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 Grenberg, Thom Gunn, John Hollander, Mary McCarthy, James Merrill, Katha Pollitt, Ned Rorem, Lloyd Schwartz, Anne Stevenson, Rosalyn Turek, Helen Vendler, and Richard Wilber.