Chapter 22 - Religion

Summary

This essay ponders Elizabeth Bishop’s complex relationship to Christianity. Though she was often called an unbeliever, she loved the work of George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simone Weil, and St. Teresa. She once wrote in her journal that “genuine religious poetry seems about as far as poetry can go – and as good as it can be.” Yet she was also prone to mock religiosity. Her poem “The Unbeliever” lends itself to being misread as a statement of her own position. In fact, however, she was neither a believer nor a confirmed non-believer. She once described her position to Robert Lowell as one of sitting on the fence. Her discomfort with those who were too emphatic about their religious beliefs probably derived from the traumas she experienced as a child. Though rarely examined by critics, “A Cold Spring” is an excellent example of her refusal to find in the natural world the sort of “message” that Hopkins often found there.