them—& you had no right to do that. I do see how when you have written an absolutely wonderful, or satisfactory, poem—it’s hard to think of changing anything …
LOWELL
It’s oddly enough a technical problem as well as a gentleman’s problem. How can the story be told at all without the letters? It’s the revelation of a wife wanting her husband not to leave her, and who does leave her. That’s the trouble, not the mixture of truth and fiction. No one would object if I said Lizzie was wearing a purple and red dress, when it was yellow.
BISHOP
I feel I’ve annoyed you more than enough, but I can’t resist this from Kierkegaard:
LOWELL
The trouble is the letters make the book; they make Lizzie real beyond my invention …
BISHOP
“The law of delicacy, according to which an author has a right to use what he himself has experienced—
She has an asthma attack.
BISHOP
LOWELL
is that he is never to utter verity
How can I want to hurt?
Hurt Lizzie and Harriet?
but is to keep verity
for himself & only let it be refracted—”
LOWELL
How can the story be told without the letters?
BISHOP
I don’t give a damn what someone like Mailer writes about his wives—but I DO give a damn what you write!
A silence.
She tries to catch her breath, wheezing.
He calls her on the telephone.
She wheezes, trying to speak, and can’t.
BISHOP
You talk—I can’t—
They hang up.
A silence.
LOWELL
I’m afraid the unexpected sadness of speaking to you, made me speechless. When you said “You talk, I can’t,” I could only think of questions and became speechless. But we are never speechless together.
I must write more softly to you. Forgive me.
They age somehow.
BISHOP
I am NOT going to hear Stanley Kunitz in Madison Square. What are we coming to? You can’t read poems without a drum & guitar and a bit of chanting …
Why all this change? My favorite eye shadow—for years—suddenly comes in 3 cakes in a row and one has to use all one’s skill to avoid iridescence …
LOWELL
I see us still when we first met, at Randall’s. I see you as rather tall, long brown-haired, shy but full of description and anecdote as now. I was brown haired and thirty I guess. I was largely invisible to myself, and nothing I knew how to look at. But the fact is we were swimming in our young age, with the water coming down on us, and we were gulping.
BISHOP
Cal dear, maybe your memory is failing!— Never, never was I “tall”— And I never had “long brown hair” either!— It started turning gray when I was 23—and probably was already somewhat grizzled when I first met you. I think you must be seeing someone else! What I remember about that meeting is your dishevelment, your lovely curly hair, and how we talked about a Picasso show—and how much I liked you, after having been almost too scared to go. You were also rather dirty, which I rather liked, too.
Well I must stop and slice some green beans— See you later, alligator, as they say in Florida.
So please don’t put me in a beautiful poem tall with long brown hair!
She sits and looks out a window.
She grips the chair as though it is a wheelchair.
LOWELL
Frank told me you arrived back in Boston in a wheelchair, a sad surprise because you seemed in such good health here and safe with your new English drug. Hope you are now recovered and moving to North Haven. I think on clear days you can see Castine from the northern shore. I miss it all.
My book is done. It’s the opposite of yours, bulky, rearranged, added-to—as though the unsatiated appetite were demanding a solid extra course when dinner was meant to be over. I spent a week or more on three lines which finally ended in changing the position of two words. I think a lot about getting things right—and often there is sprawl that cannot be arranged. We seem to be near our finish, so near the final, the perfect, is forbidden us, not even in the game.
I have no more to say … of course.
He hails a taxi.
BISHOP
I’m writing to you this morning to say that I hope you’ll understand if I say I’d rather you don’t come to North Haven on the 10th …
He looks over as though he sees her.
Just for a moment, while crossing the street.
Then Robert Lowell has a heart attack and lies down.
Day before yesterday and the day before that, seven, in all, guests left & although I love them all and we’d had a very nice time—it was just a bit too much. I hope you’ll understand when I say I must work and not break off for a while.
He closes his eyes.
SUBTITLE: Robert Lowell has a heart attack in a taxi.
He dies.
BISHOP
I’ve been reading your DOMESDAY BOOK—it’s just about perfect, I think—I’d only question “splash flowers” … (Forgive my being so picky.) There are many, many good—no, gorgeous lines—I’ll show you my underlinings sometime—
Well, I’ll see you in Cambridge or New York—and maybe in North Haven next summer—
She looks up sharply.
She breathes in.
