the art of losing

I accept that it's practically cliche to post this Bishop poem, and yet I'm in one of those transitional periods in my life where I can't find ANYTHING. I'm between two houses and nothing is where it seems. A pair of jeans walked off for about an hour on Friday night, right before I was supposed to be somewhere in them. I have 25 copies of my new house key so that I can't possibly miss them, and yet miraculously, I still do. Important mail that I definitely spied this weekend has officially vanished somewhere today before I could open it.
Today by zany coincidence, one of my students was reading aloud "Cross" by Langston Hughes and accidentally turned the page halfway through, where she picked up in the middle of "One Art" without skipping a beat. This poem is everybody's old friend, and I loved that it paid a visit during freshman English today. Also makes me think of an address that the minister of my church gave at our school's graduation. I wish I had a copy of it now. What I remember is her looking out at rows of girls in perfect white dresses, and telling them that at some future point in their lives, they were probably going to find themselves lost. Really lost. And how that moment or phase of confusion, despair, or disorientation just might end up being the greatest gift.

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.