“Five Flights Up” by Elizabeth Bishop Automatic translate

“Five Flights Up” is a lyrical, narrative poem by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop. The poem is a lyric because it’s short and slender and features hints of personal emotion, and it’s a narrative because it tells the story of a dog and a bird. “Five Flights Up” is a part of Bishop’s poetry collection “Geography III” (1976)—the last book Bishop published before her death in 1979. Although the poem isn’t as famous as some of her other poems, like “The Fish” (1946) or “One Art” (1976), “Five Flights Up” reflects Bishop’s signature messages and ideas; it presents a nuanced portrayal of the world and a speaker subsumed by what they’re witnessing. As with Bishop’s other work, the poem demonstrates how subtle or ordinary sights and sounds—in this case, a dog and a bird—can lead to intoxicating observations and thoughts. In his book-length study on Bishop, “On Elizabeth Bishop” (Princeton University Press, 2015), the distinguished Irish writer Colm Tóibín says Bishop wrote with a “hushed, solitary concentration”. That quiet, singular focus is on display in “Five Flights Up”, and the intense absorption could be why Bishop famously published only around 100 poems in her lifetime. Besides poetry, Bishop published essays, short stories, translations, and a travel book about Brazil.

Poet Biography Elizabeth Bishop was born February 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her dad, William, came from a prominent family. His dad was a wealthy contractor and supervised the construction of notable buildings like the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. William, who had Bright’s disease, died when Elizabeth was eight months old. Her mom, Gertrude, was an ice skater and trained to be a nurse. She had mental health conditions and, while at Boston’s Deaconess Hospital for treatment, she jumped out a second-story window. It fell on family members to raise Bishop. She didn’t have a pleasant childhood. She dealt with asthma and other ailments, but she enjoyed reading and school. In 1930, Bishop enrolled in the prestigious women’s college Vassar where she, along with other students—like the famous novelist Mary McCarthy—started a literary journal, “Con Spirito”. While at Vassar, Bishop met the established American Modernist poet, Marianne Moore. A critical influence on Bishop, Moore helped Bishop publish and gain crucial recognition. Later, Bishop became close friends with the Confessional poet Robert Lowell. Although Bishop had some income due to her wealthy family, Lowell helped Bishop supplement her income by getting her grants and teaching appointments. Bishop and Lowell had much in common. They both experienced alcoholism, mental health conditions, and stormy love lives. In her biography of Bishop, “A Miracle for Breakfast” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), Megan Marshall writes, “Elizabeth was never one to join the cause of sexual liberation or to identify herself publicly as a lesbian”. Yet Elizabeth was attracted to women and maintained loving, romantic relationships with women throughout her life. In 1946, Bishop published her book “North & South”. From 1949 to 1950, Bishop was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—an august position now known as Poet Laureate. The post required Bishop to live in Washington, DC, which she didn’t enjoy. What Bishop liked was travel. She visited Mexico, Africa, and Europe. In 1951, she traveled to Brazil. After a debilitating allergic reaction to cashews. Maria Carlota Costellat de Macedo Soares (Lota), a member of an influential Brazilian family, helped Bishop recover. The two women fell in love, and they lived together in Brazil for almost 15 years. In 1955, Bishoped published “Poems”. The book combined her first book, “North & South”, out of print at the time, and her new poems, collected as “A Cold Spring”. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956. In 1961, Lota started to oversee the construction of a large public park and entertainment project in Rio. Lota’s new job and the political turmoil in Brazil strained their relationship. In 1965, Bishop published her third collection of poetry, “Questions of Travel”. A year later, Bishop took a teaching position at the University of Washington and began a romantic relationship with a 23-year-old pregnant, married woman, Roxanne Cumming. Meanwhile, the demands of the public project put Lota’s physical and mental health in jeopardy. In 1967, Lota visited Bishop in New York, where she died after overdosing on Valium. Bishop and Cumming continued their relationship, living in San Francisco and Brazil. In 1969, Bishop published “The Complete Poems”, which won the National Book Award in 1970. Reviewing “The Complete Poems” for “The New York Times Book Review” in June 1969, the distinguished American poet John Ashbery called Bishop “a poet of strange, even mysterious, but undeniable and great gifts”. In 1970, “The New Yorker” hired Bishop to review poetry, but Bishop never published a review. With help from Lowell, Bishop earned a teaching position at Harvard, becoming the first woman to teach creative writing at the eminent university.