An archived Elizabeth Bishop interview from the Paris Review here.

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Her first memory: I remember my mother taking me for a ride on the swan boats here in Boston. I think I was three then. It was before we went back to Canada. Mother was dressed all in black—widows were in those days. She had a box of mixed peanuts and raisins. There were real swans floating around. I don’t think they have them anymore. A swan came up and she fed it and it bit her finger. Maybe she just told me this, but I believed it because she showed me her black kid glove and said, “See.” The finger was split. Well, I was thrilled to death! Robert Lowell put those swan boats in two or three of the Lord Weary’s Castle poems.

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The Joseph Cornell boxes she loved:

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& then her translation of the poem by Octavio Paz, which she also mentions:

Objects and Apparitions



Hexagons of wood and glass,
scarcely bigger than a shoe box,
with room in them for night and all it's lights.

Monuments to every moment,
refuse of every moment, used:
cages for infinity.

Marbles, buttons, thimbles, dice,
pins, stamps, and glass beads:
tales of time.

Memory weaves, unweaves the echoes:
in the four corners of the box
shadowless ladies play at hide and seek.

Fire buried in the mirror,
water sleeping in the agate:
solos of Jenny Colonne and Jenny Lind.

"One has to commit a painting," said Degas,
"the way one commits a crime." But you contructed
boxes where things hurry away from their names.

Slot machine of visions,
condensation flask for conversations,
hotel of crickets and constellations.

Minimal, incoherent fragments:
the opposite of History, creator of ruins,
out of your ruins you have made creations.

Theater of the spirits:
objects putting the laws
of identity through hoops.

The "Grand Hotel de la Couronne": in a vial,
the three of clubs and, very surprised,
Thumbelina in gardens of reflections.

A comb is a harp strummed by the glance
of a little girl
born dumb.

The reflector of the inner eye
scatters the spectacle:
God all alone above an extinct world.

The apparitions are manifest,
their bodies weigh less than light,
lasting as this phrase lasts.

Joseph Cornell: inside your boxes
my words became visible for a moment.