"Sambas" appeared in somewhat different form in an article by Elizabeth Bishop, "On the Railroad Named Delight," The New York Times Magazine, March 7th, 1965. Reprinted by permission. The translation from Satires II, vi, of Horace, was published in Alexander Pope, The Poetry of Allusion by Reuben A. Brower (Oxford University Press, 1959). Reprinted by…
You’re over seven feet tall and weigh close to three hundred pounds, but you’re so well proportioned that nobody ever realizes just how big you are until he sees you standing next to another human being. Your manner with other people is gentle and considerate. One afternoon while you’re sitting in a bar with friends,…
In Rio de Janeiro, dozens of new sambas are composed for each year’s Carnival. Although sambas concerning love outnumber all others, there are always some about world events, such as landing on the moon, and Brazilian politics and life in general. This sampling from 1965, a year after the “rightest” revolution, comments on, or pokes…
* Like most people who sense that their love affair is going to pieces, Anna Karenina and Prince Vronsky try a few desperate measures to check the disintegration. One of these measures – available only to the upper classes – was travel. They go abroad, to Italy, and there they make the acquaintance of an…
Several miles in the distance clouds of dust rose hundreds of feet in the air, marking the passage of the more than two hundred thousand pilgrims who were making their way deep into the phosphate-rich Spanish Sahara. Frankie pulled her white illustrated T-shirt over her head and bared her firm young breasts to the onslaught…
Some of my favorite poems by Elizabeth Bishop are not among her Complete Poems published in 1969. They have appeared singly since and whet the appetite for a new collection. Not counting several translations of Brazilian verse, eight new poems have appeared in. The New Yorker: "In the Waiting Room," "Night-City (From a Plane)," "12…
"Like a rock in the sea, she was islanded by fields, the heavy grass washing about the house, and the cattle wading in it as in water. Even their gentle stirrings were a loss when they moved away at evening to the shelter of the woods. A rainy day might strike a wet flash from…
The past has left its mark on you. One Saturday afternoon you and a number of other people went for a ride on Lake Erie in a friend’s new boat. It was cold and overcast and the boat began to fall to pieces several miles from shore. The builder had obviously not put it together…
I feel that I should introduce myself. I am X, a not very unusual person, A rather ordinary specimen of human life. At the moment I feel that I serve no purpose, Which is why I am here—I want to feel useful. Also, I find mental hospitals interesting. And I do hope you will find…
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