The Art of Losing

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 is a favorite poem of mine, dating back to my college days (not because it was featured prominently in the Hollywood flick, In Her Shoes), when I was fairly well-real (alas, not so much anymore). In any event, I majored in English (i.e. literature) and had a great interest in 20th Century literature - especially poetry. This one is written in the form of a "villanelle", the most famous of which is probably Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night". The villanelle is best described as follows: "It is 19 lines long, but only uses two rhymes, while also repeating two lines throughout the poem. The first five stanzas are triplets, and the last stanza is a quatrain such that the rhyme scheme is as follows: "aba aba aba aba aba abaa." The tricky part is that the 1st and 3rd lines from the first stanza are alternately repeated such that the 1st line becomes the last line in the second stanza, and the 3rd line becomes the last line in the third stanza. The last two lines of the poem are lines 1 and 3 respectively, making a rhymed couplet." (from this site).

One more favorite villanelle, much less widely known, is by Mary Jo Salter, from her collection, Henry Purcell in Japan. If it is not immediately apparent, the inspiration is from Shakespear's King Lear. The poem is called "REFRAIN":

Never afflict yourself to know the cause,
said Goneril, her mind already set.
No one can tell us who her mother was

or, knowing, could account then by the laws
of nurture for so false and hard a heart.
Never afflict yourself to know the cause

of Lear's undoing: if without a pause,
he shunned Cordelia, as soon he saw the fault.
No one can tell us who her mother was,

but here's a pretty reason seven stars
are seven stars: because they are not eight.
Never afflict yourself to know the cause -

like servants, even one's superfluous.
The King makes a good fool: the Fool is right.
No one can tell him who his mother was

when woman's water-drops are all he has
against the storm, and daughters cast him out.
Never affilict yourself to know the cause;
no one can tell you who your mother was.

Isn't it just a wonderful form? Next time, I will tell you about another favorite verse form:
the Sestina.

It's a doozy.

But where did my original thought go? Oh yes, the art of losing. It is an art I have mastered, one which I have practiced both farther and faster. I have lost my wallet too many times to count, although I have always been lucky enough to have it returned, whether by a business traveler staying at the Regency in midtown or a cabbie who drove it to my building and wanted a tip (he got one). I have lost my cell phone several times. I lost my Palm so long ago, I think it was called a Palm Pilot at the time. I have lost two iPod shuffles, shuffles which I carry around with me so that I have no opportunity to lose my $300 iPod video. I managed to lose the 30 gig anyway while teaching a class at Yahoo! Hot Jobs, although I got it back the same night. That Tzippy and Ric sweater that I love - the tangerine cashmere? It's my second. The first one I lost within moments of receiving it. Oh yeah, and my Cartier Panthere. Gone in 60 sixty seconds. Or however long it took to fall off my wrist without my noticing.

On a less dramatic note, I lost a Diet Peach Snapple today, throwing it away, inadvertantly, with a bunch of garbage.

But my coup de grace: I lost my car yesterday.

Yes, you heard it right. I lost my car. I left it in Midtown, having driven it from Shala X to Yoga Sutra and parked it in a lot so that I could teach my lunchtime classes. Two hours later, I walked out of Yoga Sutra and hopped in a cab home. Car?? What car? It was only this morning when I called my garage for my car and the attendant said, "Car? We were wondering where your car was! You don't have it?" that I realized that I had left my car in midtown the day before.

How does one forget that she parked her car in a lot? How does such a thing happen?

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

YC