Poetry Books by ELIZABETH M. BISHOP, Ph.D
Soulmate in a Kayak
Imagine floating on the Green River in Utah and Colorado going five miles an hour with your beloved and letting your imagination wander to the good old days before Covid when virtual was a non-reality and reality was showering your dreams and irradiating you with irreverent bursts of humor and the imagination out of control. Everyone should find their soulmate and drift in the sea of cosmic consciousness.
A book containing four vignettes: Vignette 1: Soulmate in a Kayak This section depicts a surreal treatment of a fictitious want ad and the fallout thereof. Vignette 2: Derwish in a Kiosk The poems deconstruct the want ad. Vignette 3: Reinventing Atlantis Ishti poses questions for those living in so-called civilized society: how can we honor what we don’t know we have lost? Vignette 4: The Green Knight A pseudo medieval melodrama involving a lovelorn swain who suffers and endures the worst case scenario in a love tryst gone wrong.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (July 13, 2011)
Language: English
Paperback: 160 pages
ISBN-10: 1461154928
ISBN-13: 978-1461154921
Cosmic Excuse
This book was written when the celebrant (writer) took a philosophy class. This class was filled with cosmological seekers who had no idea what would happen when the professor introduced all kinds of possible interpretations of karma. Students were amazed at how Burning Man celebrations were brought up and close and personal in the spirit of classroom learning in earthquake-prone regions of California. This is one of those books–you had to be there to learn but this is the next best thing. Everyone is a seeker until the veils are lifted and the raw ragged light of the cosmic excursion is laid bare for the pilgrim-prone seeker.
Poetry contains a recipe within it. A dash of salt, a dash of wisdom's soul. The poems reflect the poets’ continued interest in nature blended with spiritual insight that makes the listeners’ spirit want to dance and celebrate life.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (January 19, 2014)
Language: English
Paperback: 142 pages
ISBN-10: 1495247651
ISBN-13: 978-1495247651
My Feet Talk to the Road: Gardenia's Café
My Feet Talk to the Road, Gardenia's Café, holds a key to some of the episodic material contained in the short stories. Each of the characters may be seen as representing some aspects of the Major Arcana found in Tarot cards. In addition, the characters may be viewed as spirit guides who enjoy interaction with Gardenia, the owner of the Café. Readers might like to be informed that Gardenia was a real person who used to read tea leaves and cards, and was an incredible seer. These vignettes reflect some of the typical members of her clientele who appear very fond of telling stories and expanding on archetypal aspects of family interrelationships.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; Second Edition (June 20, 2011)
Language: English
Paperback: 260 pages
ISBN-10: 1461129648
ISBN-13: 978-1461129646
Honoring the Elders
This book was vetted by elders and expresses the indigenous point of view. The voice is unmistakable and clear. Enjoy what we all might know about climate changes and global warming. This book was written in honor of indigenous elders, grandmothers and grandfathers who saw what was coming and were discreet about what they knew and expressed it without fanfare and in a spirit of great humility and tireless wisdom.
Many of the poems in this collection honor the elders and anticipate the enjoyment of the natural world. Restoring the importance of Mother Earth and reclaiming her power is central to the premise of this collection of talk stories and poems. First Peoples were never to be separated from Mother Earth. At the point of colonial contact, the rights of the people were violated. We are to remember we are all interconnected, no matter what. Much healing and honoring needs be accorded ancestral ways, now and forever.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (November 8, 2013)
Language: English
Paperback: 162 pages
ISBN-10: 1493699261
ISBN-13: 978-1493699261
Meditation
These mystic ragas are just about that. Let the mind in meditation be privy to scenes and theatrical exposes and explore the inner workings of the subconscious without fear of exposure. Meditation can be seen as an invitation to meditate or what happens if you don't know how to meditate. Of course, the poet meditated with an end in view–to write a better poem that would make it clear the molecules dance when you are free to create.
Poetry can be said to be a continuing conversation among pilgrims engaged in the ordered creation of a text. After each pilgrim's path towards a shrine or an altar, a poem emerges that may appear to out leap the vast amusement of the sun's brilliant light. No one individual can keep up with nature's interplay of spirits. While some poets may grumble about the nature of the universe, others celebrate the mystery of birth, life, and death and rebirth. As the reader of this verse, you can decide what to do. So, enjoy.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (September 16, 2014)
Language: English
Paperback: 104 pages
ISBN-10: 1502387549
ISBN-13: 978-1502387547
MALVINA
She is the poet's great grandmother depicted as living in Charlie Chaplin's era. There she is now feeding the pigeons in Venice on the cover. It is that magical time when she thinks she will sing until her lover awakens to her high notes and comes to her. Of course the beloved never appears which causes the entire book to be sung under different gates and portals in an Andalusian reverie. Malvinia really did exist and she really did sing opera, not crossover music either. She sang the reassuring real stuff of opera, the real McCoy, the old operatic favorites known by all the loyal fans of Pavarotti and Callas.
