Elizabeth Bishop, 1976

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.

Source: The Poetry Foundation

---

I never knew about this poem until recently, when my former British Literature teacher from high school mentioned it.

The thing that sticks out to me the most is that most of the lines end in “disaster”, except the two which end in “master”. It’s a short poem, 5 stanzas of 3 lines and then 1 stanza of 4 lines. It’s interesting that she personifies the things getting lost as “filled with the intent / to be lost”, and as such since they seem to want to be lost, it’s okay if they are from time to time. As the poem goes on, Ms. Bishop seems to be more and more amped up about pointing out the things she’s lost – “I lost my mother’s watch. And look!” Toward the end, I think it becomes much more serious when it becomes apparent that she’s lost larger things, until she’s lost someone dear to her.

After I read it a few times, I realized that the second stanza is a command, not an observation – you should lose something every day, so as to better master the art of losing. I wonder what she names by losing “places” – forgetting them? I can see how one might lose a house – it being sold to someone else, for example – but I’m not sure how one might lose a city, a river, or a continent, unless one moves away.

I misplace things all the time. Usually it’s something like my water bottle or a pen (or several pens). I often forget things like names, too – it tends to take me a few tries meeting someone for their name to stick. I’ve heard that if you lose anything no matter how small, you go through all the stages of grief, although the intensity varies with the importance of the thing lost. Pain and suffering are a part of life, and to love is to risk losing what you love, it’s true.

I wonder who the last stanza (and the whole poem) is addressed to. It’s the one I think means the most, and it’s the one I puzzle over the most. I wonder if she means using humor as a coping mechanism with “the joking voice, a gesture / I love”? I also wonder what she means by – “the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look (Write it!) like disaster.”