Lining the halls of Vassar’s stately Thompson Library are tables and tables of postcards, from your standard, scenic photographs to kitschy tokens and handmade collages.
The private college in Poughkeepsie has been amassing a collection of Bishop’s personal papers and correspondence ever since her death in 1979. Ronald Patkus, the college’s historian and head of special collections, says “Elizabeth Bishop’s Papers” is now one of Vassar’s most valuable and heavily used collections to date, but her postcards have never gotten the spotlight – until now.
"The postcards, for many years, were ignored, probably precisely because they were postcards. But now, scholars are taking newer interest in material culture, and as it turns out, in our collection we have over 500 examples of postcards," he explains. "We think there are probably more out there in the world today, but that’s a great part of our archive that hasn’t been explored."
Patkus credits guest curators Dr. Jonathan Ellis, from the University of Sheffield, and Susan Rosenbaum, from the University of Georgia for the idea. Together, the three poured through Vassar’s collection and singled out 55 jewels spanning from her early life to her final years. Patkus says they’re pretty fragile, and they couldn’t have guests handling and flipping over the cards themselves. So, they had to get creative.
"We had facsimiles made of the backs. They came out really well," he notes.
Bishop studied English at Vassar and graduated in 1934 – hence the college’s determination to collect her work. Born in 1911, Patkus says, she had a turbulent childhood: her father died less than a year after her birth, and Bishop’s mother was institutionalized in 1916. However, Bishop went on to make a wide circle of friends, including some of her classmates at Vassar, like Frani Blough Muser. Patkus says Muser was a frequent recipient of Bishop’s postcards, as were other famous artists and poets at the time, like Loren MacIver and James Merrill.
"The postcard as a format was very popular in the early and middle 20th Century. Late-century too, but especially middle. There were literally millions of them that were sent around the world," says Patkus. "But especially looking at Bishop, we can see, therefore, how she used the postcard in her life."
Bishop’s inheritance from her father gave her the ability to travel extensively over the course of her life. On display at the Vassar exhibit are postcards from Rome, Paris, Key West, Boston, and particularly Brazil, where Bishop lived for 15 years after developing a relationship with the architect Lota de Macedo Soares.
Patkus says there’s a few cards that were clearly her favorites. He says Bishop had multiple copies of a bright red, cartoonish postcard reading “You don’t know BEANS until you’ve been to Boston” in big letters across the front. He suspects the cards were both an outlet for Bishop’s sense of humor and her creativity.
One section of the exhibit, called “X Marks the Spot,” showcases how Bishop would draw on or notate her postcards to demonstrate her own ties to a site. For example, on the back of an unsent postcard from Great Village in Nova Scotia, where Bishop spent her early childhood, she notes, “I drove the cow to pasture up this road.” Another card delivered to her doctor, Anny Baumann, features a painting of the Library of Congress — with a small “X” in the upper lefthand corner, marking the office where Bishop served as a consultant in poetry in 1949.
Patkus says Bishop even dabbled in making her own cards from scratch.
"One thing I find in looking at this exhibit is that it's very visual. It pulls you in, to see all the different images," he notes. "But then there's also real interesting things happening in the texts as well. Certain aspects of her life, things that she was thinking about."
In all, the Vassar exhibit contains 12 categories of postcards for visitors to dig through.
Bishop’s poems and short stories would go on to win nearly every literary honor and prize in the United States, including a Pulitzer. That said, she wasn’t a particularly prolific writer, publishing only a handful of books in her lifetime – and unlike some of her contemporaries, like Robert Lowell, Bishop didn’t incorporate many intimate details from her life into her work. Patkus says that’s part of why Bishop’s correspondence is so important: it gives scholars a glimpse into her personal life.
He hopes the exhibit will bring additional cards and letters out of the woodwork — because the demand for Bishop’s papers is on the rise.
"There’s been a real interest in her work, and it’s grown. It seems almost every year, there's books, articles coming out. Conferences, entire conferences dedicated to Elizabeth Bishop," says Patkus. "There’s just a number of scholars who are very interested in her oeuvre."
“Elizabeth Bishop’s Postcards” will remain on view at the Thompson Library through the fall semester. By way of disclosure, Vassar College is home to WAMC’s Hudson Valley bureau.
