Elizabeth Bishop was a poet whose personal life was fraught with family struggles, questions of sexuality, and a great deal of loss. A casual reader might recall some of these emotions exhibited in her masterful villanelle, “One Art.” Filmmakers have even attempted to capture snippets of Bishop’s interior life during her time in Brazil in the recent movie, Reaching for the Moon. However, despite the fact that she moved throughout her life and perhaps never found her “place,” her readers can sense that she felt a strong tie to family, legacy, and her historical moment. Bishop’s “Poem,” a short piece about a puzzling family heirloom, serves as an excellent example of how she negotiated her historical ties, ties that in many ways have formed the basis of my complicated relationship with Bishop’s work.