literary house #1

Poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is one of the many writers who were drawn to Florida during the 20th century and i couldn’t resist looking up her house. A nomad all her life, Bishop arrived in Key West during the 1930s; in 1938, she & her then-lover, Louise Crane, bought a traditional “eyebrow” house at 624 White Street. Bishop held onto the house for nearly a decade, despite the collapse of her relationship with Crane. Her first book of poems was published while she lived here, but while Bishop was clearly smitten with the climate & lifestyle of the Keys, her battles with alcoholism and depression eventually led to her to sell the house and later to her leaving Florida.

Bishop wrote of the house: “It is very well made, with slightly arched beams so that it looks either like a ship’s cabin or a freight car.” I think I’ve read other writers who have compared their homes to trains or ship cabins – maybe the sensation of travel & isolation helps them to focus. Certainly these are themes highly relevant to Bishop’s work, and I’m always looking for ways that homes reflect the people living within them!

Today, the house is still lovely (though it sports a loud orange sign warning Bishop fans to stay out…so i did). I find it fascinating that she lived in one of these “eyebrow” houses so peculiar to Key West – where the second story is essentially hidden by the eyebrow of the roof, which comes low over a two-storey veranda. You can see the odd effect in this photo. This hidden aspect of the house, coupled with its overgrown garden & well-worn shutters, seem a perfect reflection of Bishop’s often lonely poetic practice.

Though many people know her poem “One Art”, i prefer the evocative “Florida”, which begins:

The state with the prettiest name,
the state that floats in brackish water,
held together by mangrave roots
that bear while living oysters in clusters,
and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons,
dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks
like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass.
The state full of long S-shaped birds, blue and white,
and unseen hysterical birds who rush up the scale
every time in a tantrum...

(read the rest of the poem)