Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950 and the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956. Lota de Macedo Soares was a Brazilian aesthete who conceived and constructed the Flamengo Park in Rio de Janeiro. In 1951, Bishop travelled to South America on Norwegian freighter S.S. Bowplate, intending to stop in Brazil for only a few weeks. While in Brazil, she had an allergic reaction to the fruit of a cashew tree and was nursed back to health by her Brazilian friend, Lota de Macedo Soares. The two women fell in love and Bishop accepted Macedo Soares’s offer to build her a studio behind Macedo Soares’s Modernist house in the mountains above Petrópolis. In 1966, Bishop taught at the University of Washington in Seattle where she began a relationship with Roxanne Cumming. In 1967, Soares followed Bishop back to the United States, having recovered from an ailment with extensive hospitalization. The same day she arrived in New York, 19 September 1967, Soares committed suicide by overdosing on tranquilizers, and died several days later. Reaching for the Moon (2013) (original "Flores Raras"), directed by Bruno Barreto, tells the tragic love affair between them.
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950 and the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956. Lota de Macedo Soares was a Brazilian aesthete who conceived and constructed the Flamengo Park in Rio de Janeiro. In 1951, Bishop travelled to South America on Norwegian freighter S.S. Bowplate, intending to stop in Brazil for only a few weeks. While in Brazil, she had an allergic reaction to the fruit of a cashew tree and was nursed back to health by her Brazilian friend, Lota de Macedo Soares. The two women fell in love and Bishop accepted Macedo Soares’s offer to build her a studio behind Macedo Soares’s Modernist house in the mountains above Petrópolis. In 1966, Bishop taught at the University of Washington in Seattle where she began a relationship with Roxanne Cumming. In 1967, Soares followed Bishop back to the United States, having recovered from an ailment with extensive hospitalization. The same day she arrived in New York, 19 September 1967, Soares committed suicide by overdosing on tranquilizers, and died several days later. Reaching for the Moon (2013) (original "Flores Raras"), directed by Bruno Barreto, tells the tragic love affair between them.
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