On Conversation

From Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell:

[Postcard: Winslow Homer, Marblehead, 1880 (watercolor, Art Institute of Chicago); and image of two people in conversation on a costal rock]

"Out of all the masterpieces in this place I chose this to send you, for obvious reasons. We spent hours here--most of the time in Chicago--I suppose you've seen it, but I had never been to C before--or believed in Nevada, Utah, and so on. Utah is exactly like HELL. But it was a very nice train ride on the ZEPHYR, everyone fighting for clear views for their polaroids ... Please write.
Hope all is well, with much love,
Elizabeth" (From Words in Air)

As I couldn't find a Homer watercolor called Marblehead, I chose this one--either there was a mix-up with the title or the real Marblehead no longer exists (that is to say, is not present on the internet).

What is the obvious reason that Bishop refers to? This poem that Lowell wrote about being with Bishop gives some insight into that:

Water, by Robert Lowell

It was a Maine lobster town—
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands,

and left dozens of bleak
white frame houses stuck
like oyster shells
on a hill of rock,

and below us, the sea lapped
the raw little match-stick
mazes of a weir,
where the fish for bait were trapped.

Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
From this distance in time
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,

but it was only
the usual gray rock
turning the usual green
when drenched by the sea.

The sea drenched the rock
at our feet all day,
and kept tearing away
flake after flake.

One night you dreamed
you were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile,
and trying to pull
off the barnacles with your hands.

We wished our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water was too cold for us.