In the early-1950s, while living in Petropolis, Brazil, Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) met Clarice Lispector and became enchanted by her stories, a few of which Bishop translated and sent to the New Yorker, who were "interested."

Bishop also sent letters to her friend Robert Lowell. In a June 1963 letter, she wrote (of Lispector):

"...she's the most non-literary writer I've every known, and 'never cracks a book' as we used to say. She's never read anything that I can discover -- I think she's a 'self-taught' writer, like a primitive painter."

Below is a poem by Bishop:

ARGUMENT

Days that cannot bring you near
or will not,
Distance trying to appear
something more obstinate,
argue argue argue with me
endlessly
neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.

Distance: Remember all that land
beneath the plane;
that coastline
of dim beaches deep in sand
stretching indistinguishably
all the way,
all the way to where my reasons end?

Days: And think
of all those cluttered instruments,
one to a fact,
canceling each other's experience;
how they were
like some hideous calendar
"Compliments of Never & Forever, Inc."

The intimidating sound
of these voices
we must separately find
can and shall be vanquished:
Days and Distance disarrayed again
and gone...