 
                         20060409.00

               One Art

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 everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing further, 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.

                          --Elizabeth Bishop

===================================

I have been wrestling with "One Art" for several days now. My
predicament reminds me of a discussion about Dali's "Persistence
of Memory". Then, I tried to show how I see the seashore by
comparing it with a picture of my father gazing over Aspe Bay.
In response to "One Art", I might quote a poem that reflects
my experience of "losing", (Hoelderlin's Der Abschied), but the
poem would be in German, and I find it untranslatable. It is also
beside the point, since the two experiences have nothing in common.

Elizabeth Bishop's poem, I think, corroborates the subtitle of
the anthology. It is a real poem for unreal times. The "reality"
of the poem I see in its consummate craftsmanship. The "unreality"
of the times which it reflects is the conflation of the so diverse
and variegated experiences of "losing" and the claim, perhaps
tongue in cheek, that these may be mastered by "One Art".

My losses, as I have experienced them, are all different,
both in quality and intensity, one from the other. To subsume
them under a single term "losing", is to put the cart before
the horse and to limit experience to (playful) words, rather
than finding words to reflect (almost) limitless experience.
The death of my father is a loss different from the death of
my mother, The loss of a family member, a friend, an acquaintance
is each of them unique in my experience. There is a perspective
in which my entire life may be interpreted as a series of losses.
Each loss is incomparable with any other.  I can't conceive of a
single method, of "One Art" of losing.

Disaster is a relative term. It derives meaning from the ideal
of cosmic order and harmony of which it purports to describe
the disruption. But if such harmony was nothing more than the
expression of childish fear and longing for safety, then the
adult must learn to accept the fact that all is disaster.

Such is my experience with Elizabeth Bishop's poem. (She does
not allow me to interpret it.) The seal to the cosmic disaster
is not the loss of "you", but the revelation that the "you"
which is lost is nothing more than "a joking voice, a gesture
that I love." Unreal times, indeed.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
