Elizabeth Bishop at Vassar

When she went off to study at Vassar College, Elizabeth Bishop brought along a jar of Roquefort cheese:

Bishop brought the cheese to college because she claimed that the best way to develop poems was to record her dreams, and eating cheese before bed made her dreams more vivid and interesting. According to her freshman year English professor at Vassar, Barbara Swan, Bishop was “evidently doomed to be a poet.”

Elizabeth Bishop ’34 starts literary career at Vassar (The Miscellany News)

And here’s a poem: “One Art.”