Rating: 
Summary: A Harvest of Joy
Review: Gosh, it is hard to sum up one's feelings about the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. She is one of those artists, like Shakespeare and Mozart and Cervantes, whose work contains such perfection it seems almost sacrilegious to comment upon it.And she was ALWAYS a good poet. This volume proves it by publishing much of her juvenilia alongside more mature, better known poems as the wonderful "Florida", "Sestina", and the majestic "The Fish", a poem I enjoy teaching to my students every semester as a supreme example of imagery (I defy them to find instances of abstract language in the poem; there aren't many). Also included is an astonishing series of translations Bishop rendered over the years, mostly of South American poets, including Octavio Paz. All in all, this is a treasure trove, a book for the ages, and a reminder of what we lost with Bishop's early death at age 68.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful collection of poetry
Review: I would like to thank my poetry teacher for introducing me to Bishop, who is now one of my favorite poets. Her style is very phrasal, and very beautiful. I would reccomend her to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Images
Review: If you like images and not abstracts in poetry, Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems is a wonderful collection. She works very hard to create poetry void of direct emotion. She lets the reader apply their own emotion to the descriptions and images in her poetry. Read, enjoy and for those of us learning, this is a wonderful reference.
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Summary: Can't be ignored
Review: No matter what sort of poetry you are drawn to--and here I include the Beowulf poet, the Metaphysical poets, the Modernists, etc.--Elizabeth Bishop can't be ignored. Her poems, from set forms like the villanelle "One Art" ("The art of losing isn't hard to master.") to the patchwork of imagery that is "The Fish" are all at the peak of expression. Bishop demonstrates virtuousity in a number of forms of poetry in this (relatively) slim volume. I especially appreciate her poems on travel and Brazil. This is a dead writer whose ideas of culture are still ahead of our time. This book is a treasure trove. It rewards multiple readings. Bishop's craftsmanship has ensured that this book will continue to endure even as bigger names of her era fall by the wayside.
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Summary: a lot of great poems
Review: Probably like a lot of people, I was led to Elizabeth Bishop by the dedication in Robert Lowell's great "Skunk Hour". I like many of the poems in this book. (I know next to nothing about poetry but, to give you an idea, my favorite poet is Yeats.) Bishop has a lot of thoughtful imagery, and she conceptualizes things in a fresh way. It often takes you aback. To take the very first poem here, "The Map," there're the lines: "The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still. / Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo / has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays, / under a glass as if they were expected to blossom" The book is in roughly chronological format, and naturally the poems on the whole seem to get better, subtler, through the years (a few things later are a little strange). Armadillo, referred to by Lowell, reads a bit like a companion piece of Skunk Hour: "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, . . ." I confess my favorite poem here would be "Crusoe in England", a revery: "I felt a deep affection for / the smallest of my island industries. / No, not exactly, since the smallest was / a miserable philosophy. / Because I didn't know enough. / Why didn't I know enough of something? / Greek drama or astronomy? The books / I'd read were full of blanks", and then, back in England, "The knife there on the shelf--/ it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix. / It lived. How many years did I / beg it, implore it, not to break? . . . / Now it won't look at me at all." One thing I'd mention is, there isn't much in the way of unifying currents through the poems. Yeats, I think, has his Irish legends and politics and a pretty characteristic moral tone. Frost, his woods. Sylvia Plath, her hell. Bishop however comes across as an incidental observer of things. Her poems (even with each of the original collections, except maybe one) vary widely in theme, place, audience, mood. Here's a homage to Robert Lowell, and next an oddly rhyming poem on Rio de Janeiro. One page it's "View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress," next it's "Insomnia" (one of poems here that I guess could be seen as having a sapphic aspect to it). It's as if Bishop were always visiting different places and people and taking in what she came across (in fact, she was often in foreign lands; the cover has a drawing by her in Mexico). I don't necessarily like this aspect of her poetry as a whole--it reminds me of why I'm not a big fan of Katherine Mansfield. But of course that's saying nothing about each poem. A poem by Manuel Bandeira which Bishop translated (included here) goes: "I would like my last poem thus . . . that it have the beauty of almost scentless flowers . . ." That's what a lot of these poems are like. These are said to be all of Bishop's known poems--she died in 1979--including stuff she wrote at 16 which, as this edition helpfully notes, "appeared in the Walnut Hill School magazine in 1927". It's a handsomely-done edition, with pleasant font and roomy margins. 275 pages.
Rating:
Summary: a brilliant collection by an equally brilliant poet
Review: This is a beautifully comprehensive collection of Bishop's work, complete with translations from Portuguese (she spent much of her adult life in Brazil) and verses she wrote in her youth that will be new to most readers.
Bishop wrote far less than most of her contemporaries, but the work in this slim volume cements her (at least in my mind!) as one of the foremost female poets of her generation.
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Summary: More than just a fish.
Review: Unfortunately Elizabeth Bishop has become most known for her poem "The Fish." While it is indeed an enjoyable poem, I believe that there is a depth to her poetry that deserves to be recognized. The reason I think "The Fish" has become more popular is because, when I read it, it seemed like something that would be found in one of the numerous Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I don't really care for these, so that may have affected my opinion of the poem. Bishop is a very accomplished poet who has employed a number of very difficult poetry formats, namely the sestina, found in her poem of the same name. She also uses the popular villanelle format. Among my favorites are "The Map," "One Art," "Sestina," and especially "In the Waiting Room."
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Summary: Poetry as it should be
Review: While this book would make a worthy addition to anyone's library, its greatest value may derive from its ability to show the reader examples of poetry's potential realized. One cannot help but admire Bishop's craftsmanship.
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