Quote by Elizabeth Bishop: “Awful sea and awful sky.”

This concise observation captures a sense of overwhelming desolation and grandeur in nature. It conveys a feeling of being dwarfed by the vastness of the natural world, suggesting both dread and a kind of bleak awe at its scale.

From Bishop's poem 'The Bight,' describing a specific bay in Florida. The setting is a scene of decay and activity, viewed from a window, where the 'awful' (awe-inspiring) nature of the sea and sky frames the mundane details below.

American poet known for her precise, restrained verse and her long residency in Brazil. Her collection Geography III, which contains One Art, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976; she was the first American to win the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.