Bishop, Elizabeth and Alice Quinn. Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006. Print.

Contents:

The titular work of Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments does not appear until the middle of the second part of the compilation. Some of the poems are merely titled with their first lines, while others are left craftly unfinished. There are photocopies of her notes, some handwritten, some typed, and all containing scribbles on how to better improve her work.

The book contains many of her works, and is separated into several parts.

• Poems from Youth

• 1929--1936: College, New York, Europe, Florida

• 1937--1950: Key West, Washington, D.C., Yuddo, Nova Scotia

• 1951--1967: Brazil, Seattle, New York

• 1968--1979: San Francisco, Ouro Preto, Cambridge, Boston

       Appendix

A poem Bishop almost included in her second publication Poems: North & South/ A Cold Spring was "Breakfast Song," an intimate poem written for one of her lovers. She decided to leave it out, only for it to be saved and included in this compilation.

Another poem that caused quite a stir and upset a lot of people was "A Drunkard," because of its blatant references to alcoholism.

Quinn includes several collected drafts of Bishop’s work in succession, including the 16 drafts of “One Art.” Quinn notes how so many of the drafts exist, and other books like Victoria Harrison’s Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetics of Intimacy unpacks this poem in great detail, analyzing its structure while ultimately disagreeing with the composition presented by the Vassar College Library. However, both Quinn and Harrison note that we cannot take the numbering of the drafts at face value: “There is a possibility of error in either case, of course, since Bishop did not number them.” This has lead to many different interpretations of “One Art,”  and so each must be read as its own work.

Further discussion of her uncollected works of poetry have been made by Thomas Travisano in "Bishop’s Uncollected Poems: A Bibliography."

Thomas Travisano. "Bishop’s Uncollected Poems: A Bibliography." The Elizabeth Bishop Bulletin 8:2 (Winter 2000): 2-4.

A copy of the article and bibliography may be found on the Vassar College project page for Elizabeth Bishop. (http://projects.vassar.edu/bishop/uncollectedpoems.php)

Critical Reception:

"It's no wonder ... that the recent publication of Bishop's hitherto uncollected poems, drafts, and fragments ... encountered fierce resistance, and some debate about the value of making this work available to the public. In an outraged piece for The New Republic, Helen Vendlerlabeled the drafts 'maimed and stunted' and rebuked Farrar, Straus and Giroux for choosing to publish the volume."

O’Rourke, Meghan. “Casual Perfection: Why Did The Publication Of Elizabeth Bishop’s Drafts Cause An Uproar.” 2006. Slate. Online. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_highbrow/2006/06/casual_perfection.single.html

“Although they do not map the stages of composition, these drafts show us the kinds of sketches and improvisations Bishop worked with. We learn she had a habit of jotting an alternative word or phrase in the righthand margin, and glimpse her reviewing her raw material from new angles. That Bishop would have hated to see her rough work in print is certainly possible, but the book's editor, Alice Quinn, does not pretend that the work is anything but rough. The poems are framed by commentary, almost as they are framed in real life by their boxes and shelves in the Vassar archive. If Bishop did not destroy her papers but gave them to a university library, she could not have seriously opposed a wider readership, provided we read, as Quinn encourages us to, as explorers of process rather than consumers of product.”

Rumens, Carol. “Caught In Mid-Creation.” 2006. The Guardian. Online. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/may/06/featuresreviews.guardianreview17