A folkloric portrait of a woman waiting by various gates for her beloved who may never arrive. The locations depicted in the text are considered in a visionary and fictional manner. Part dream, part reverie the quilt of stories supports tribal voices heard in the region of Moorish Spain.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (April 13, 2012)
Language: English
Paperback: 212 pages
ISBN-10: 1475161425
ISBN-13: 978-1475161427
That The Soul May Clap Its Hands
Look on the back of this little book to see the author struggling to guide a real indigenous canoe filled with her mother and her sister. Mother wears her father's hat (an indigenous shaman), sister is young and complaining as ever. Bishop is pulling the entire canoe (really heavy). Snapping turtles inhabit the lake and have a tendency to clamp their jaws on the paddles. Bishop gives the snapping turtles what and they disappear as soon as the picture is snapped to encapsulate a host of happy and exciting childhood memories!
Poetry is a way of life, a way of celebrating many aspects of nature, both dark and light. To celebrate life through poetic exploration is the aim of much Elizabeth Martina Bishop's vibrant work. That being said, poetry can be found everywhere, in ordinary rituals of daily life. Poetry is a way of meeting the challenges of life as well. Poetry provides ways that aspects of both inner and outer lives may balance and compliment each other. The poetry you find within these pages is not seen as a rarified art form, rather it is seen as a talk story, a way of telling a story that decorates almost all the ample rooms of the heart.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 26, 2014)
Language: English
Paperback: 138 pages
ISBN-10: 1500301167
ISBN-13: 978-1500301163
The Wedding Will Not Take Place
For all the women in the world who did not want to get a divorce, read this book. It is a must. One hundred twenty-nine books went into the making of this book written at midnight and two in the morning while the poet lived at Bowling Green State University early computer room in the Seventies. That alone should make you wonder why three marriages later, the book continues. Part Two will be written post Covid-19.
This poetic novel promises an occasion for celebration and ceremony. Meanwhile, the ritual of ceremony exists only within the mind of the celebrants who are on the point of undertaking a long journey. This novel promises an ambitious time line involving the completion of a journey. However, no actual ritual of ceremony is actually performed. Instead, the act of writing is seen as a self-redemptive and self-revelatory journey occasioning a spiritual awakening. In the spirit of "Waiting for Godot," celebrants and attendants engage in long journeys of pilgrimage, ultimately leading them towards an inner heart-centered labyrinth. A novel approach to writing a novel without an apparentending or beginning, words in themselves represent an exploration of the psyches of those who would prepare for a centered afterlife of joy and renunciation.
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (April 10, 2012)
Language: English
Paperback: 190 pages
ISBN-10: 1475161204
ISBN-13: 978-1475161205
Canary Portals
Canary Portals is based on a Turkish schoolteacher who takes her high tea each day at five in the afternoon. She is mute. These are her thoughts about her past lives and near death experiences. Suitable for music composition. This makes a companion piece to Words Not Yet Spoken and House of Words. Taken together, they are a trilogy.
Canaries have symbolized the healing properties of the sun. Many folk cultures feature the canary as a Rosocrucian dream image showing the canary hovering above a rose. In this narrative poem the canary operates as a fixture, a landmark, leading the dreamer in a journey celebrating life, birth and death.
Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; Second Edition (May 19, 2014)
Language : English
Paperback : 128 pages
ISBN-10 : 1499572115
ISBN-13 : 978-1499572117
Life Lived Like a Story
A January includes a prophetic January 6 poem written in 2016. No other poems in the collection have this date or any date mentioned. Star-Gazing is seen as an act of meditation and addressing issues of perception, chaos, and serene equanimity.
These poems were all written during the first two months of 2016. Taking the line of least resistance, poet Elizabeth Martina Bishop has penned a series of confessional narratives and lyric poems emphasizing the interpenetration of nature in all things. Come witness a new body's awakening, the precious eyes of a nighthawk, the beauty of a sunset, the surrendering of self in a daydream.
Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (February 29, 2016)
Language : English
Paperback : 118 pages
ISBN-10 : 1530271843
ISBN-13 : 978-1530271849