Dana Gioia begins his collection of reflective essays with the notion that every reader has two lives: one public, the other secret. I would extend that to writers as well. The public life is the one visible to the people around us: teachers, friends, and family. As Gioia puts it, “this is the realm of experience universally known as real life” (20). And then there’s the secret life which is just as intense and complicated as real life, the one that very few people see or even know about, wherein the writer is constantly turning over images and ideas. Such is the life for those who reside or wish to make their way in the literary world. Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writer’s Life offers beautifully unfiltered glimpses into these secret lives of famous, forgotten, and unknown writers alike.
The book as a whole feels like a...
