There's no mistaking Elizabeth Bishop's poetic gift, but more remarkable was her ability to marry her talent for life with her talent for writing in order to create brilliant poems, prose, and letters. Here Thomas Travisano tells the story of Bishop's life, noting her friendships with an international array of literati, visual artists, scholars, and politicians, along with a cosmopolitan gay underground that was invisible to the dominant culture. Drawing on fresh interviews and newly discovered manuscript materials, Travisano illuminates that the "art of losing" that Bishop celebrated in her poem, "One Art" was linked to an "art of finding", and Bishop's life was devoted to the sort of encounters and epiphanies that so often appear in her work.