Proposal

The full version of this project will be a “teaching and learning edition” of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” The core of the edition will be a reproduction of 16 drafts of Bishop’s poem. As users travel linearly between drafts, they will see newly introduced textual variants appear highlighted on the screen to give the effect of an animation of the revision process. They will also see revisions Bishop made to individual drafts underlined and be able to mouse over this text to see Bishop’s revisions.

As a teaching and learning edition, many revisions, both to individual drafts and between drafts, will feature guided reflection questions, which will also appear when moused over. These questions will ask students to reflect on how Bishop’s revisions help create the poem’s meaning and reflect her intentions. Some questions will also be interactive, for example challenging users to propose alternative lines that fit the meter and rhyme scheme of the poem. Such questions will guide students towards understanding how Bishop’s final editorial decisions make the poem so masterful.

 In addition to the edition itself, the resource will include background information about Bishop, the poem, and these drafts. It will also include a section of scholarly analysis of the poem and links to videos of the poem being read aloud. In this way, the project will be a true representation of how the poem exists in the minds of today’s public, providing a further frame of comparison beyond the final draft.