"Elizabeth Bishop's World War II - Cold War View offers the first comprehensive portrayal of the poet in mid-century America. The elusive story of Bishop's national, cultural, and literary politics during the World War II - Cold War period finally is brought into sharp focus - as the book traces her life and writing from the war years in Key West through her tenure as the 1949-1950 national poet laureate at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Our understanding of Bishop is completely reshaped by this study's unique ability to easily move back and forth between a wide-ranging cultural critique of mid-century America and a careful, close, and chronological reading of the poet."--BOOK JACKET.