The influence that Elizabeth Bishop's poetry has had on the poetry of John
Ashbery has been widely cited. ¹ Ashbery himself remarked that he "read,
reread, studied and absorbed" Bishop (Shoptaw 29). In Ashbery's poem "Un-
tilted," written only a month before Bishop's death, the speaker makes an ap-
peal to Bishop. ² By alluding to her early poem "The Man-Moth" and drawing
on common motifs in Bishop's poetry, the speaker reveals an empathy for her
unwillingness to go public with her homosexuality. Pressured by the preju-
dices of the 1940s and 1950s, Bishop would never write about her lesbianism,
except through veiled references in her poetry that work as maps to the mar-
ginalized life of the homosexual poet. Vernon Shelty comments on Bishop's
tendency to hold back: "Reticence and silence seem to have come naturally to
her, but that innate bias must have been powerfully reinforced by the need for
certain kinds of secrecy in her emotional life. . . . the climate of hostility to
homosexuality throughout most of Bishop's lifetime thwarted the develop-
ment of what might have been a remarkable love poet" (24). ³ Shelty makes a
connection between Bishop and Ashbery through this secrecy, stating that like
Bishop, "Ashbery seemed destined to be a love poet, but he found his way
blocked by the imperative of secrecy surrounding the love he would have
taken as his subject" (25). Unable to openly address issues of his own sexual-
ity, Ashbery empathizes with Bishop's silence. By the end of "Untilted," how-
ever, focusing on the "cradled," "pure" but painful "tear"—a legacy from
Bishop's poem "The Man-Moth"—the speaker appeals to Bishop, and to him-
self, to let go of fear. ⁴

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