Editor Recommends Two Key West Poets: Past & Present

Emily Schulten is a poet, professor, and a prominent literary voice in Key West. Born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1979, she earned her BA and MA in English from Western Kentucky University and her PhD in creative writing from Georgia State University. She teaches writing and literature at the College of the Florida Keys and has published three poetry collections: Rest in Black Haw (2009), The Way a Wound Becomes a Scar (2021), and Easy Victims to the Charitable Deceptions of Nostalgia (2024). Schulten was named Poet Laureate of Key West in 2024 and received the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and Best American Poetry 2025. She is also a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Literature and Creative Writing.

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This collection is a deeply personal and beautifully crafted meditation on themes of illness, family, and emotional healing. At its core is Schulten’s experience donating a kidney to her brother—a story she tells with honesty, restraint, and poetic grace.

The book is structured in five sections, each resembling a musical movement. The first focuses on the transplant itself, with poems like “Dialysis” offering vivid, unflinching detail: “Before I donated my kidney to my brother, they pierced a hole in the middle of his body…”

From there, the collection expands into themes of romantic loss, grief, motherhood, and the quiet resilience of everyday life. Critics have described it as “a book of the body, both literally and metaphorically,” praising its “enormous lyric depth” and “swift, precise narrative.” This is poetry that doesn’t just describe—it connects. It’s accessible, emotionally rich, and ideal for readers who appreciate storytelling through verse. I highly recommend it for your shelf, your nightstand, or your next gift.

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Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil in 1964. ( Public domain / Arquivo Nacional Collection)

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) was an icon in 20th-century American poetry. We're talking Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and even a stint as U.S. Poet Laureate! But what's really interesting is her time in Key West. She lived there from 1938 to 1946, and it was during those years that she wrote many of the poems that ended up in her breakthrough collection, North & South (1946).

You can feel how Key West influenced her writing. Her style became sharp and observant, but with quiet emotional depth. She had a humble home on White Street, and it's now a literary landmark. Bishop's poems often capture the island's unique tropical light, the maritime world, and that sense of being a little isolated, especially in poems like “The Fish” and “The Bight.” Interestingly, she bought a house at 624 White Street back in 1938. While in Key West, she also got to know Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, who had divorced Ernest Hemingway a few years prior. Later, she ended up in an apartment on Frances Street.

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This is the edition to own if you're a fan of one of America's absolute best poets. People are increasingly realizing she's a titan of 20th-century English poetry. Bishop's poems are just brilliant – they’ve got this perfect mix of funny and sad, pain and finding peace. She's like a microscopic camera, zooming in on nature and people's lives with incredible precision. Her work often circles around geography and the landscapes she knew, from her New England roots to her time in Brazil and Florida. She also beautifully explores our connection to the natural world, ponders how we understand things, and tackles that age-old question of whether form can ever truly tame life's chaos.

Elizabeth Bishop Key West House.

Sources

“Elizabeth Bishop.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poet/elizabeth-bishop. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.

“Elizabeth Bishop.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Nov. 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bishop. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025. 

Key West Art & Historical Society. “A Writers’ Retreat: Literary Figures of Key West.” KWAHS.org, https://www.kwahs.org/exhibit/literary-figures-of-key-west. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.

Key West Literary Seminar. “Poet Homes of Key West.” KWLS.org, https://www.kwls.org/archive/poet-homes-key-west-fl. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.