Then she stands up and reads the following poem.
While she reads, Robert Lowell casually rises from the dead.
He leans against a wall and listens to the poem.
BISHOP
North Haven
In memoriam: Robert Lowell
The goldfinches are back, or others like them,
and the white-throated sparrow’s five-note song,
pleading and pleading, brings tears to the eyes.
Nature repeats herself, or almost does:
repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.
Years ago, you told me it was here
(in 1932?) you first “discovered girls”
and learned to sail, and learned to kiss.
You had “such fun,” you said, that classic summer.
(“Fun”—it always seemed to leave you at a loss…)
He smiles.
You left North Haven, anchored in its rock,
afloat in mystic blue … And now—you’ve left
for good. You can’t derange, or rearrange,
your poems again. (But the sparrows can their song.)
The words won’t change again. Sad friend, you cannot change.
Lowell quietly applauds.
She turns to him.
She walks toward him.
During the following exchange, thousands of letters pour down on them,
slowly, as they took some time getting over various oceans.
They un-age somehow.
LOWELL
Dear Miss Bishop
BISHOP
Dear Mr. Lowell
LOWELL
Dear Elizabeth
BISHOP
Dear Cal
LOWELL
Dearest Elizabeth
BISHOP
Dearest Cal
LOWELL
Affectionately, Cal
BISHOP
Recessively yours, Elizabeth
LOWELL
My darling receding Elizabeth …
They reach each other.
BISHOP
I don’t know why I’ve been so slow about writing to you, since I think of you every day of my life I’m sure—
LOWELL
Dearest friend, I miss you so—
He takes her hands.
BISHOP
I’ll write soon—
He shakes his head
, as in: You can’t write to dead people.
She nods, as in: I will write to you.
They look at the letters.
And it is as though they have become their own words.
And so can remain in the same place.
They exit, together.
The end.
Afterword
Anyone doing a complete production of the play should also have Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. The letters from the play correspond to the following letters, which are numbered and dated in that book as follows. Occasionally, text from two or three letters has been combined, in which case the number and date refer to the letter or letters from which the text was primarily drawn. The letters are not always quoted verbatim.
9 1. 46 King Street, New York, May 12th, 1947
9–10 2. 202 E. 15th St., New York, New York, May 23, 1947
10–11 3. Briton Cove, Cape Breton, August 14th, 1947
11 4. Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, August 21, 1947
12 6. New York, N.Y., September 22nd, 1947
13 12. November 3, 1947
14 13. Key West, Florida, November 18th, 1947
14–15 14. November 20, 1947
15 18. 630 Dey Street, Key West, Florida, January 1st, 1948
15 19. January 21, 1948
15–16 23. March 18th, 1948
16 24. Washington, D.C., March 22, 1948
16 33. Wiscasset, Maine, June 30th, 1948
16–17 34. July 2, 1948
17 35. Sunday, July 11th, 1948
17–18 36. July 14, 1948
19–20 43. Ipswich, Massachusetts, August 16, 1948
20–21 44. Stonington, August 22, 1948
21–22 51, 47, 48. Library of Congress, September 7, August 27, and August 30, 1948
22–23 53, 52. September 11th and September 8th, 1948
23 58. October 25, 1948
24 61. December 5, 1948
25–26 64, 18. Key West, December 21 and January 1st, 1948
26 65. December 24, 1948
26 66. December 31st, 1948
27 67. January 5, 1949
27 68. January 11th, 1949
27–28 69. January 14, 1949
28 72, 73. Monday the 31st January and February 21st, 1949
28 74. Baldpate Mental Hospital, Georgetown, Massachusetts, April 10, 1949
29 75. Yaddo, August 5, 1949
29 78. Washington, D.C., October/November 1949
29–30 80. 29 West 104th St., NYC, November 18, 1949
33–34 115. Care of Lota de Macedo Soares, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 21st, 1952
34 118. Iowa City, Iowa, June 14, 1953
36–38 157. Castine, Maine, August 9, 1957
40–41 162. 115 East 67th Street, New York, August 28th, 1957
43 158. New York, N.Y., August 11, 1957
43–44 137. June 18, 1956
45 143. January 1957
45 145. February 7th, 1957
45–46 146. February 27th, 1957
46 137. June 18, 1956
47–49 174, 175. Petrópolis, Brazil, December 11th and 14th, 1957
49 176. January 29th, I think—1958, I know
49–50 177. Saturday, March 15th, 1958
50 178. APRIL FOOL’S DAY 1958
52 269. Rio, Sunday morning, May 26th, 1963
53 337. Friday, February 26, 1967
54 349. 15 West 67 St., N.Y.C., October 9, 1967
59 373, 374. May 13th, 1970
59 375. Harvard University, October 20th, 1970
61–63 391, 392. March 28 and April 4, 1972
64 397. July 28, 1972
64–65 442. January 16th, 1975
66 459. August 2nd, 1977
The play mostly follows the chronology of the letters with some exceptions. I’ve suggested some subtitles for dates that signify leaps in time or jumps in location. But I think to make the reader, or audience, overly aware of dates and place would be to make the play overly biographical. The play should have, instead, the flavor of an intimate conversation that manages to be intimate because matters like time and place are increasingly irrelevant.
