This book interweaves more than 120 interviews with relatives, friends, colleagues, and students of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), one of America's finest poets. Among the interviewees are numerous intellectual and artistic figures, including John Ashbery, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Giroux, Clement Greenberg, Thom Gunn, John Hollander, Mary McCarthy, James Merrill, Katha Pollitt, Ned Rorem, Lloyd Schwartz, Anne Stevenson, Rosalyn Tureck, Helen Vendler and Richard Wilbur. The chronology which governs this work is as follows: childhood, 1911-1927; Walnut Hill, 1927-1930; Vassar, 1930-1934; New York, Europe and Key West, 1934-1940; Key West and New York, 1941-1948; Washington, D.C. and Yaddo, 1948-1951; Brazil, 1951-1957; Brazil, 1958-1965; Seattle, 1966; Brazil, 1966-1967; San Francisco, 1967-1969; Ouro Preto, 1969-1973; Cambridge and Boston, 1973-1977; and Boston, 1977-1979.