Elizabeth Bishop on poetry and experiencing life

    Elizabeth Bishop believed that creating good poetry doesn’t depend on the poet’s experience:

And as to experience - well, think how little some good poets have had, or how much some bad ones have. There’s no way of telling what really is “experience” anyway, it seems to me. Look at what Miss Moore has done with what would seem to me like almost none, I imagine, and the more “experience” some poets have, the worse they write. (From One Art: Letters, by Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Giroux.)

    For a brief biography of Elisabeth Bishop, click here. For a brief biography of Marianne Moore, click here.

Comments

[Aaron Kelson]

I remember beginning to read a fiction novel once, written by an English professor. (I'm sorry that I can't recall the title.) By the time I was a chapter into the book I realized that I was reading a technically flawless work, but one that had almost no life. Everything that a student might be evaluated on by that professor was perfectly in place. Yet, the spirit of the work was missing. Maybe the author had too much experience.

Work that has real spirit (something that gives life) often seems to be done by people whose limited experience is coupled with a great abundance of faith.

Some work does have to be technically perfect though. Experience has its place.