Elizabeth Bishop
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Elizabeth Bishop, one of the most respected American poets, published just 90-odd poems in her lifetime. She had a reputation for perfecting poems over many years and refusing to publish those that did not meet her exacting standards.  Helen Vendler takes on Alice Quinn of The New Yorker, arguably the country's most prominent poetry editor, for editing ''Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts and Fragments,'' by Elizabeth Bishop, one of the most respected of American poets. The book, published last month by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, features nearly 120 pieces of Bishop's unpublished work. She published just 90-odd poems in her lifetime. For many readers, these manuscripts and fragments provide an important window into Bishop's creative process while also feeding a hunger for more of this spare poet's work. But some people believe that Bishop, who had a reputation for perfecting poems over many years and refusing to publish those that did not meet her exacting standards, never intended for this work to be published. Bringing it out now, more than 25 years after her death, is unfair to her legacy, they say.