Studying With Miss Bishop Dana Gioia by Dana Gioia instant download after payment.

"Fascinating snapshots of remarkable encounters which, when brought together, chart a delightfully unusual path to literary success."―Booklist
"Reading this memoir is like being at one of those memorable dinner parties, attended by the best and brightest, sparkling with wit and excellent conversations. You don't want it to be over, the conversations to end! But with books, you need not worry. You can go back to the party, savor it, reread it again, and again."―Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies and Afterlife
"Gioia has been uncommonly lucky in meeting many major poets, among them Elizabeth Bishop. His portrait of her in these pages is shrewd and subtle. The famously elusive poet quivers into life here."―Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me: An Encounter
In Studying with Miss Bishop, Dana Gioia discusses six people who helped him become a writer and better understand what it meant to dedicate one's life to writing. Four were famous...

Studying with Miss Bishop is a book of literary memoirs, portraits of six people whose examples helped me become a writer. Four were famous authors—Elizabeth Bishop, John Cheever, Robert Fitzgerald, and James Dickey. The other two were unknown—my Mexican uncle, who served as a Merchant Marine until his early death, and Ronald Perry, a forgotten poet whom I never met. If that cast of characters seems strange, it’s because literary life is strange.

The first piece describes my odd and bookish childhood in a Los Angeles apartment surrounded by the library of my dead uncle. This unlikely legacy set in motion the equally unlikely course of my adult life. The later chapters provide portraits of each author. I have tried to give the reader a tangible sense of what it was like to be in their company. They were people of potent personality. I paid attention to them. In some cases, I even kept notes. I felt others would enjoy meeting them as I did.

Preparing this book for publication, I was struck by how much the literary