Dear Elizabeth: A Play in Letters from Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell and Back Again

Download or read book Dear Elizabeth: A Play in Letters from Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell and Back Again written by Sarah Ruhl and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A moving, innovative play based on one of the greatest correspondences in literary history From 1947 to 1977, Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop exchanged more than four hundred letters. Cataloging the composition of their poems, their travel and daily routines, the pyrotechnics of their romantic relationships, and the profound affection they had for each other, these letters are the most intimate record of both poets and one of the greatest correspondences in American letters. Sarah Ruhl is one of the most lauded and produced playwrights working today, with plays beloved for their unembarrassed lyricism, casual surrealism, and naked emotional force. In Dear Elizabeth, Ruhl attempts the impossible: adapting Lowell and Bishop's thirty-year correspondence into a stage play. And she succeeds brilliantly, re-embodying the letters and poems in human voices, elegantly suggesting the poets' lives outside of the letters, and poignantly depicting the emotional closeness and geographical distance that defined their thirty-year relationship. Dear Elizabeth offers a reading experience as engaging as a live performance, one that will entrance anyone curious about the lives of these legendary poets"--