The Art of Losing

Latest impulse-buy: unfinished poems by Elizabeth Bishop (1927-1979) called Edgar Allen Poe & The Juke-Box. I enjoy unfinished works, and our editor for this collection, Alice Quinn, is painstaking in her efforts to give us the most information possible for these poems, or almost-poems. One of my favorites, which eventually came to be called One Art, went through at least 16 drafts, and Ms. Quinn prints all of them for us. In the first draft, called How to Lose Things, Bishop explains how to train oneself to lose items by starting small with pens, keys, and the like. Then she goes on to the second stanza with these verses: "You may find it hard to believe, but I have actually lost/ I mean lost, and forever, two whole houses,/ one a very big one. A third house, also big, is/ at present, I think, 'mislaid' - but/maybe it's lost, too. I won't know for sure for some time/ I have lost one peninsula and one island./ I have lost - it can never be has never been found -/ a small-sized town on that same island./ I've lost smaller bits of geography, like/ a splendid beach, and a good-sized bay./ Two whole cities, two of the/world's biggest cities (two of the most beautiful/ though that's beside the point)/ a piece of one continent -/ and one entire continent. All gone, gone forever and ever."

I like the tone--it's kind of silly and mad (think Alice in Wonderland). In later drafts Bishop writes this line to open the poem: "The art of losing isn't hard to master;" and she seems to stick with this but really strips away much of the above excerpt. By the 16th draft she's written 6 stanzas of 3 lines each. Here's what I get from it: The art of losing (things/places/people/love) isn't hard to master (we can practice so when we experience it we take it more lightly each time), and then "their loss is no disaster." I think Bishop doesn't really believe this will work, especially in matters of love, but she hopes for the ability to make her head trump her heart. This thought also appeals to me, and I'm also familiar with its futility.