Elizabeth Bishop

One Art
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.

 

 

I read this poem with a bittersweet eye as the end of another academic year closes in, about to release those students in their fluprescent cells to the steamy summer outdoors.

Losing completes the circle of the school year, losing detracts from the ‘finding’ you finish as you exit those halls of knowledge every May and June, and losing brings that sad, sweet taste to everyone’s mouth as they look upon those people, those familiar faces and places, only to know that like their favorite flavor of candy, somehow those favorites will melt away in the summer heat and will change, sometimes beyond recognition.

A stellar way to evoke all these things in such simple language, Elizabeth Bishop draws upon perhaps one of the few universally shared emotions and experiences, and again the reader loses themselves to the simple beauty of the flowing language that here sums up the perpetual sense of loss so well known, especially to students in june.