This book brings together the work of pioneering scholars in the field- critics who are exploring the psychosexual tensions within Bishop's vision and the uncanny way her poetics of dislocation challenges our assumptions about placement and orientation. These scholars argue that Bishop's ""sense of difference"" as an orphan, a woman artist, and a lesbian plays a significant role in the questioning of aesthetic, ethical, and sexual boundaries that is so much a part of her poetic practice. Drawing on central issues of Bishop's personal life, the book considers the ways in which the poet's art confronts the female body, the sexual politics of literary tradition, and the pleasures and perils of language itself.