One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
This poem kind of irked me. It really made me think about the concept of loss itself. I really feel like I don’t live my life to its fullest, as this poem say–every day we lose we don’t get back. “Lose something every day. Accept the fluster/ of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.” Bishop begins by describing things that can be lost and found again, basically things that are more inconsequential material things like a door keys, a watch, a house. But the end is the real clincher, the loss of an other. Something you can’t get back.
We all deal with loss in different ways. Some people cry, some get angry, some block it out. But we all have an “art” to loss, if you want to call it that. Generally, we are fairly predictable and have the same reaction to loss, thus our art is mastered. But never does Bishop mention that losing something or someone is easy, just that its “not too hard to master.”
What about life? Is Bishop suggesting that we live to lose? After all, we all die eventually — we experience loss and mourning for others and eventually we are lost too. wooo depressing!!! However, Bishop makes a difference in the fact that losing some things is just part of life, whereas losing someone is more of a disaster. Is loss the One Art that we all must learn to master before we are lost too?
And I did not understand the (Write it!) part, why did Bishop choose to word it like that?
