Elizabeth Bishop (Voices & Visions (Audio))

Rating:
Summary: This cassette fails to fulfill even modest expectations.
Review: Is it reasonable to assume that a one-hour cassette tape entitled 'Elizabeth Bishop' includes poetry read by Bishop herself? Perhaps not. Surely, though, such a tape would include complete Bishop poems adequately read by someone. Guess again. The tape in question is a hodge-podge of comments by UNIDENTIFIED people about Bishop's poetry. Octavio Paz has an accent, so one can identify him, and I think the quavery, crusty voice is Mary McCarthy's -- but who knows for sure? An extremely self-conscious woman (unidentified) reads about half a dozen strangely expurgated poems. There is no indication either on the cassette case or on the tape itself that the poems have been edited. Why edit short poems anyway? You'll have to ask someone at Mystic Fire Audio.

Rating:
Summary: Mistaken Identity
Review: The reviewers here miss an important point. If they found a book entitled "Elizabeth Bishop," they would assume it would be about her and her poetry (the tape does contain poems read by the poet as well). While the one reviewer is correct in stating this was originally a video, the audio has 90% of what the listener needs. And as for any good reader, imagination must fill in the rest. It's unlikely one will find a tape so insightful an opening into Bishop's work.

Rating:
Summary: Yes, there is no Elizabeth Bishop on this tape
Review: You are absolutely right, that the poems on this tape are strangely edited and that the voice reading them is NOT Bishop's. It is the actress Blythe Danner, who was trying to read them dramatically, but anyone who knows EB knows that she never read them that way, nor did she write performance poetry.

The reason this tape is so strange is that it is the audio track of a video. If you get the original Voices & Visions video, which most good libraries have, you can see the faces of Mary McCarthy, Jimmy Merrill, Octavio Paz and others as they speak. It doesn't make up for the disrespectful use of the poetry, but they did find an old blue bus with a rounded hood to use for "The Moose." It even looks a little like the real moose road in Nova Scotia. If you want to hear Bishop's actual voice, get the Random House "Voice of the Poet" tape, which is an amazing compilation of her voice over about 30 years. I don't believe she was ever recorded reading "One Art," so you'll have to read it for yourself after you hear the poet's understated, almost offhand way of reading her own work.