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Title: This cassette fails to fulfill even modest expectations.
Review: Is it reasonable to assume that a one-hour cassette tape entitled 'Elizabeth Bishop' includes poetry read by Bishop herself? Perhaps not. Surely, though, such a tape would include complete Bishop poems adequately read by someone. Guess again. The tape in question is a hodge-podge of comments by UNIDENTIFIED people about Bishop's poetry. Octavio Paz has an accent, so one can identify him, and I think the quavery, crusty voice is Mary McCarthy's -- but who knows for sure? An extremely self-conscious woman (unidentified) reads about half a dozen strangely expurgated poems. There is no indication either on the cassette case or on the tape itself that the poems have been edited. Why edit short poems anyway? You'll have to ask someone at Mystic Fire Audio.
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