Map 1: Introducing Elizabeth Bishop

1) Her lesbian relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares gave her life stability and love

2) Bishop often spent many years writing a single poem, working toward an effect of offfhandedness and spontaneity

3) Bishop came to see poetry as an available, viable vocation for a woman

4) Bishop won the Lucy Martin Donnelly Fellowship from Bryn Mawr College in 1950 and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

5) In the last decade of her life, Bishop traveled in South America and Europe and taught at several universities, establishing a permanent relationship with Harvard