Technically, this is not my first diary; my first asked for recs on another Kossack's diary, which I felt needed more eyes. But this is the first that actually qualifies as a diary, I think. I plan to begin a "Poem for Sunday" series to share work from poets I love—some well-known, others less so. Elizabeth Bishop is most likely one of the latter.
She published only 101 poems during her lifetime. But each of them went through countless revisions before she was satisfied; the results are poems of precise observation, recorded in meticulous language. Some reviews described her work as "domestic." This was likely due in part to her rejection of the confessional style favored by poets like her close friend Robert Lowell, whom she once chastised for using letters from his ex-wife in a poem, an act which she believed was a violation of privacy: “Art just isn’t worth that much.” It was also likely due in part to her focus on the everyday as a sort of matte finish on the miraculous.
Today's poem is "One Art," written at a time when Bishop, who struggled with depression and alcoholism throughout her adult life, feared the loss of her lover, Alice Methfessel. Her fears were not realized; the two remained partners until Bishop's death in 1979. The poem is a villanelle, a complex and difficult form of which this poem is considered one of the most accomplished. While it is not my absolute favorite of her poems, it seemed especially appropriate after the recent loss of beloved Kossack triciawyse.
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.