Robert Giroux, the editor, mentions in his introduction [to The Collected Prose] a remark Bishop once made to him on the subject of the confessional poets: 'You just wish they'd keep some of those things to themselves.' He cites the example of that seemingly cheery villanelle 'One Art' ('The art of losing isn't hard to master'), written towards the end of her life, to demonstrate her freedom from self-pity. It is one of the ironies of her often fiercely reticent art that one senses her isolation and pain most keenly when he is celebrating the uniqueness of other creatures—people and animals—and the warm climates she sought in her maturity.

Elizabeth Bishop is that rarest of writers—a constantly attractive presence. She is all of a piece in her prose and her poetry—the same care has been generously lavished on the composition of both. She is always sharply observant in her shyness….

The most beguiling essay in [The Collected Prose] is the long memoir of Marianne Moore entitled 'Efforts of Affection.'… Bishop wittily, tactfully captures Marianne Moore and her fearsome-sounding mother in their cramped apartment at 260 Cumberland Avenue, with its bowl of nickels (later dimes, finally quarters) for subway fares on a bookcase by the front door. It was considered bad manners to refuse one of these upon leaving.

'The exact way in which anything was done, or made, or functioned, was poetry to her,' Bishop says admiringly of Moore. No wonder they remained so devoted to one another. A similar curiosity informs all the non-fiction in this collection….

A strain of autobiography runs through all the eight short stories included here, even 'In Prison,' which has a male narrator. The final story, 'In the Village,' is set in Nova Scotia, where Bishop was raised. A child hears a terrible scream—his mother's, presumably. She seeks reassurance in other sounds, one in particular the clang the blacksmith makes as he shapes a horseshoe. Elizabeth Bishop searched for and lighted on any number of consoling sounds in her exquisite art, any number of soothing cadences. Most other poets of her time contented themselves merely with imitating screams.