I Felt That the Art of Losing Is Almost Harder Than Winning
"The armored cars of dreams, contrived to permit us do so many a dangerous thing."
Elizabeth Bishop
One Art
by 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 hr badly spent.
The fine art of losing isn't hard to chief.
And so do losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where information technology was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother'south sentry. And wait! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The fine art of losing isn't hard to principal.
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 vox, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's non also hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
One Fine art is a villanelle. Villanelle'south are kissing cousins to sonnets. Like sonnets they are highly structured poems with precise rhyming schemes and line arrangements, but with less emphasis on syllable count per line while always being 19 lines. Villanelle's have been effectually since the 1600'due south just the most famous villanelles are from the 20th century, including; Dylan Thomas' Practice Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl Dear Story, W. H. Auden's If I Could Tell You lot and Edwin Arlington Robinson'due south The Firm On The Hill. I have written a couple of villanelle'south in all their goofy complexity. They are kind of fun because they take on a life of their ain well-nigh half manner through the writing procedure. If you have never tried writing one, give it a go and permit the rhyme and structure guide the procedure and come across what your subconscious has been hiding from you. If yous have written a villanelle and would like to share information technology, transport it to Fourteenlines10@gmail.com and I'll post it along with one of my ain.
Elizabeth Bishop had the luxury of wealth throughout her lifetime and it afforded her the opportunity to go to Vassar, then travel the world, write verse and paint. An independent woman of means, she often painted and wrote nearly subjects that were more aligned with the working grade. Bishop understood strife and loss, both of her parents having died when she was very young. She invested her time well in pursuit of her fine art, her poetry critically acclaimed, winning the Pulitzer in 1956.
We are adaptable as a species, if at a different rate and to a unlike extent as individuals. Change and loss is something that is integral to the human experience. I was watching the movie A Little Anarchy, and Kate Winslet's pivotal moment in the flick is when she addresses the King with a metaphor, the wise rose, as a manner of reminding the King nearly the beauty of his aging lovers. She give's the King a rose and tells him the rose is oblivious to all the stages of its life, wilting, dropping its petals and forming a seed caput to foster the next generation. She shifts the King's perspective by saying information technology is just the gardener who tends the rose that morns its fading beauty. Many of us are mourning the things nosotros are losing or have lost. Its good to remember loss is office of our nature as well, and fifty-fifty faded or remembered beauty is beautiful, as well.
Breakfast Vocal
by Elizabeth Bishop
My love, my saving grace,
your optics are awfully blue.
I kiss your funny face,
your coffee-flavored mouth.
Last night I slept with y'all.
Today I love y'all so
how can I bear to go
(equally soon I must, I know)
to bed with ugly expiry
in that cold, filthy place,
to sleep there without you,
without the easy jiff
and nightlong, limblong warmth
I've grown accustomed to?
—Nobody wants to dice;
tell me it is a lie!
But no, I know information technology's true.
Information technology'due south simply the mutual case;
there's nothing 1 can practise.
My love, my saving grace,
your optics are awfully blueish
early and instant blue.
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