BISHOP, Elizabeth. Geography III. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1986.
8vo. Original brown cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine; light brown end papers, pictorial dust jacket; pp. [xiv], 50, [2]; gilt lettering to spine faded with a very minimal marking to front cover of jacket; otherwise near fine.
First edition, first printing, of the author's last work.
"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". - One Art
Heavily influenced and inspired by the poet Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop was also sponsored by John Ashbery for the 1976 Books Abroad / Neustadt Internation Prize for Literature. Unlike her contemporaries, such as Sylvia Plath, she chose emotive expositions of the physical world over the private life and Marie-Claire Blais would express this in her critique of Geography III, "One cannot read a single line of her poetry or prose without feeling that a real poet is speaking …whose eye is both an inner and outer eye. The outer eye sees with marvellous, objective precision and the vision is translated into quite simple language".
A meticulous editor and perfectionist, she published 101 poems in her lifetime. Geography III contains eight poems including the prose poem "12 O'Clock News" and the notorious villanelle "One Art".
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