Elizabeth Bishop

In this dissertation, I study how ekphrasis illuminates ideas of selfhood and time in Hilda Doolittle’s (H.D.) (1886-1961), Frank O’Hara’s (1926-1966), and Elizabeth Bishop’s (1911-1979) fiction and poetry. I examine the porous boundaries between plastic (and sometimes musical) …

In the early twentieth century, critics accused women writing their personal experiences of being overly “sentimental.” Many women poets dissociated themselves from such accusations by composing impersonal poetry, yet many still wrote about the self through poetic experimentatio…