Elizabeth Bishop: I've never really sat down and said to myself, I'm going to be a poet. Never in my life. I'm still surprised that people think I am... There's nothing more embarrassing than being a poet, really.
Elizabeth Spires: It's especially difficult to tell people you're meeting for the first time that that's what you do.
Bishop: Just last week a friend and I went to visit a wonderful lady I know in Quebec. She's seventy-four or seventy-five. And she didn't say this to me but she said to my friend, Alice, I'd like to ask my neighbor who has the big house next door to dinner, and she's so nice, but she'd be bound to ask Elizabeth what she does and if Elizabeth said she wrote poetry, the poor woman wouldn't say another word all evening! This is awful, you know, and I think no matter how modest you think you feel or how minor you think you are, there must be an awful core of ego somewhere for you to set yourself up to write poetry. I've never felt it, but it must be there.
- Elizabeth Bishop, from her Paris Review interview. You can read the whole thing here.
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