Elizabeth Bishop (Video)
- Hello, this is Brian Edwards,
- dean of the School
- of Liberal Arts at Tulane,
- and I'm pleased to join you
- to help celebrate National Poetry Month.
- The month of April 2020 has, of course,
- been a particularly unusual month
- for us as we struggle with loss
- and so much that is different
- from our normal routine.
- When the library asked
- if I would record a poem to help
- celebrate the month,
- my mind went immediately
- to a poem by Elizabeth Bishop,
- one of my favorite poets.
- I'm going to read to you
- "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop.
- Elizabeth Bishop was born
- in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1911,
- and she's someone
- who learned at an early age
- something about loss.
- Her father passed away
- when she was only eight months old,
- and her mother,
- who struggled with mental health issues,
- was institutionalized
- when she was only five.
- Elizabeth Bishop was raised
- by her grandparents in Nova Scotia,
- which figures frequently in her poetry.
- She's one of our great American poets
- of the 20th century,
- the winner of the Pulitzer Prize
- and National Book Award,
- and "One Art" is one of her best known
- and most loved poems.
- It's written in the form of a Villanelle,
- a 19 line form
- which is particularly intricate
- and uses repeated words and lines.
- So this is "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.