The art of losing

One Art

Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979

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.

The film, “Reaching for the Moon,” is based on 15-year-period in the life of Elizabeth Bishop—during which she lives with her partner Lota in Brazil. Bishop was Poet Laureate of the U.S. in 1949; she won the Pulitzer in 1956; and she later won the National Book Award. 

Bishop lived comfortably all her life—thanks to an inheritance that allowed her to travel all over the world.  One of her closest friends was the poet Robert Lowell.  She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and struggled for many years with alcoholism.