Elizabeth Bishop's Brazil represents a significant development in Bishop studies. It is a diligently researched work that adds much to the analysis of Bishop's Brazilian poems and translations. Hicok has also brought to our attention the ever-increasing volume of work done by Brazilian critics on Bishop and usefully extends this in her work, particularly in her consideration of Bishop's translations of Brazilian poetry. Hicok asserts that Bishop's decision to stay in Brazil transformed her career, and sets out to explore that transformation in this book, ending with a chapter on the Amazon, where she suggests that this is “the place that Bishop chose to dwell imaginatively at the end of her life” (7). There is a great deal of detailed research to support the proposition that Brazil was the imaginative locus for Bishop at this stage of her life, although I think this perspective should be balanced by the possibility that, had she lived, she may have sought and found a new direction.

The book is arranged thematically into five principal areas of interest: architecture, the road, translations, politics, and the Amazon. Hicok is well versed in the impact of Brazil on Bishop's life and work, breaking new ground in her exploration of the cross-cultural zones between Brazil and the USA that Bishop both experiences and uses in her work. Hicok draws on the work of cultural theorists such as Mary Louise Pratt, James Clifford and Homi Bhabha to bring to the fore fascinating insights into the cultural exchanges present in images such as the “weak mailed fist” of the armadillo in the eponymous poem (25). Hicok also draws our attention to the “moment(s) of encounter” (44) staged by Bishop as she travels further into the interior of her adopted homeland, noting that Bishop is both the observer and the observed. There is rich ground on this subject in the chapter on the Amazon and, in particular, on the connectivity between “The Riverman” and “Santarém,” the work of James Clifford and the interplay between the ethnographer and the traveller (122), casting an intriguing light on notions of home and travel in Bishop's work. Hicok has chosen to focus strongly on Bishop's time in Brazil; however, this sometimes seems to come at the cost of a wider consideration of how her themes reverberate beyond Brazil. Given the importance of houses and homes, I would have found it interesting to have more detail on the interplay between Casa Marianna and the figure of Marianne Moore, to give just one example.

Hicok intelligently roots her reading of the relationship between Bishop and Lota Macedo Soares around Samambaia, the modernist house that Lota built and shared with Bishop. The figure of Lota Macedo Soares is expertly brought to life by Hicok, who correctly emphasizes her status as a member of the Brazilian elite, highly influential in the politics and culture of Brazil of the time. This enables Hicok to draw a fine balance between the private life of Macedo Soares and Bishop and concepts of house and home structured around Samambaia and Rio de Janeiro, and the development of Bishop's own independent understanding of, and participation in, the political and cultural life of Brazil. Her reading of the relationship between Macedo Soares and Bishop is helpfully extended and layered by her understanding of the Brazilian cultural context and the work of critics such as Thomas Skidmore whose work helps deepen the analysis of class and hierarchy in poems such as “Manuelzinho.”

The chapters on Bishop's Brazilian translations and politics explore a great deal of careful research, uncovering notable material in reference to Bishop's translations and revealing her “increasingly involved dialogue” with Brazilian politics (99), adding new material to our reading of “The Burglar of Babylon” and “Pink Dog.” In her analysis of Bishop's translations, Hicok concludes that Bishop's approach to translation “was in line with the major translation trends of the 1940s and 1950s” (84), principally that in a translation, the sense of the original should be clear. The work Hicok does on the translations, in particular in her discussion of the works of Clarice Lispector, João Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Dummond de Andrade, significantly enhances our understanding and knowledge of this area of Bishop's work. It is here that Hicok most profitably extends the work done by Brazilian critics, namely Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins, providing a window into the wealth of Brazilian scholarship on Bishop for those not able to read the original.Footnote ¹ Refreshingly, Hicok's appraisals of Bishop's translations reveal a more directly critical approach to Bishop's work, such as her careful analysis of the racial and cultural implications in Bishop's choice of “pickaninny” in The Diary of Helena Morley (67–71). The book greatly extends our knowledge of Bishop's time in Brazil, and the reverberations this had on her work, whilst also providing a useful resource for scholars who are interested in the wealth of Brazilian criticism on Bishop.