When FSG published a book of fragments, drafts and uncollected work by Elizabeth Bishop, many fans were outraged. Why?

The answer, I think, has to do with the mystery at the core of Bishop’s work: the way her poetry evokes powerful, intimate feelings without devolving into mere self-revelation. Bishop chose a path of aesthetic discretion at a time when many of her peers were pursuing, to great acclaim, confessional self-disclosure. Publishing her fragments seems a betrayal to those who believe that Bishop’s genius is largely a product of this reticence—who fear that coming upon Bishop in naked moments of aesthetic undress would destroy the spell cast by her poems. Their protective zeal is understandable. Bishop, after all, is a poet whose small body of work is inflected by a powerful reserve. But the concern is, I think, ultimately misguided. It wasn’t concealment that made Bishop the poet she is; it was her quest for exact expression.

I’ll be keeping matches next to deathbed, my darlings, in the unlikely event some misguided future society decides my dregs are worth dredging up. (Thanks, Ian!)