ABSTRACT
For many years, Elizabeth Bishop was known mainly as the writer of 'The Fish'. She called it 'that damned "Fish", so sick was she of requests to anthologise it. Bishop was conscious enough of the reputation actually to make fun of it on several occasions. In 'Crusoe in England', for example, her surrogate-poet is stuck continually cataloguing things, 'registering their flora,/their fauna, their geography'. Bishop's reputation would not have changed without the availability of so much biographical material over the last two decades. Yet there is still disagreement as to whether this has led to a more nuanced understanding of her writing. Bishop's first association with the shoreline seems to have been terrifying, although it took 50 years for her to face up to it in writing. Bishop's forays into the political sphere were always tentative. She refused to appear in all-female anthologies, never discussed her sexuality and rarely addressed 'public' themes.
