Visits to St Elizabeths is a 1950 poem by Elizabeth Bishop modelled on the English nursery rhyme This is the house that Jack built. The poem refers to the confinement between 1945 and 1958 of Ezra Pound in St Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C. The nursery rhyme style gives an unusual effect to the strange or unsettling descriptions of a psychiatric hospital in the poem. Likewise the poem treats Pound ambivalently describing him by turns as "honored", "brave", "cruel", and "wretched" among other things.
Famous quotes containing the word visits:
“Dr. Craigle: A good man, completely reliable. Not given to overcharging and stringing visits out, the way some do.
Phil Green: Do you mean the way some doctors do or do you mean the way some Jewish doctors do?
Dr. Craigle: I suppose you’re right. I suppose some of us do it, too. Not just the Chosen People.”
—Moss Hart (1904–1961)