Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpts from Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop, edited by George Monteiro (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996).

p. 80 (from an interview with Beatriz Schiller, 1977):

"How did you prepare for a life of poetry?"

"I studied music, afterwards changing over to English literature. Literature, Latin, Greek, Zoology. I don't know which subject helped me the most. I never took courses on how to write. Actually, in my time they did not exist. They are a new thing. I tell my students that instead of learning to write poetry, they would do better to study Latin and Greek. Hardly any of them have studied Latin. In the past Latin was mandatory. I find that while it is not essential, having Latin sharpens one's control over other languages. The universities should teach things that can be taught. I find it nonsensical to go to the university to learn to be creative."

p. 91 (from an interview with George Starbuck, 1977):

GS: Do you approve of all the creative writing classes...

EB: No. I try to discourage them! I tell students they'd be better off studying Latin. Latin or Greek. They are useful for verse writing. I have a feeling that if there is a great poet at Boston University or Harvard now, he or she may be hiding somewhere, writing poetry and not going to writing classes at all. However, I have had some students who have done very well (two or three "geniuses" I think and several very talented). I think the best one hopes for is that after students graduate they'll continue to read poetry for the rest of their lives. What can you teach, really teach?

pp. 108-109 (from an interview with Eileen McMahon, 1978):

Q. Do you think that the Latin and Greek you studied in college affected your poetry?

A. Latin probably. I had an excellent teacher while I was at Vassar. I remember sitting for a couple of years on Monday mornings and writing Latin prose from English prose. I was not a very good student in college. I was always distracted, but I do think that Latin is probably the best writing exercise I can think of.

Evelyn Waugh has a very good passage in his first autobiography about the value of translation both ways—from a dead language to live ones. Through translation you learn that certain words mean things and they have to be in certain places in a sentence to be effective.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.