a single word to exemplify [Elizabeth] Bishop's peculiar charm and power, it might well be "No," which keeps resurfacing at key moments. This was hardly a cry against life's challenges and opportunities. Rather it was a self-reprimand, or a self-exhortation: an internal urging to cast off first impressions, to look deeper and see things afresh. Time and again, an initial image gives way to a truer image: "Are they birds?/They flash again. No. They are vibrations of the tuning fork you hold and strike."from Brad Leithauser: The Wall Street Journal: The Poet as Survivor
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