In this book, novelist Colm Tóibìn offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences-the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibìn creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that will intrigue readers interested in both Bishop and Tóibìn.

For Tóibìn, the secret of Bishop's emotional power is in what she leaves unsaid. Exploring Bishop's famous attention to detail, Tóibìn describes how Bishop is able to convey great emotion indirectly, through precise descriptions of particular settings, objects, and events. He examines how Bishop's attachment to the Nova Scotia of her childhood, despite her later life in Key West and Brazil, is related to her early loss of her parents-and how this connection finds echoes in Tóibìn's life as an Irish writer who has lived in Barcelona, New York, and elsewhere.