Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writer’s Life

Product Description

“Highly enjoyable . . .
Studying with Miss Bishop offers the opportunity to encounter writing as an act of civility.”―
Wall Street Journal

“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

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 authors―Elizabeth Bishop, John Cheever, James Dickey, and Robert Fitzgerald. Two were unknown―Gioia’s Merchant Marine uncle and Ronald Perry, a forgotten poet. Each of the six essays provides a vivid portrait; taken together they tell the story of Gioia’s own journey from working-class LA to international literary success.

Review

“[A] fantastically charming collection.”―
Los Angeles Review of Books

”
Studying With Miss Bishop is surely destined to become a classic. These affectionate portraits . . . communicate as well as any book ever the love that underlies an authentic literary vocation.”―
Catholic World Report

“In deft, graceful essays, poet, literary critic, and librettist Gioia recalls six ‘people of potent personality’ who shaped his vocation . . . An appealing literary memoir.”―
Kirkus Reviews

“I can’t imagine a better way to spend time than in the generous company of Dana Gioia, a poet whose work I’ve hugely admired over the decades. He’s an important critic as well as a poet, with a wide range of interests. He writes about writing with an ease and affection that mask the deep rigors of his thought.
Studying with Miss Bishop gathers pieces from his early life lived among writers―poets, in particular. 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. The word ‘delicious’ aptly describes these essays. Gioia lays out a broad intellectual feast, and readers will come away satisfied and smiling.”―
Jay Parini, author of
Borges and Me: An Encounter

“Highly enjoyable . . .
Studying with Miss Bishop offers the opportunity to encounter writing as an act of civility.”―
Wall Street Journal

“Wonderfully evocative of the literary world in the 1970s and 1980s, these essays are fascinating snapshots of remarkable encounters which, when brought together, chart a delightfully unusual path to literary success.”―
Booklist

“In his engaging and absorbing memoir,
Studying with Miss Bishop, Dana Gioia, one of America’s premier critics, poets, and essayists, shares with us the teachers who inspired him. We learn of the quirks of personality, attitudes, philosophies, pedagogy of the likes of Elizabeth Bishop (a rambler and a smoker), Robert Fitzgerald (a wise and rigorous, and big hearted intelligence), John Cheever (suave, even-eyed, exacting), James Dickey (reactive, a bit of a bully, and larger than life). Of course, all along the way, we are also studying with Mr. Gioia himself, a well-read, far-ranging, accurate and perceptive raconteur, a generous and wise teacher. 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

PRAISE FOR DANA GIOIA’S OTHER BOOKS:

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99 Poems: New & Selected is