“The art of losing isn't hard to master” — Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art" (poem), 1976
Photo by Guilherme Gabriellion Unsplash
There's a poem almost anyone can relate to — because everyone has lost something: a person, a place, a way of living, that sure thing we thought was going to last forever.
Elizabeth Bishop called it "One Art," and she opens it the way a friend might, offering advice over coffee: the art of losing isn't hard to master. She starts with small things — keys, an hour wasted somewhere. You nod along. We've all lost those.
The poem repeats itself on purpose. That's the trick of its form — the same lines returning, calmer each time, like a person reciting something until it starts to feel true. Bishop isn't just telling you losing is easy. She's performing the discipline it takes to believe it.
Then the losses grow. Houses. Cities. A whole way of living, gone. And still she holds the form together — almost to the end.
Then the loss becomes a person, and something in her can't quite finish the sentence. A dash. A parenthesis. A command she has to force onto the page, like she's talking herself into it: (Write it!) — and there it is, the thing the whole poem was built to hide, finally slipping through.
I don't think she was lying to us.
I think she was lying to herself, the way we all do, and just happened to write it down.
What have you gotten good at pretending doesn't ache?
If this resonated, you might also enjoy: On Presence— Mary Oliver and On Restraint — Naomi Osaka