Many readers are struck by Elizabeth Bishop's use of clear, striking descriptions of the physical world, and no scholar has ever asked how Bishop's commitment to description shapes her writing and thinking. "Elizabeth Bishop's Poetics of Description" argues that attention to the material realm informs everything Bishop does. Seen through this lens, many familiar topics look remarkably different. Bishop's relationship to travel, epiphany, surrealism, and imagery are all transformed, and a timely new Bishop emerges - one quite different from the postmodern poet that has dominated recent scholarship. Zachariah Pickard eschews academic jargon and concentrates on the poems themselves as well as a number of key prose passages that have long been overlooked. His study combines scholarly rigor with clarity and common sense to present a moving new account of Bishop's work that will appeal to educated readers within and without the academy.