STUDYING WITH MISS BISHOP

A poet's reflections on memorable individuals.

In deft, graceful essays, poet, literary critic, and librettist Gioia recalls six “people of potent personality” who shaped his vocation: Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Fitzgerald, who taught him as a graduate student at Harvard; John Cheever, whom Gioia met at Stanford, where he was studying business; writer James Dickey; Ronald Perry, a little-known poet whom Gioia never met; and the author’s Mexican uncle, who died when Gioia was a child and whose library of books, stored in Gioia’s family’s apartment, inspired his reading and his aspiration to be a writer. No one among his relatives or teachers, he reveals, “ever encouraged my reading or intellectual pursuits,” but he was encouraged by his uncle’s presence, felt through the books he left. The author pursued his literary ambitions at Harvard, where two professors stood out: the “prim, impeccably coiffured” Bishop, the “most self-effacing writer I have ever met”; and Fitzgerald, whose “many strengths harmonized so naturally that one simply enjoyed the music of his company. Being with him, I understood for the first time how legendary pilgrims recognized their next master.” Both contrasted favorably with their celebrated, hugely popular colleague Robert Lowell. Gioia preferred Bishop’s and Fitzgerald’s modesty and humility, qualities he found in Cheever, too, who had come to Stanford on a campus visit with his son. Cheever seemed to Gioia “more bright young man than sagacious patriarch,” and his “intelligence was enlivening.” An unfortunate meeting with Dickey came after Gioia published a negative review of one of his books: “It is often better not to meet the writers you admire.” Gioia’s connection with Perry also came from reviewing; Perry wrote to thank him for an appreciative review, and the two continued to correspond, planning to meet, finally, in New York. Gioia’s portrait of this “invisible poet” and their role in one another’s lives serves as a moving elegy.

An appealing literary memoir.