Also, the letter that begins “Dear Cal, A commission for you” is taken from a letter Elizabeth Bishop wrote to Carley Dawson about Robert Lowell in One Art, p. 165. The fragment beginning “Marianne, loan me a noun/Cal, please cable a verb!” is from “Letter to Two Friends,” in Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop, p. 113. The fragment beginning “Let Shakespeare and Milton” is from “Let Shakespeare and Milton,” in Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box, p. 126.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to James Bundy and Jennifer Kiger at Yale Repertory Theatre for commissioning the play and seeing it through. Many thanks to Les Waters for signing on to direct the play when it was only a series of fragments. To Tony Taccone at Berkeley Repertory Theatre for understanding that playwrights need two productions to finish plays. To Mary Beth Fisher, Jefferson Mays, and Tom Nelis—your incarnations will live with me always. To Vassar Library. To Brian Kulick. To Zak Berkman, and the amazing Ellen Mclaughlin and Ronda Eckert. To Polly Noonan and the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. To André Bishop for hosting the first reading of the play and Cynthia Nixon for reading. To Harriet Lowell for trusting me. Thanks to Jonathan Galassi for having faith in the project. To Mitzi Angel. To Kay Jamison. To Tom Paulin. To Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton for their beautiful scholarship. I recommend Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell by David Kalstone, Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral Biography by Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau, and One Art: Letters selected and edited by Robert Giroux. Many thanks to early readers Andy Bragen, Tony Charuvastra, Maria Dizzia, Rinne Groff, Todd London, and Kathleen Ruhl. Thank you to dear Kathleen Tolan for telling me to read Words in Air, and for being a beacon of literary friendship over the years. The same holds true for Andy Bragen, who tirelessly supported this play in its embryonic stages. My biggest debt is owed to Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, two of the most beautiful letter writers in the history of letters.
ALSO BY SARAH RUHL
PLAYS
Passion Play: a cycle
The Clean House and Other Plays
Melancholy Play
Late: a cowboy song
Eurydice
Dead Man’s Cell Phone
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play
Orlando
Stage Kiss
NONFICTION
100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write
A Note About the Author
Sarah Ruhl’s plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist; Tony Award nominee for best new play); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Passion Play: a cycle (PEN American Award); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award); and, most recently, Stage Kiss and Dear Elizabeth.
Her many plays have been produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, regionally throughout the country, and internationally. They have been translated into more than fifteen languages, including Polish, Russian, Korean, and Arabic.
Originally from Chicago, Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. Ruhl has since been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Helen Merrill Emerging Playwrights Award, the Whiting Writers’ Award, the PEN American Center Award for a mid-career playwright, the Feminist Press’s Forty Under Forty Award, and the 2010 Lilly Award. She is currently on the faculty at Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Faber and Faber, Inc.
An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Ruhl
All rights reserved
First edition, 2014
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint quotes from Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Mariann
e Moore and Robert Lowell by David Kalstone, Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral Biography by Gary Fountain and Peter Brazeau, and One Art: Letters selected and edited by Robert Giroux.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ruhl, Sarah, 1974–
Dear Elizabeth: a play in letters from Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell and back again / Sarah Ruhl. — First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-86547-815-2 (paperback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71198-6 (ebook)
1. Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911–1979—Correspondence—Drama. 2. Lowell, Robert, 1917–1977—Correspondence—Drama. 3. Poets, American—20th century—Biography—Drama. I. Title.
PS3618.U48 D43 2014
812'.6—dc23
2014004042
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