In this book, novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences - the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. "I have always been drawn to Bishop's spare poetry, but it was reading Tóibín's analysis, which manages to be both a personal reaction and an objective assessment, that helped me to appreciate her fully. Subject and critic can seldom have been as well-matched as they are here, and the insights go in both directions, illuminating Tóibín's novels as well as Bishop's poems."---Catherine Peters, Raceme