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Writers on Recordings: Colm Tóibín on Elizabeth Bishop

London Review Bookshop Podcast

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I Will Not Make a Wasp's Nest Into a Symbol

"I want to find a rhythm whereby, if i notice enough and find a rhythm enough, i will actually manage to create a level of feeling around noticing that will be almost exquisite," she writes. The poem is about an empty wasp's nest given to her by a Dutch pharm who admired it so much he gave it to me. "It does have a mysterious presence in the poem as object. We cannot be sure what it means, or even what it does here."

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